Newbie 1889: Ice Cream (Game Over)

[volxen]

VOTE: NotNova

Because I like Nova, and you are definitely NotNova.

[volxen]

aren't you supposed to be one of the best scumplayers on site???

According to whom?
I imagine some would agree with you and some would disagree with you.

Should we be afraid of the possibility of scum you?

I would suggest as the theory most experienced player there is probably a certain increased value to trying to sort me early, which I can see as a valuable strategic play.
Not sure why you'd be generically afraid though? Do you think you should be generically afraid of me more than anyone else? In pure statistics I am more likely to be town than scum, so therefore should you not be generically trusting of me? (I submit the answer to that question is clearly no - but then suggest your inverse of fear is also clearly no and wonder why you want me to debate it like a valid concern)

Want to put your vote on RCEnigma with me? I think I'd like to put him to three votes.

Thor, why do you want to put RC at L-2 so early in the game? Do you really believe that his vote for Reundo was serious rather than RVS?

[volxen]

Thor, why do you want to put RC at L-2 so early in the game? Do you really believe that his vote for Reundo was serious rather than RVS?

Just to spare myself typing up some things;

Why I want him at L-2 = https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... _Your_Vote
A quick thought about what I think of his, and my, early votes = https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... _be_Random

To spell out some very simplistic things aka tl:dr;

1. I want to put him at L-2 to see who will support me in that push and who will oppose me and to see how he responds, and depending on that series of interactions I will either want to lynch him, not lynch him, or perhaps investigate someone else while I debate, or want to keep hounding him for a while.

2. I think his vote was both RVS and serious at the same time - to think that anything is 100% random lies madness - my vote was also both RVS and deadly serious, considering I have no scum reads *stronger* than him right now why shouldn't I want to get him to L-2? Does sitting at L-3 help me more somehow?

Who would you like to lynch right now?
And if the answer is 'no one' I submit you are scum playing poorly or town who fails to understand that we can't catch scum without lynching someone, and that you're allowed to reassess your vote regularly if you find a read becoming weaker/stronger, yeah?

Please don’t misinterpret my question, Thor. I’m all about aggressively putting pressure on someone when it is warranted. But who do I want to lynch

right now

? No one

yet

, as there is not enough content in this game yet, in my opinion, to develop a solid scumread (or townread for that matter) on anyone.

I think you also read quite a lot into my question. I was legitimately asking you, in essence, if RC is a serious scumread for you, and if your vote for him was serious. You seem very eager to put pressure on him for what may have simply been a non-serious RVS joke vote for Reundo. I also disagree that a vote can’t be RVS, or at least non-serious. My vote for NotNova, for example, was a completely non-serious joke vote.

At this point I want to simply start gathering as much information as possible and get reads on people and understand their motivations. But in order to do that, the game needs more content. Once I start developing some reads, I will be more than happy to start pressuring my scumread(s).

But by all means, we can dig deeper into RC’s motivation behind his vote. I’m certainly not going to try and stop you from seeing how RC responds to your pressure, but I did want you to clarify

why

you are pressuring him.

RC, are you seriously scumreading Reundo, or is your vote for him completely non-serious? Were you serious when you said that it would be worth it to take a gambit and lynch Reundo on the basis that he is too dangerous to keep alive if he is in fact scum based on the quality of his town game?

[volxen]

My short reply is I find it really funny how people are putting me to L-1 because of not liking me wanting people at L-2.
Also, as a bookeeping thing - anyone who wants to hammer me (cast the final vote to lynch me) should state hammer intent and request a claim from me. That will give me time to claim my role for people to assess, and also time for anyone who isn't confident in lynching me to state as such, prove they are wimps and unvote

Spoiler: Wall replies

Please don’t misinterpret my question, Thor. I’m all about aggressively putting pressure on someone when it is warranted. But who do I want to lynch

right now

? No one

yet

, as there is not enough content in this game yet, in my opinion, to develop a solid scumread (or townread for that matter) on anyone.

The extreme extension of that logic is everyone sits around and doesn't vote or say anything - that extreme extension leads to a rather unhelpful 1st day.
I think it is important for town to take stances early to elicit reactions to talk about, and if you don't you'll never get to the stage that something is worth taking as a scum/town tell, yeah?

I think you also read quite a lot into my question. I was legitimately asking you, in essence, if RC is a serious scumread for you, and if your vote for him was serious. You seem very eager to put pressure on him for what may have simply been a non-serious RVS joke vote for Reundo. I also disagree that a vote can’t be RVS, or at least non-serious. My vote for NotNova, for example, was a completely non-serious joke vote.

If you're not willing to lynch NotNova (or at least claim you're willing) then what's the point of voting them exactly?

At this point I want to simply start gathering as much information as possible and get reads on people and understand their motivations. But in order to do that, the game needs more content. Once I start developing some reads, I will be more than happy to start pressuring my scumread(s).

If everyone's motivations are "joke vote" then there are no motivations.
Note that me claiming my motivation was not a joke caused a reaction.

There's a difference between voting for someone and wanting them to be lynched, especially when we're still largely in RVS. Most accusations made at this stage are pretty flimsy and non-tangible, which is fine when there's not much to go on, but to want anyone lynched at this point, especially for the reasons you're pushing, is a bit far-fetched. Even if I hypothetically did have a rock-solid scum-read on RCE on page 1, it's still far too early for a lynch and I'd rather linger a while longer to find his potential partner.

What of any of this have I disagreed with? (besides the bit I'm about to question)
How do you expect to find his scum partner without putting pressure on him to try to find reactions? The only other answer I can think of is putting pressure on a town player to get reactions, which seems the inferior option of the two paths, no?

The fact that you correlate not wanting to lynch someone right now with skill level bothers me.

I actually correlated not wanting to pressure with skill level - just to clarify.
WHy does that idea bother you exactly?

RCEnigma responded to your initial question about why he'd want to lynch someone who has a good scum game, so why didn't you follow up with his response if he's your strongest scum-read? As far as I can tell, a no-response is as good as the issue being resolved, so I don't see why he's still a scum-read to you if this is the case, and if this isn't the case then I don't see why you would just let his response fly under your radar. I'm seeing a lot of telling but not a lot of showing from you, and if RCEnigma truly is a scum-read I'd expect you to treat him more like one instead of just stating he is one.

His explanation was that his thought process was a fallacy - why should that relax me or appease me?
How would you expect me to treat scum and why would you have that expectation? I don't think you know how I play the game at all - have you researched me? If you haven't researched me then why are you holding me to made up expectations?

Hypothetically, as scum, does it seem viable for me to come out strongly against one of the few players I recognize? Especially one that I have seen firsthand has a lethal town game. On top of that I do I add the RVS angle and then try to ride that to an end of day lynch? Certainly not, but I suppose it would make sense if I tried to work that angle with Reundo as a partner potentially. Reundo can confirm we are in fact, not scum partners.

You claim that you wouldn't do this as scum, but then immediately explain one (of many) reasons you would.
Maybe you are his scum partner and I caught you

The lack of follow up is troubling but even more troubling is your decision to talk around me to the rest of town, about me. Instead of interacting directly with me, which feels manipulative for one. Or this is a disingenuous read in the first place and your efforts would be better placed elsewhere. So let me take your
model a step further and ask what you think of Reundo and Volxen both of whom have soft defended me early. Do you find either of them to be scummy with me? They cant both be scum if I am indeed mafia.

WHat interaction did you expect after you admitted openly that your thought process was flawed and you did it anyway?
Why wouldn't you expect me to try to get other people to vote you by talking to them?

This also puts me off a bit. As town there is less reason to fear anyones town game, while being wary of their scum game. While I havent seen Reundo roll scum I know what he is capable of and can imagine him playing a town-looking game as scum, which is dangerous. Though I know what to look for when he is town, I dont know what to look for when he is scum and what he can artificially present.

But why fear him for that? Theoretically you could say almost the same for everyone you're unfamiliar with.
Why does it put you off that I suggest you shouldn't be empty fearful of people?

With that said it is perfectly acceptable for Voyager in this case to put more emphasis on his wariness towards your scum game since he can be disproved later with less risk than the inverse of accepting you as town when you could be Scum. Which has those immediate implications as well as skewing reads around it later.

Is that why you're voting me?

@thor: thanks for the explanations, just getting a bit of a feeling of defensiveness from your post about L-2..

What about my answer seems defensive?

i'm still new (2nd game) so im not sure what's the meta for L-1 so early into the game but i'll do it anyway..
i'm clearly sheeping reundo and RCE (for now, at least)

What do you like about each of their cases (I'm curious since neither actually made a case that I can spot)

No one here is advocating taking it to the extreme that you mention (i.e., don’t talk or vote at all on day 1). But there also needs to be a reasonable amount of content before you can seriously start pushing someone towards a lynch and develop solid townreads and scumreads.

In any case, I would say we are officially out of RVS now, as you have placed a serious vote on RC, and RC and Reundo have placed serious votes on you.

As I said, my vote for NotNova was a pure RVS joke vote. Like it or not, it is how a lot of people start the game in the RVS stage.

But we are out of RVS now, so let’s keep things going. Are you scumreading Reundo Thor?

[volxen]

I need to read through everything and get caught up.

[volxen]

I’m up through post 94 so far.

Xwing, can you help me understand the trajectory of your gameplay so far? First in 27, you list both UC and Thor as “scum leans”, but then in the same post you also point out that you are sheeping Reundo and RC, which seems to suggest that you aren’t actually scumreading them for your own individual reasons and there really isn’t any confidence behind your reads. Then you vote for Thor in 27, but in 39 it sounds like you are almost starting to regret your vote on Thor – you said here, “im still leaving my vote parked on you for the above logic (paragraph 1)..

i would have placed it at ucvoyager

because of his weird "vote" on you but i dont want to derail the current momentum.. “. You then doubled down on this reasoning again in 90 when you said, “

so maybe i should have stuck with UCvoyager

, but i didnt want to derail the momentum on you coz i was sure it would generate content”. You then unvoted Thor in this post, but, interestingly, you didn’t change your vote to UC. It comes across like you really

want

to vote for UC, but you are helpless to do so.

So my question is, if UC is the person you are the most suspicious of (which your ISO seems to suggest that is the case), why did you feel obligated to leave your vote parked on Thor for so long? You mentioned twice that you feared momentum would be lost if you had switched your vote from Thor to UC, but why did you believe that to be the case? Much of the posts in this thread so far consist of the back-and-forth between Thor and RC. I really don’t think you changing your vote from Thor to UC would have changed that or lessened the early game momentum that was started from Thor’s wagon.

If UC is the person you are the most suspicious of, you should be putting pressure on him to see how he reacts. The logical thing to do is to vote him and see if you can get others to follow suit to intensify the pressure and see how UC reacts. You could also start questioning him (beyond just asking him about the unvote vote thing). Why haven’t you done any of this?

[volxen]

I’m up through post 94 so far.

Xwing, can you help me understand the trajectory of your gameplay so far? First in 27, you list both UC and Thor as “scum leans”, but then in the same post you also point out that you are sheeping Reundo and RC, which seems to suggest that you aren’t actually scumreading them for your own individual reasons and there really isn’t any confidence behind your reads. Then you vote for Thor in 27, but in 39 it sounds like you are almost starting to regret your vote on Thor – you said here, “im still leaving my vote parked on you for the above logic (paragraph 1)..

i would have placed it at ucvoyager

because of his weird "vote" on you but i dont want to derail the current momentum.. “. You then doubled down on this reasoning again in 90 when you said, “

so maybe i should have stuck with UCvoyager

, but i didnt want to derail the momentum on you coz i was sure it would generate content”. You then unvoted Thor in this post, but, interestingly, you didn’t change your vote to UC. It comes across like you really

want

to vote for UC, but you are helpless to do so.

So my question is, if UC is the person you are the most suspicious of (which your ISO seems to suggest that is the case), why did you feel obligated to leave your vote parked on Thor for so long? You mentioned twice that you feared momentum would be lost if you had switched your vote from Thor to UC, but why did you believe that to be the case? Much of the posts in this thread so far consist of the back-and-forth between Thor and RC. I really don’t think you changing your vote from Thor to UC would have changed that or lessened the early game momentum that was started from Thor’s wagon.

If UC is the person you are the most suspicious of, you should be putting pressure on him to see how he reacts. The logical thing to do is to vote him and see if you can get others to follow suit to intensify the pressure and see how UC reacts. You could also start questioning him (beyond just asking him about the unvote vote thing). Why haven’t you done any of this?

i believe i've already explained in my earlier posts and responses to the questions, but i'll repeat for you:
in my first game, town had a hard time reading my slot coz i played safe..so in this game i tried to stick out by voting on the wagon and putting thor at L-1..apparently as pointed out by most, that action was the opposite of what i wanted to do (e.g. it made me seem to hide behind majority instead of stick out coz i put him at L-1 like i was intending)..upon examination i admit that was a bad move on my part..at that time im not able to really defend my vote on thor coz i dont believe him to be scum, i just wanted to see how the interactions between the 3 "strongest" players were..it would be beneficial for town to sort out their alignments early..i thought it would derail momentum coz i put it at L-1, if you remove it then there's no real scare of being lynched (at that time, of course thor didnt know that, until he dissected me)..

obviously that time i thought it would derail the momentum if i removed the L-1 vote there..what i thought vs what you thought wont always be the same as we're different individuals..i removed my vote when i knew it was futile coz the pressure is already off after i told thor i essentially dont scum read him [paraphrased]..
yes we all know already that i had no confidence in that vote and i had no reasons for voting thor other than what i've said above..we already established that during my interaction with both thor and notnova (not sure which post but maybe you should finish reading everything first..)

what kind of pressure do you expect me to put on UC? have you read my rock solid case on him? (hmm maybe not yet but you will later..continue reading til the later pages).. i leaned scum on him on what..page 2..on why..his first post..do you think he will be pressured if i put my vote on him now? do you think others will be convinced and follow suit? honestly?
now it's more like im waiting for him to speak/address my question..when he comes back then i can engage with him more..

I did see your initial explanation about what happened in your previous game, I just don't think it was a good reason for you to vote for Thor just because other people did, especially when it sounded like you really wanted to pressure UC rather than Thor. By "pressure" I mean that you could have started by voting for UC to get his attention, and then start asking him questions, which could have led to a back-and-forth dialogue between the two of you. This in-turn could have helped you to either solidify your initial scumread of him, or perhaps it would have convinced you that your initial read of him was wrong. But you instead voted for Thor just because other people were doing it and didn't put any pressure on the player that you said you wanted to pressure in two different posts (UC). That is what I find suspicious in your gameplay.

Also, I want to clarify something. In this post you said, "upon examination i admit that was a bad move on my part..at that time im not able to really defend my vote on thor coz

i dont believe him to be scum

, i just wanted to see how the interactions between the 3 "strongest" players were". Are you saying that Thor was NEVER a scumread for you, or that he initially was a scumread for you but you changed your mind about him? Because in post 27 you listed UC and Thor as your two scumleans:

ego

VOTE: ThorVOTE:
UNVOTE:

aren't you supposed to be one of the best scumplayers on site??? Should we be afraid of the possibility of scum you?

was this ever counted as a real vote? then subsequently counted as an unvote? if it was, im not feeling this..

@thor: thanks for the explanations, just getting a bit of a feeling of defensiveness from your post about L-2..

i'm still new (2nd game) so im not sure what's the meta for L-1 so early into the game but i'll do it anyway..
i'm clearly sheeping reundo and RCE (for now, at least)

lean town: reundo, RCE, volxen (just from tone)

lean scum: ucvoyager, thor (explanations above)

null: all the rest

VOTE: thor
L-1

[volxen]

I did see your initial explanation about what happened in your previous game, I just don't think it was a good reason for you to vote for Thor just because other people did, especially when it sounded like you really wanted to pressure UC rather than Thor. By "pressure" I mean that you could have started by voting for UC to get his attention, and then start asking him questions, which could have led to a back-and-forth dialogue between the two of you. This in-turn could have helped you to either solidify your initial scumread of him, or perhaps it would have convinced you that your initial read of him was wrong. But you instead voted for Thor just because other people were doing it and didn't put any pressure on the player that you said you wanted to pressure in two different posts (UC). That is what I find suspicious in your gameplay.

Also, I want to clarify something. In this post you said, "upon examination i admit that was a bad move on my part..at that time im not able to really defend my vote on thor coz

i dont believe him to be scum

, i just wanted to see how the interactions between the 3 "strongest" players were". Are you saying that Thor was NEVER a scumread for you, or that he initially was a scumread for you but you changed your mind about him? Because in post 27 you listed UC and Thor as your two scumleans:

yes, the reasoning, game-wise, might not have been sound..but what did you think of my thought process and motivation behind it though? do you think of it as genuine/fake? town/scum motivated? easy/hard to follow?
also, do we need to vote someone to get their attention, before asking questions? or is this more on game meta? coz personally even if i get tons of votes i dont really feel pressured at all (maybe coz i havent experienced drawing scum so i dunno..) i believe just directly engaging/asking the person would merit the same reaction..and if you've got enough info based on content and interactions (or lack thereof), then you can build a case then vote for them..that way, town can see your thought process and reasoning and join your vote if they are convinced..

do you have any scum reads at the moment, volxen?

to address your last point: during my L-1 vote on thor, i didnt have anything on him (null), i just wanted to see how their 3 interactions would go..
as of this writing, im treating the trio as town, though if there's scum in that pool, i will still choose thor..i've explained why in my previous posts..

I think it's plausible that you could do what you did as either alignment, so you are still null for me at the moment. As town, it could be simply as you say it is, that you wanted to change up your gameplay from your last game so you intentionally sheeped onto the largest wagon right off the bat to "stand out". As scum, your motivation could have been to push for a Thor lynch, and/or to force a roleclaim out of Thor, especially if you and your scumbuddy suspected that he is a town power role. After all, since Thor is the IC, if he is town the argument could be made that he is the strongest town player among us and getting him lynched and/or forcing him to out himself as a town power role would be a strong start for the scumteam.

For the time being I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, as your responses to me so far haven't indicated to me that you necessarily have malicious intent with your voting (i.e., voting for Thor when you listed UC as your prime suspect). This is probably in part due to my experience in Newbie 1885 (link: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77049), where I incorrectly scumread a relatively new player (Hugo) due to him unfortunately doing a series of things that unintentionally made him look

seriously

scummy. I've learned from that game that new players will simply unintentionally do things that are suspicious, so for now you get the benefit of the doubt. But I will be keeping a close eye on your slot.

I don't have any strong scumreads yet, but I think I would like to get UC's attention. So:

VOTE: UCvoyager

UCvoyager is now at L-1

[volxen]

I'll say that Volxen was much more active in his last game. To Nova I'll say that his walls are playstyle indicative not alignment indicative. He gets a lot out in his posts and similar to me is probably prone to tunnels.

Probably

prone to tunnels? In Newbie 1885 I incorrectly tunneled on Swims the whole game, lol. I'm trying to break that bad habit, though.

[volxen]

Nova, is there a particular reason why you singled me out compared to the other players with low-content? In 115 you voted for me and called me out after I had made a post (101) indicating that I was in the process of getting caught up in the thread. You called me out for lurking, but you didn’t call anyone else out and it came across like the only reason why it bothered you is because I made that post before I would have gotten prodded, as opposed to making it after I got prodded. In the very next post in the thread, 116, UC made a similar “I need to get caught up” post, but it didn’t phase you at all. Literally the only difference between my “I need to get caught up” post and UC’s “I need to get caught up” post is that I made mine before I would have gotten prodded, and he made his after he got prodded. Also, at the time you made 115, Horrordude only had two posts (6 and 72), one of which was his RVS vote and the other being his “I need to catch up” post. UC also had only two posts (16 and 52) at the time you made 115, and again here one of his posts was a unvote/vote and the other was a “I need to catch up post”. I, on the other hand, had 5 posts (17, 19, 21, 40, and 101) at the time you made 115, and 3 out of those 5 posts contained serious game-related content. The fact of the matter is that I had more game-related content than both Horror and UC

combined

at the time you made 115, but out of us three “lurkers” the

ONLY

thing that stuck out to you was the fact that I made my “I’m getting caught up” post before getting prodded as opposed to making it after getting prodded? Seriously?

If you had equally called all three of us out in 115 for having low-content, that would have been one thing. But you completely ignored UC’s and Horror’s own lack of content and hammered down on me solely because of the timing of my “I’m getting caught up” post. And then in 179, you continued to double down on me while still basically ignoring UC’s lack of content (you briefly name dropped him here but that was it). And here you also praised Horror for making a catch-up post, while downplaying my exchange with and questioning of xwing, as if that’s somehow not legitimate game-related content.

If your case against me is that I am more likely to be scum compared to the other low-content posters because of the timing of my “I’m getting caught up” post, then, to quote Reundo, I would say your case is pretty damn “flim flam”.

[volxen]

fos: NotNova for the time being for his questionable reasoning behind scumreading me.

[volxen]

@NotNova, 214 is a long post which basically says

1-) That you think I am scum because of the timing of my “I’m getting caught up” 101 post
2-) That you didn’t like my questioning of xwing

Look, I don’t know what to tell you other than you are reading way too much into my “I’m getting caught up” post in 101. Do you want to know why I made it? Because I was busy IRL and I wanted everyone to know that I was still here. You are acting like prod dodging somehow fits into my overall larger master scum plan. As if getting prodded is somehow noble and really pro-town. And I would think you of all people would have at least considered the possibility that maybe I was in fact just busy IRL, considering you had two days in-between 115 and your next post 160, and you indicated in 160 that you were busy IRL and that was the reasoning behind the gap in your posts. So why immediately jump to the conclusion that the timing of my 101 is scum-motivated, instead of considering that it’s simply what it looks like, a completely NAI post indicating that I got busy IRL but was in the process of getting caught up? Because that’s apparently how you treated UC’s own “I’m getting caught up” post in 116, since you never referred to it or criticized it.

That’s what I find unreasonable in your logic. In 115 you hone down on me, even though I had more content that both UC and Horror combined at the time and come to the conclusion that I am more likely to be scum than either of them because of the timing of 101. And that literally was the only distinguishing factor between me vs Horror/UC. I guess if I had made 101 after getting prodded rather than before, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, as the timing of the post is the basis of you honing down on me.

Regarding my questioning of xwing, I’m not really sure why you take issue with it. I genuinely found the disconnect between him stating UC was his top scumread but voting for Thor because others were doing it to be suspicious, so I questioned him to dig deeper into the issue and see how he would respond so I could gather more information. It seems like you’re almost trying to suggest that because my questioning of him didn’t lead to me necessarily scumreading and voting him, that it was a waste of time. If that is the case you are making, then I would argue that you are missing the entire point of what this game is all about. Questioning people and uncovering their motivations is literally what the game of Mafia is all about. Questioning someone does not always have to result in voting for them or scumreading them. I questioned him to gather more information, and I found his responses to be plausible coming from a town perspective (i.e., that he is a new player that wanted to stand out more, and he thought he could achieve that by sheeping onto the largest wagon), so I gave him the benefit of the doubt for the time being. What is unreasonable about any of that?

Now that that’s out of the way, I would like to actually start addressing other things here. To start, RCEnigma is a townread for me, and I will elaborate more in my next post.

I’m not sure yet on Reundo and Thor. I probably need to ISO both of them some more and re-read through their arguments/discussions. I think it’s entirely possible that the 3-way arguments involving {Thor, Reundo, RCEnigma} are TvTvT. I need to analyze Reundo and Thor more to see if anything sticks out to me as potentially scum-motivated.

NotNova, if you are town, then I would encourage you to keep a more open mind about my slot. Just as I am trying to keep an open mind about your slot, as I do think it’s possible that you are just misguided about me and I can see town!NotNova being genuinely fed up with lurkers, and it is a fair argument to suggest that scum could be residing within lurkers. I do find your focus on me over the other lurkers with less content to be illogical, but I still think it’s entirely possible that you are town and are simply misreading me. Besides myself, who is your next strongest scumread?

[volxen]

@Thor, my apologies to you. It was you, not Reundo, who used the term "flim flam". So in 199, it should say "to quote Thor" rather than "to quote Reundo".

[volxen]

I think it is very likely that there is at least one member of the scumteam among {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UCvoyager], and Angel}.

NotNova – I’ve already said why I suspect him. He has talked about how “fed up” he is with lurkers (see: 214), but the only slot he really has been critical of out of {Volxen, Sky[Horror], CeeJay[UC]} is mine. He basically gave Sky[Horror] a free pass just because he wrote a catch-up post (while simultaneously criticizing me for my legitimate questioning of xwing), and for whatever reason he has all but completely ignored CeeJay[UC]’s slot. UC himself really didn’t have any content in this game, and his replacement CeeJay hasn’t done much but accuse me of being scum because I was on his predecessors’ wagon (now his wagon). NotNova simply doesn’t seem to care about the lurking from Ceejay[UC]’s slot. NotNova likes to keep bringing up the fact that I didn’t have a complete readslist early on in the game (which is true), but did Sky[Horror] and Ceejay[UC] have them? No, they did not, but that doesn’t really seem to concern NotNova at all. All three of our slots have had periods of inactivity/lurking in this game, but I am the only one he is interested in questioning and pressuring.

If NotNova were town, I think he would be more inclined to equally pressure/question all three of myself, Sky[Horror], and Ceejay[UC] for our periods of inactivity/lurking. Obviously, he can only vote for one of us at a time, but he still could have made an effort to question/pressure Sky[Horror] and Ceejay[UC], but he didn’t. He pays lip service to being fed up with lurking, but then he hard tunnels all of his focus on the one out of us three who has had the most content in this game: myself. That suggests to me that he may be pushing an agenda rather than legitimately trying to scum-hunt amongst the slots that have less content in this game. If he is scum, perhaps it is because one of the other lurker slots is his partner (Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], or even Angel). And in 214 and 217 he sounds like he is just more interested in establishing associatives than in actually lynching scum. Why is the guy that is supposedly so “fed up” with lurking adamantly opposed to lynching the slot that

literally has zero content

? NotNova’s words and actions are just contradictory.

Xwing – I’ve already talked about xwing as well. I do find his early game behavior of voting for Thor while listing UC as his prime scum suspect (and his reasoning for doing so) to be suspicious. And then in 233, he writes a lengthy post on why he is voting for me, but his reasons for voting me are basically the same exact reasons that NotNova listed for voting me: 1) he didn’t like the fact that I had a period of inactivity that was followed by my “I’m getting caught up” post in 101 and 2) he didn’t like that I questioned him about his voting for Thor. He then goes on to compare his vote for Thor to my original vote for NotNova, even though he knows that my original vote for NotNova was a non-serious RVS vote (because I didn’t have any serious scumreads at the time that I voted for NotNova, see: 17), whereas at the time he voted for Thor he had a scumread (UC) that he neglected to vote for. He also keeps justifying his behavior in this game based on what happened in a previous game: 1) first he uses it to justify his voting for Thor (“I want to stand out unlike my last game”), and 2) second he uses it in part to justify voting for me (“in my last game one of the people that attacked me turned out to be scum”). Overall that’s just faulty reasoning as this is a completely different game with different people and different circumstances.

Ceejay[UC] – His predecessor UC didn’t really have much content, and the first thing Ceejay did when he joined the game was accuse me of being scum (see: 207). Interestingly, he was fine with the other three people being on his wagon (Thor, Sky[Horror], and xwing), and it was only my being on his wagon that he took issue with (see: 212). I feel like that was a very easy play to make, because I had already taken heat for inactivity/lurking (mostly from NotNova), and out of the four people on his wagon I was the easiest target for him to attack. In essence, he basically just agreed with NotNova’s case against me. And out of the 200+ posts that this game currently has, the only thing that seems to have stuck out to him is the fact that I was on his predecessors’ wagon (now his wagon), even when I made it clear that I voted for UC primarily to get his attention (see: 183).

Angel – I don’t really have much to say here as there is literally no content from this slot. But as Reundo said, multiple people have replaced out of this slot, which may suggest a higher likelihood of it being a scum slot.

[volxen]

EBWOP: Why is the guy that is supposedly so “fed up” with lurking adamantly opposed to lynching the slot (Angel) that

literally has zero content

?

[volxen]

CJ wagon is not the worst due to early UC posts actually

Do you still have intent to hammer me?

[volxen]

@RCEnigma,

I’m not seeing what is so grounded about NotNova’s case against me. He really brought up two valid points against me:

1) That I didn’t have an early game reads list
2) That I had a period of inactivity

And those two things are equally applicable to all of the other lurker slots: Ceejay[UC], Sky[Horror], and Angel. But it’s as if he is holding me to a different standard than everyone else, because he has chosen to ignore the other lurker slots rather than taking the more equitable approach of presenting cases against all four of us.

If his theory is that it is very likely that one or even both members of the scumteam are among the lurkers, then how is it possibly the most logical approach to tunnel on one out of those four slots and completely ignore the other three? Even if he suspects me the most, should he not have made an effort to engage and question/pressure the other three lurker slots? Admittedly in the case of Angel this would be impossible since that slot has not checked in, but he has had ample opportunities to start seriously engaging/questioning/pressuring the Sky[Horror] and CeeJay[UC] slots. Especially in the case of Ceejay, who has been UC’s replacement for a while now, yet he has made no effort engage, question, or pressure him. In 260, he basically says that the best usage of his limited time to is death tunnel on my slot and ignore all of the other lurker slots because he doesn’t have an unlimited amount of time to devote to this game (as if any of us do).

For example, in 70 he asks me for a readslist. Why has he not asked the same of the Sky[Horror] and Ceejay[UC] slots? This is one of his two major points against me, yet he is unwilling to be equally critical of their slots for not having early game readslists.

His lynch pool also seems to be {Volxen, Volxen, Volxen, and more Volxen}. I haven’t seen him list the name of anyone else that he would seriously consider lynching. And we are on day 1 of a nine-player game that has two scum slots. And I seriously doubt anyone has uncovered the exact scum team, so at this point in time wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect NotNova to have at least 3 serious scumreads anyways? The only two people he has mentioned as scumreads are myself and xwing, and in 223, he said that xwing is “far below Volxen” on his list of scumreads, so I’m not even sure at this point how serious of a scumread xwing is for him.

Meanwhile, while it did come late, I did clearly list four scumreads in 258. To be more specific, this is how I am currently sorting everyone:

Town: {RCEnigma, Reundo, Thor}. Out of these three I feel the most confident about RC being town, but I really suspect that Reundo and Thor are both town as well. If either Reundo or Thor are scum they are doing an incredibly good job of covering up their agenda, because nothing in their interactions (with each other as well as with everyone else) or individual ISO’s stands out to me as being likely to be scum motivated.

Null: {Sky[Horror]}. This slot would be a scumread for me if Horror hadn’t made that catch-up post in 155, which was a fairly decent catch-up post. I still think it’s possible that the Sky[Horror] slot could be scum, but I think scum is much more likely to be residing among {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. For now the Sky[Horror] slot is null until I see more content from Sky.

Scum: {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. I already talked about these four slots in 258.

Ironically, even though he does have a lot more content than I did in the beginning of the game, I am currently taking a much more holistic and open-minded approach to this game than he is. He is insistent on death tunneling me, whereas I have shared a total of four scumreads, any of whom I would be OK with lynching. To be perfectly clear, that means my lynch pool is {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. I wouldn’t be adamantly opposed to a Sky[Horror] lynch, but I believe that any of my four scumreads would be a better lynch.

One of my biggest concerns regarding NotNova is that if he is in fact town, he is setting himself up to look unnecessarily scummy with my mislynch (if I am lynched on day 1) going into day 2. Let me put it this way:

Scenario 1:
A = NotNova death tunnels Volxen
B = NotNova ignores the other lurker slots (Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel)
C = Volxen is mislynched day 1
D = scumteam has a much easier time scumpainting NotNova on day 2

A+B+C=D

If I am mislynched on day 1, NotNova is undoubtedly going to take heat for my mislynch, because it is a wagon that he has started, and he has been very forcefully pushing for me to be lynched today. Xwing has also tunneled on me to some extent lately, but no one else on my wagon has been death tunneling me the way NotNova has been. He has been death tunneling me and ignoring the other lurker slots, period. So if I am mislynched and flip town, it’s not exactly going to be hard for the scumteam to start making the argument that NotNova was pushing a scum agenda with my mislynch (and possibly push for NotNova own mislynch on day 2). They could make similar arguments to what I have been making – that he has been highly inconsistent in his push against me while completely ignoring the other lurker slots. The difference is that at that point I would be confirmed town, so the point about him being inconsistent becomes even more valid. And his whole theory that scum is likely to be among the lurkers won’t be a valid defense for him to fall back on, because of his singular focus on only one out of the four lurker slots (and the one with the most content out of the four to boot).

Scenario 2:

A= NotNova equally focuses on all four lurker slots (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel)
B = Volxen happens to be one out of the four lurker slots that is chosen to be lynched
C= Volxen is mislynched day 1
D= scumteam has a much harder time scumpainting NotNova on day 2

A+B+C=D

If this

were

the case, this would be the much better scenario for NotNova going into day 2, because it’s going to be more difficult for the scumteam to scumpaint paint him (and push for his mislynch on day 2) if he were equally pressuring all four of (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel) and I just happened to be the one that was lynched. He could defend himself by falling back on his theory that scum is likely to be among the lurkers (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel). It then becomes harder for the scumteam to suggest that NotNova was pushing a scum agenda, because they have to attack his entire premise (that scum are more likely to be among the lurkers) in order to do that.

The problem is that scenario 1 is the current reality. His lynch pool should in theory be {Volxen, xwing, Sky[horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel}: all of the lurkers plus xwing, since xwing is apparently still a scumread for him. But the only person he has any interest in lynching is me.

Either he has an incredibly narrow-minded and short-sighted town game for day 1 (death tunnel one suspect and ignore all of the other lurker slots) or he is simply scum. If he is town, I would encourage him to start taking a more holistic and open-minded approach to this game so that his death tunneling of me cannot be used against him by the scumteam. Because believe it or not, the most important thing to me is that town wins this game. Of course, I don’t want to be mislynched, but what would be worse than my mislynch is if my mislynch is followed by NotNova himself getting mislynched on day 2 because he inadvertently makes himself look scummy with how hard he death tunneled on me to the exclusion of all else on day 1.

Seriously @NotNova, you need to start taking a more holistic and open-minded view of the game, and you need to start doing that now. Yes, I get it I am your top suspect, but you are aware that there are two scum slots in this game, and you are also not 100% confident of your scumread of me. At this point in the game you should, at a minimum, have 3 serious scumreads, and you should be willing to vote for any of them.

[volxen]

I want to keep Thor around, I wont be voting there today. Why are we even discussing his reputation in a newbie game, it's irrelevant.

RCEnigma, run down on why you're voting for my slot?

Volxen, why are you so concerned about a mislynch on Day One? You're pushing the 'lynching me will be a mislynch' thing rather heavily.

Ruendo, replace outs aren't a tell this early in the game. Using your argument that lurkers are anti-town, I'd go as far as to say replacing out was neutral behaviour. Scum lurk to avoid the radar, they wouldn't lurk so much that it would get their slot replaced out.

I haven't read the thread properly yet, that is just be notes on a few points made on this page.

Hi everybody, it's been about 3-4 years since I last played, so bare with me and I'm sure we can sort everything out.

Because the one person I am 100% certain of being town is myself. My win condition requires all scum to be lynched, and I know for a fact that I am not scum, so me being mislynched does not help me meet my win condition. So don't I have an obligation to defend myself to the best of my abilities, as opposed to sitting back and just accepting my mislynch? I'm not really sure what point you are trying to drive home here.

[volxen]

So let me ask you this Volxen, do you see Scum!Nova tunneling you to a lynch only for it to flip town and implicate himself heavily? As opposed to keeping his lynch options open for perhaps a Townie to lead the charge that he started.

The answer is yes, I think it's entirely possible that scum!Nova could lead the charge against me, even though it's a bit of a risky play (as opposed to letting someone else take the charge as you suggest). If he is scum I don't know exactly what his plan going into day 2 will be assuming I am mislynched on day 1, but it would probably involve deflecting the blame at some of the more suspicious players on my wagon, such as xwing and especially Ceejay[UC]. Ceejay[UC] in particular would be an easy target for NotNova to attack, considering Ceejay didn't exactly articulate a good reason for being on my wagon (he voted me because I was on his wagon, even though he had three other people on his wagon that he has ignored). Or maybe he would start doubling down on xwing, who was his original scumread. In fact, interestingly in 287 NotNova said the following about xwing:

Polarized: xwing (if you flip scum, cleared town, otherwise a scumlean)

So it seems his read of xwing is contingent on how I flip. I find it a bit interesting that he's not willing to commit on xwing until he sees my flip. If I flip scum, that apparently means xwing is cleared as town, but if I flip town, then xwing is back to being a scumread for him again. So maybe he makes the case that there has to be at least one scum among {Volxen, xwing}, and then pushes for xwing's mislynch on day 2 (assuming nova is scum and xwing is town) after my mislynch on day 1.

[volxen]

@xwing, who all is in your lynch pool?

[volxen]

@xwing, who all is in your lynch pool?

that would be you, then angel (mostly for the twice flaked, which i admit is quite weak)..
im gonna look at ceej and sky more as well (in that order)..
any reason you asked?

Because it's important to be transparent about things like that.

[volxen]

Ceejay[UC] – His predecessor UC didn’t really have much content, and the first thing Ceejay did when he joined the game was accuse me of being scum (see: 207). Interestingly, he was fine with the other three people being on his wagon (Thor, Sky[Horror], and xwing), and it was only my being on his wagon that he took issue with (see: 212). I feel like that was a very easy play to make, because I had already taken heat for inactivity/lurking (mostly from NotNova), and out of the four people on his wagon I was the easiest target for him to attack. In essence, he basically just agreed with NotNova’s case against me. And out of the 200+ posts that this game currently has, the only thing that seems to have stuck out to him is the fact that I was on his predecessors’ wagon (now his wagon), even when I made it clear that I voted for UC primarily to get his attention (see: 183).

Do tell me, do you think voting a lurker increases the chances of a lurker posting?
Now that you have my attention, what do you wanna do with it?

Good, I'm glad that I have your attention since there has been very little content from your slot. You can start by sharing any townreads, nullreads, and scumreads that you have. Also, who all is in your lynch pool?

[volxen]

@Volxen do you have a previous game that I can parse? Or is this your first?

My only completed game is Newbie 1885 (I was town in it). Here is a link to it: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77049

My problem right now is that I really don't understand Volxen. Sigh.

What are you having trouble understanding about me?

[volxen]

@Reundo, in 360 you said, "I'd be much more content lynching volxen than ceejay today". Can you explain why you find Ceejay towny then? He hasn't done much besides immediately vote for me and accuse me of being scum upon his entrance to the game, and his reasoning was simply because I was on his predecessors’ wagon, which became his wagon.

Here is the post where I voted for UC:

I did see your initial explanation about what happened in your previous game, I just don't think it was a good reason for you to vote for Thor just because other people did, especially when it sounded like you really wanted to pressure UC rather than Thor. By "pressure" I mean that you could have started by voting for UC to get his attention, and then start asking him questions, which could have led to a back-and-forth dialogue between the two of you. This in-turn could have helped you to either solidify your initial scumread of him, or perhaps it would have convinced you that your initial read of him was wrong. But you instead voted for Thor just because other people were doing it and didn't put any pressure on the player that you said you wanted to pressure in two different posts (UC). That is what I find suspicious in your gameplay.

Also, I want to clarify something. In this post you said, "upon examination i admit that was a bad move on my part..at that time im not able to really defend my vote on thor coz

i dont believe him to be scum

, i just wanted to see how the interactions between the 3 "strongest" players were". Are you saying that Thor was NEVER a scumread for you, or that he initially was a scumread for you but you changed your mind about him? Because in post 27 you listed UC and Thor as your two scumleans:

yes, the reasoning, game-wise, might not have been sound..but what did you think of my thought process and motivation behind it though? do you think of it as genuine/fake? town/scum motivated? easy/hard to follow?
also, do we need to vote someone to get their attention, before asking questions? or is this more on game meta? coz personally even if i get tons of votes i dont really feel pressured at all (maybe coz i havent experienced drawing scum so i dunno..) i believe just directly engaging/asking the person would merit the same reaction..and if you've got enough info based on content and interactions (or lack thereof), then you can build a case then vote for them..that way, town can see your thought process and reasoning and join your vote if they are convinced..

do you have any scum reads at the moment, volxen?

to address your last point: during my L-1 vote on thor, i didnt have anything on him (null), i just wanted to see how their 3 interactions would go..
as of this writing, im treating the trio as town, though if there's scum in that pool, i will still choose thor..i've explained why in my previous posts..

I think it's plausible that you could do what you did as either alignment, so you are still null for me at the moment. As town, it could be simply as you say it is, that you wanted to change up your gameplay from your last game so you intentionally sheeped onto the largest wagon right off the bat to "stand out". As scum, your motivation could have been to push for a Thor lynch, and/or to force a roleclaim out of Thor, especially if you and your scumbuddy suspected that he is a town power role. After all, since Thor is the IC, if he is town the argument could be made that he is the strongest town player among us and getting him lynched and/or forcing him to out himself as a town power role would be a strong start for the scumteam.

For the time being I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, as your responses to me so far haven't indicated to me that you necessarily have malicious intent with your voting (i.e., voting for Thor when you listed UC as your prime suspect). This is probably in part due to my experience in Newbie 1885 (link: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77049), where I incorrectly scumread a relatively new player (Hugo) due to him unfortunately doing a series of things that unintentionally made him look

seriously

scummy. I've learned from that game that new players will simply unintentionally do things that are suspicious, so for now you get the benefit of the doubt. But I will be keeping a close eye on your slot.

I don't have any strong scumreads yet,

but I think I would like to get UC's attention

. So:

VOTE: UCvoyager

UCvoyager is now at L-1

Since there seems to be confusion on this, I meant it when I said that I voted for UC to get his attention. Not because I wanted to lynch him at the time. UC himself was really null for me, because he didn't do much besides... lurk. But then Ceejay joins the game, and he immediately votes for me and accuses me of being scum, while simultaneously clearing the other three people on his wagon (Thor, Sky[Horror], xwing)..... because reasons? In 207 Ceejay says in reference to me, "Does he think his vote would drag a lurker into the thread? I feel that his vote on my slot at that point was opportunistic and not really town motivated."

I'm not sure why Ceejay would find the prospect of voting for a lurker to get their attention to be such a shocking concept, and why he would make the assumption that it's necessarily indicative of scum-motivation (if it's pro-town to lynch lurkers that aren't contributing, then why is it suddenly scummy to vote for a lurker merely to get their attention?). It's entirely valid to vote for someone to get their attention and/or pressure them, even if you are not ready yet to lynch them at the time of the vote. Even if he has only skimmed through the thread and skimmed through his predecessors ISO, he would quickly realize that his predecessor UC didn't really do much of anything. But no, out of the 200+ posts that were in this game upon his joining in, he immediately latches onto my wagon and accuses me of being scum and doesn't really comment on much of anything else. And his only reasoning for scumreading me is because he doesn't like the fact that I voted for a lurker's slot to get their attention.

Also, I find it a bit curious, given how much of an issue Ceejay has with my voting of his slot, that he hasn't questioned the other two people that were on his wagon (Thor and xwing) as to why they were voting for his slot (I’m not including Horror here since he replaced out). As far as I can tell, Thor voted for UC for reasons similar to my own reasons for voting for UC.

Here is the post where Thor voted for UC:

@Xwing - how do you see ignoring my slot to help you win the game?

i'm not ignoring your slot per se, i'm ignoring you at the moment..there's plenty of back and forth with you and the others already and i believe there's even more content to come..

Okay.
How does "ignoring me for some period of time yet to be declared" help you win?
I feel it won't.

Unvote: RCEnigma
Vote: UCVoyager

RCE is starting to convince me he might be town. Let's lynch UCVoyager. (as a disclaimer for Reundo - though I do say 'let's lynch' which *could* mean 'immediately, like in the next 20 minutes' my lack of inclusion of timing does not actually clarify this as my goal, the better way to read this is 'let's lynch him in a general sense insomuch as I read him as scum, but I understand that other votes might take a bit of time to gather here, and I also appreciate the use of hammer intent and claim time for people to assess the wagon - and though I would like to see proactive advancement of that end goal within a short time, frankly within 48 hours having a hammer intent would please me immensely, it is not a statement that we must do it all immediately )

And when asked by xwing about his vote for UC, Thor explained it in this post:

@thor: it keeps me motivated to play the game..

Wow - I'm sorry reading my posts is that painful to you.
Frankly though, if you're town aren't you basically game throwing right now and being a jerk to all your fellow town team by not bothering to read posts to help catch a scum member or figure out a town member?

how exactly were you convinced of RCE's towniness?[/quote[
To clarify - I said starting to convince, not convinced.
For me the basic evidence is he doesn't appear to have a plan. Being lost tends to be a thing town are more comfortable with. Compare/contrast with Reundo who, even though he is admitting half his case on me might be wrong, is also still voting me and is ignoring that 2 players who were voting me are agreeing they had flawed reasoning while Reundo is attacking me for calling out flawed reasoning being used to vote me. If he's town, he's absolutely tunneled and not helpful. If he's scum - he's probably scared that admitting he was wrong and actually doing something different would 'look scummy' so he's digging in hard to avoid it. Either way it's not town minded. RCE is using terrible logic, but at least he seems generally interested to toss out a lot of town reads and also to (weakly) poke at new avenues. Makes it look like he might legit be trying to solve the game.

why is UC scum for you?

At this point - being purely unhelpful to town paired with not posting. If we can't sort him we might as well flip him because I wouldn't want him in lylo if this is how he'll be playing the rest of the game.

Want to vote him with me?
If nothing else it will allow someone to freak out that I'm asking for support on a wagon again.

Thor can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m getting the impression Thor’s vote for UC here very much had to do with the fact that UC was lurking and not contributing. In other words, he and I voted for UC for similar reasons. The main difference is that Thor was willing to commit to lynching UC at the time of his vote, whereas my vote was more about pressuring UC and getting his attention, in hopes of drawing him out from his lurking and to see how he would respond to being at L-1. But Ceejay is A-OK with Thor’s vote on his slot, but my vote for his slot is scummy, even though we both voted for UC for similar, if not exactly the same, reasons? How does that make any sense whatsoever?

And here is the post where xwing voted for UC:

@horror: even if im not convinced yet on vote usage, it's been noted by most people to be suspicious, so i concede that point for now and will be voting in this post..

[shockingly] i agree with thor that time's not enough..in my first game we adopted a mob lynch mentality on D1 simply coz we didnt have time to switch and ended up mislynching a townie who didnt defend himself well..i also agree that among the inactives,

UC seems most suspect coz of the nature of his prodges

..horror has already posted content, angel has just replaced (so the two others before really flaked)..

regarding my take on the inactives, i think we should be a bit wary in speculating their alignment, since in my first game, the two inactives were actually PR roles..whereas in reundo's, they were scum..all im saying is we can speculate but we shouldn't put too much importance on it..we wont know until they actively join the game..

VOTE: UCvoyager

So again, a vote for UC’s slot that was at least in part due to his inactivity/lurking. And again, Ceejay is A-OK with xwings vote on his slot as well…. It’s only my vote on his slot that he takes issue with. Even though all three of us voted for his slot because of inactivity/lurking. Makes perfect sense.

So ironically, my vote for UC’s slot was initially about merely trying to get UC’s attention, but Ceejay himself tipped his slot from a nullread to a scumread for me with his entrance to the game and his illogical stance that my vote, and only my vote, for him is scummy even when at least two of the other people on his wagon (Thor and xwing) voted for his slot for similar reasons.

This is why I have been content to keep my vote on Ceejay, as he is now in fact a full-blown scumread for me. But as I made clear in 284, I do have other people in my lynch pool that I am willing to vote for as well.

[volxen]

Also, I am not simultaneously scumreading and townreading NotNova in 284. I think I made it pretty clear that he is a scumread for me in that post as well as 258. But I am not 100% certain of him being scum, and on the off-chance that he is just misguided town that is horrifically misreading me, I was expressing a genuine concern of him inadvertently drawing suspicion to himself in the event that I am mislynched today. Because unlike everyone else on my wagon, he is the only one that has been hardcore death tunneling on me.

[volxen]

okay first off, im happy you're posting..
next..have you read reundo and ceejay's exchange in 212? what do you think of ceejay's reasoning there? do you think it does not answer part of your argument?

can you rank your scum reads in order from most scummy to least scummy?
im assuming ceejay first, then?

Ceejay's "reasoning" in 212 for singling me out of all of the people on his wagon is illogical. He also said in that post that my "apparent lack of sorting" was scummy, but then I sorted everyone in the game in 284, which he never acknowledged in any of his subsequent posts. And it is quite ironic that he would even make that comment in the first place, as Ceejay himself has yet to sort the vast majority of the people in this game. Most of his content has been accusing me of being scum, voting for me, and expressing supposed frustration at "not understanding" me.

I would currently rank my scumreads from most scummy to least scummy as follows:

1. NotNova
2. Ceejay[UC]
3. Xwing
4. Haylen[Angel]

[volxen]

So... does anyone have the intention to hammer me? We are a little bit under 15 hours away from the deadline, and I am at work until later in the evening. I will be around in the evening for the last 4 or so hours before the deadline, but I want to make sure I have a chance to respond before getting hammered, in the event that someone places intent to hammer me.

[volxen]

Ok

intent to hammer

just before deadline.

Very well, then I have no choice but to make a full role claim.

My role is

Town Jailkeeper

. During each night phase I am able to target one player. The player that I target is protected from being night killed and is prevented from using their own night action, if they have one. I am not able to target myself.

[volxen]

I would be agreeable to either a Ceejay or Haylen lynch. I can change my vote before the deadline if need be.

[volxen]

So just to clarify for everyone, here is the current vote count:

Haylen (4) – NotNova, Xwing, Reundo, Ceejay
Ceejay (4) – Thor, Volxen, Sky, CT
NotNova (1) - Haylen

So both Haylen and Ceejay are at L-1.

[volxen]

Haylen, are you around? Anything you want to say before deadline?

[volxen]

I'm kind of torn... I really was initially scumreading Haylen's slot just because of the fact that three people replaced out of this slot (and for what it's worth, Angel joined another game after replacing out of this one...).

However, I do find these recent posts of Haylen's to be possibly scum-motivated:

Also @Thor — can I ask you in advance for an IC-hat guide on Day 2 on how PRs should act? Thanks.

Woah Woah Woah. What the heck is this? Smells like a setup to a fake claim to me. No townie would hint so heavily bout being a power role on Day One with little so pressure.

As for my comments and lack of reads, as I said I haven't played in 3 years and I'm still finding my feet. I also have a distain for Day One. You're seeing me gather my thoughts. I'm just trying to keep things short and sweet because this game is already heavy on the text walls.

Also @Thor — can I ask you in advance for an IC-hat guide on Day 2 on how PRs should act? Thanks.

Woah Woah Woah. What the heck is this? Smells like a setup to a fake claim to me. No townie would hint so heavily bout being a power role on Day One with little so pressure.

It tends to be a major point of discussion in early D2 from what I've seen, which is why I asked in advance.

That said, I REALLY don't appreciate you trying to speculate about me having a PR. It's incredibly anti-town. You should be bringing this up if and when I do claim.

I advise we drop this discussion immediately.

Stop deflecting, you brought it up yourself. Anti-Town is advertising that you may have a power role to the game on day one when you aren't under pressure.

VOTE NOTNOVA

Besides, I'm advertising that I think you're setting yourself up for a fake claim, not that I think you're a power role.

[volxen]

mmmmmm..guys..i need guidance..
30 mins left before i leave..
both wagons are at L-1..i cant hammer haylen coz im on that wagon already..
i can still hammer ceej..

if we got a legit JK, only PR available is doctor and tracker..
if ceej is legit doctor, we got mafia RB, so the kill will still go through regardless if he protects volxen..
do we believe this claim..as it's the easiest (from site consensus) for mafia to claim?
note ceej didnt claim VT..

quick..reundo notnova wake up..CT? sky? volxen? thor?

do we believe this claim?
im leaning on NOT believing..
on the off-chance it's true..i will be responsible for hammering our doctor.. -_-"

So are you saying at this point that you think Ceejay is more likely to be scum than Haylen then?

[volxen]

unfortunately haylen doesnt seem to be active right now..

im leaving the office now..i trust reundo to be active soon and to be around just in case we choose to hammer ceej, but i'll stick around sometime by phone just in case..i'll be driving and will be rereading this an hour from now (depending on traffic)..

we got a little less than 2 hours before deadline..
sky is here and can hammer haylen so there's that relief..

pedit: huh..noted on the angel replace..wonder what thor thinks of our "twice replace theory" now..

@volxen: i dont know..im so torn..but one of them is getting lynched today..on one hand it's safer to go for haylen for today..
but otoh if ceej's doc claim is true, then we've got mafia RB, so ceej's role will be useless to protect you anyway..assuming ceej's claim is false, great..we got scum..i need to leave now guys, will come back sooner than later, i hope..

Yes, that's true. Ceejay is either the real doctor, in which case both town power roles have now been outed, or he is scum fake claiming as a last ditch effort to not get lynched. If he is the real doctor and they roleblock him, then the only way I could survive the night is if I put the member of the scumteam who tries to kill me in jail. Which is not going to be easy to do...

[volxen]

I'm placing intent to hammer Haylen before the deadline[

/b]

[volxen]

Volxen if he flips red who will you target? It would help if you let us know so we still have a confirmed town if you die. Don't say who you would check on a green flip though.

Well if Haylen flips red, that would make me more inclined to believe that NotNova is town. I mean, NotNova was previously on my wagon, and after I role claimed, he stated a clear preference for lynching Haylen over Ceejay. If NotNova and Haylen were scum partners, I don't think NotNova would go out of his way to help lynch his scumbuddy (Haylen) when he could simply join the Ceejay wagon and contribute to his mislynch without really taking any heat.

I'm assuming here also that scum would not consider it optimal to bus on day one, since there are only two scum partners in newbie games and busing means you are killing off 50% of your scum team. I don't think this is something that a sensible scum team would take lightly, since busing does not always lead to getting town credit or becoming locktown. So if Haylen is scum, after my role claim I think his partner would be inclined to jump on Ceejay's wagon rather than go out of his/her way to bus his/her scum partner.

In other words, if Haylen flips red I think all of the people that clearly stated that they would prefer to lynch Haylen over Ceejay (after I roleclaimed and it was clear that I would not be lynched) are much less likely to be scum. This includes NotNova, xwing, and Reundo -- all of whom stated a clear preference of lynching Haylen over Ceejay as soon as I role claimed.

So if Haylen flips red, I think it would be logical to look at the people who preferred to lynch Ceejay over Haylen.

[volxen]

Volxen if he flips red who will you target? It would help if you let us know so we still have a confirmed town if you die. Don't say who you would check on a green flip though.

Who will I target for my night action? I'm assuming the scum team is definitely going to target me for the nightkill, and roleblock Ceejay (assuming Ceejay is not scum). So I think my only play is to try and predict which member of the scum team is going to try and nightkill me, and jail that person so the kill doesn't go through. It's a long shot, but it's all I can do.

[volxen]

The point of you choosing one person to use your ability on is so that we're left with a conf town if you die or confirmed scum if you survive. This play only makes sense if Haylen flips red as it leaves only 1 mafia to do the kill. If Haylen flips green just go with your gut.

OK, if Haylen flips red then I would target Thor since he was the only person on Ceejay's wagon who was unwilling to vote for Haylen.

[volxen]

Yeah in case I don't make it to day 2... good luck town! Let's pull off a win here!

[volxen]

Thor665

(4) - horrordude0215, Reundo, RCEnigma, xwing
NotNova (1) -

volxen

RCEnigma (1) -

Thor665

xwing (1) - NotNova

Not Voting (2) -

Haylen

, UC Voyager

Ceejay

(4) -

Thor665

, horrordude0215, xwing,

volxen

Thor665 (1) - Reundo
volxen (1) - NotNova

Not Voting (3) -

Haylen

, RCEnigma,

ceejayvinoya

volxen

(4) - NotNova,

ceejayvinoya

, xwing, Reundo
ceejayvinoya (2) -

Thor665

,

volxen

angel7399 (1) - RCEnigma

Not Voting (2) -

Haylen

, Skygazer

Haylen

(5) - Reundo, xwing, NotNova,

ceejayvinoya

, Skygazer
ceejayvinoya (2) -

Thor665

,

volxen

NotNova (1) -

Haylen

Not Voting (1) - CheekyTeeky

The above are for my own use because I like to see pretty colors and because I expect one to change soon

@Cheeky Teeky - pretty sure you asked about the impossible shift that I was claiming happened from Ceejay to Volxen, to answer your question it would be xwing as the swing vote and Ceejay as also suspect within the same concept. If it wasn't you then that's the answer to whoever was acting like Ceejay was the counterwagon to Volxen (which I know included xwing and I think Reundo made that claim also - both are objectively wrong).

I would like to hear the claims of both Power roles for their night target.

I think the claim ordr should be;

Ceejay
*then*
Volxen

If anyone disagrees please let me know why, but considering Ceejay was more likely to be blocked if he was town (and should have objectively the more suspect claim unless you're blind) he should claim result first.

@CT - why didn't you want his claim first, or at all? Just auto ignoring it due to theory block and not even wanting the info?

Also, just as an [IC hat] moment;

I'd like you all to consider how the lynch went down, and whether that played out in a pro or anti town way. Did you get as much time to discuss the claims as you'd like? Did it feel like town was stumbling around and scrambling a bit? Would it, perhaps, have behooved us to cut out a few semi-wasted days in the middle? I recognize that replacements and the extension comprised some of those days - but this is a good point to analyze so you can maybe get an idea of *when* it is good to get the first L-1 and claim of a day (and I will personally suggest it should be done at *least* a week before deadline, though will note many disagree with me...that said, they're wrong ) [/hat]

Alright, per your advice, I will let Ceejay reveal who he saved before I reveal who I targeted and placed in jail.

[volxen]

I targeted

Skygazer

and put her in jail, as I have been strongly suspecting that the scum team is either NotNova/Skygazer or xwing/Skygazer after day 1 ended.

The fact that the nightkill didn’t go through makes me more convinced that she is scum. I think the following scenario is what played out:

The mafia roleblocker blocked CJ.

Skygazer attempted to kill me, but because I put her in jail, the kill didn’t go through.

Now if the scumteam wanted to, they could have guaranteed a night kill on CJ, because they could have roleblocked me (thus preventing me from jailing anyone) and just killed CJ. So I’m assuming I was the higher priority target for them, and since I didn’t list Skygazer as a scumread on day one, they figured the kill was not at too much risk of being stopped.

The only other plausible scenario to me is that CJ is scum rather than the doctor, but someone else is the doctor, and the real doctor protected me, and thus the scumteam didn’t know who to roleblock. So unless we are entertaining the possibility that Ceejay is actually VT but lied about being doctor to save himself, that pretty much means there is a 100% chance that either CJ is scum or Skygazer is scum, because these are the only two plausible scenarios that make sense for explaining why there was no nightkill. Currently, I’m inclined to believe that Ceejay is town and Skygazer is scum.

There were several things I looked at after day 1 to help me determine who I wanted to place in jail. To start with, I looked at the Thor wagon, Ceejay[UC] wagon, and Volxen wagon. All three of these wagons got up to L-1 status with four votes, and

I believe that each of these wagons had scum on them

. I didn’t focus on the Haylen wagon as much (though there was no doubt scum on the Haylen wagon), as that wagon formed in the very last hours on the day of the deadline, after both myself and CJ claimed power roles. And since {Volxen, CJ[UC], and Haylen} were presented as the only three lynch options, and Haylen himself apparently was not around to make a claim, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that he would be lynched after both myself and CJ claimed power roles with the very limited amount of time we had left before deadline.

Here was the vote count when Thor was at L-1:

Votecount 1.2

Thor665 (4)

–

horrordude0215

,

Reundo

, RCEnigma,

xwing

NotNova (1) - volxen
RCEnigma (1) - Thor665
xwing (1) - NotNova

Not Voting (2) - StandingWind, UC Voyager

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2018-09-18 02:50:39).

Here was the vote count when Ceejay was at L-1:

Votecount 1.7

ceejayvinoya (4)

- Thor665,

horrordude0215

,

xwing

, volxen
volxen (2) - NotNova, ceejayvinoya
angel7399 (1) - Reundo

Not Voting (2) - angel7399, RCEnigma

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is currently frozen at 1 day, 21 hours, 35 minutes until all replacements have been found.

And here was the vote count when Volxen was at L-1:

Votecount 1.9

volxen (4)

- NotNova, ceejayvinoya,

xwing

,

Reundo

ceejayvinoya (2) - Thor665, volxen
NotNova (1) - CheekyTeeky

Not Voting (2) - Haylen, Skygazer

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2018-09-21 02:47:13).

In particular, it stuck out to me that all three of xwing, Sky[Horror], and Reundo were on more than one of these major day one wagons (which I emphasized in the vote counts). Most notably, xwing was on

ALL THREE

of these wagons. Sky[Horror] was on the Thor wagon and the CJ wagon. Reundo was on the Thor wagon and the Volxen wagon.

However, after reviewing his ISO a bit during night 1, I still believe that Reundo is likely town, despite him being on two of these wagons. So I focused more on xwing and Sky and their interactions. Though I still believe that NotNova could be scum with Sky.

One thing that’s interesting to note regarding xwing and Sky[Horror], is that they were both on the Thor and CJ wagons, and in both cases Sky[Horror]’s slot joined the wagon first. So if xwing and Sky[Horror] are scum together, this could be xwing sheeping his more experienced scum partner’s (Horror at the time) vote on both wagons. Vote-wise xwing was all over the place on day 1, and multiple people questioned his reasoning for being the L-1 voter on the Thor wagon in particular (“I want to stand out unlike my last game”).

Beyond their votes, I found some of the interactions between Sky[Horror]’s slot and xwing to be quite interesting.

I'm reading the game through right now and I'll be commenting on my thoughts as I go in a stream of consciousness dialogue style. I'm almost certainly going to be rehashing some things were already covered and explained, but as mafia is a game largely based on reactions, I believe in being as transparent as possible regarding what I'm thinking as I read the thread.

- UC's 16 really confuses me. The vote and unvote is purely semantic, and his entire intro to the game is "I want to vote for Thor because he scares me but I don't want to actually apply pressure to him right now."
- I like Thor's early push for an RVS wagon. While I personally am not great at RVS analysis, being able to get an early wagon on someone allows us to gauge the overall gamestate and test reactions, thereby allowing us to move out of RVS and into the game at hand.
- In the same breath, I dislike Thor's comment about claiming that you don't want to lynch someone on page 1 is in any way AI [alignment indicative]. Yes, you want to place a vote on the person you would like to be lynched

eventually

, but there's definitely nothing wrong with saying that you don't want to lynch someone right this second when the game is a few hours old. ***Slight interjection as I'm about halfway through the thread - this is one of the aforementioned "hashed to death" issues in this game and further discussion of it would likely be inconsequential at this point in the game, but that was my first thought when I read this post.***
- Volxen gets town points for 21

Reundo can confirm we are in fact, not scum partners.

This reads as potentially buddying to me.

- I'm really not a fan of xwing's 27. The reasoning for hopping on Thor's wagon seem very forced, even going so far as to admit it's a sheep of Reundo and RC's case.

- (Quick side note, I actually really appreciate that this game appears to be more content driven without the spamposting that is the meta on most other parts of the site.)

- 41 looks like xwing trying to drum up reasoning for being on the wagon after being called out for their initially weak vote. I also don't like that they admit they would be voting elsewhere except that they wanted to put Thor at L-1. I'm a fan of early wagons, but when you're on page 2 I feel that there's nothing you would get from an L-1 vote that you wouldn't get from L-2, so intentionally joining the wagon is suspicious to me.

Looking at the wagon again, unlike RCE, I think it lost momentum over time and don't see any particular reason to suspect him.

I disagree with this. The wagon was still at L-1 at this point with at least 3 slots (mine, UC, and the one currently being replaced) without a single serious post in the game. I don't know how you can properly judge the wagon with over 1/3 of the game inactive.

Your second point is semantics. Yes that is exactly what a conversation is, yes you are swaying player A's vote in both examples. That's manipulation if it pushes your agenda.

Pointing out here that town have an agenda as well - their agenda is to lynch scum. Scum is more likely to intentionally use misinformation to get town to mislynch, but that doesn't mean that a misguided townie can't do the same thing unintentionally. The best way to sort these actions is to sort

how

they're conversing, and you learn a lot more about those interactions after a flip.

- xwing's 90 feels genuine to me, as if they genuinely realize they made a mistake hopping on Thor's wagon without much explanation. Whether it's remorseful town or backtracking scum is to be determined.

- Initially thor/RC is reading as tvt.

what kind of pressure do you expect me to put on UC? have you read my rock solid case on him? (hmm maybe not yet but you will later..continue reading til the later pages).. i leaned scum on him on what..page 2..on why..his first post..do you think he will be pressured if i put my vote on him now? do you think others will be convinced and follow suit? honestly?
now it's more like im waiting for him to speak/address my question..when he comes back then i can engage with him more..

The thing is, it's honestly a pretty suspicious thing for you to not be voting for your strongest scumread at the moment. There's no such thing as a pressureless vote, and it's advantageous for town to use their vote with this knowledge in mind. Will you voting for UC cause people to suddenly drop everything and lolwagon him? Probably not. But your decision to pressure one of the inactive slots would at the very least be consistent with some of the reads you've posted so far, and it has the potential to get other players to look at the slot more in depth.

Frankly though, if you're town aren't you basically game throwing right now and being a jerk to all your fellow town team by not bothering to read posts to help catch a scum member or figure out a town member?

In xwing's defense, they have stated that this is their 2nd game on the site, and it's already far more in depth and requires a lot more attention than I would say is standard for a newbie game. Even I've had to resort to some skimming to help get through my readthrough - I don't think you necessarily have to read and absorb every word of a game to be able to play decently.

HEY YAY I'M CAUGHT UP ON THE THREAD.

I'm probably going to be doing some ISO reads and other things tomorrow to help me sort my thoughts on the game as a whole, but for right now

UNVOTE:
VOTE: UC Voyager

I'm okay pushing this button and seeing what comes out. There are some interesting associatives with xwing that I want to explore as well, so I would be good with a wagon on either right now.

Here Horror kind of goes back-and-forth on xwing, first criticizing xwing’s vote on Thor, but then he later defend’s xwing in the same post. He acts like he would be fine with either an xwing wagon or a UC wagon, but he votes for UC over xwing, claiming that there are some “interesting associatives” between UC and xwing that he wanted to explore. But at that point in time there had not been any back-and-forth conversation between xwing and UC. At that point in time the only thing that had happened between xwing and UC is that xwing asked UC about the broken vote tags in the post where he supposedly tried to vote for Thor (see: 16), which was followed by xwing listing UC as a scumread (whom xwing hadn’t voted for yet – see: 27 ). So Horror was incredibly vague about what “interesting associatives” he wanted to explore, and why voting for UC over xwing would better help him accomplish that goal. Especially considering he talked a lot more about xwing than UC in his post, and was arguably more critical of xwing (despite later defending him) than UC, but yet decided to vote for UC anyways.

And then here are several posts from Sky:

Page 2:

town pings from xwing for knowingly placing Thor at L-1 on page 2. Shows a lack of caution that doesn't come from newb-scum

Here Skygazer writes off xwing as town simply because he was the voter who brought Thor to L-1. I find that to be an incredibly poor reason to clear someone from being scum.

Skygazer made this post on 9/16/18 at 6:51 P.M. PST:

would lynch between CJ, Angel, and Volxen mostly on PoE

Volxen feels better to me than CJ and Angel.

Intent to hammer

after an Angel replacement is found unless the deadline is extended.

I find it interesting that she immediately arrived at the lynch pool of {CJ, Angel, Volxen}, which was the same exact lynch pool that both NotNova and xwing had. And like both of them, her initial preference was to lynch me specifically.

Then she made this post

one minute later

at 6:52 P.M. PST:

CJ wagon is not the worst due to early UC posts actually

So in one minute she went from wanting to hammer me, to now considering the CJ wagon. Quite a fast backpedal.

ill think it over,

im kind of unconcerned over who gets lynched

as long as its not one of my strong townreads

i may end up just sheeping whichever wagon has the majority of my townreads

This was several days before the deadline, but here it sounds like she isn’t interesting in sorting people on her own but instead just wants to follow her townreads. And she shows complete indifference to which of {Volxen, CJ, or Haylen} gets lynched, even though she knew all three of us couldn’t be scum.

I realize you probably don't stand by this too much, but I'd think someone as experienced as Thor wouldn't bother as much with being cautious as scum. That seems like something that would only really be AI if he was new as scum, or if he's naturally cautious when playing as scum as opposed to town, which I kind of doubt.

Thor's experience is precisely why I was examining the particular wording rather than the action itself. I wouldn't be surprised by him trying to lead an early wagon to L-2 as either alignment, so I'm not really townreading him for a lack of caution with that specific wagon attempt. It's just the particular way he used the word "me" (support me, oppose me, help me) struck me as something that would be odd for town to say. I also know from his interview that he tends to make early wagon pushes on Day 1 to help with forming reads and getting reactions, so the way he specifically mentions how the wagon being at L-2 will be more helpful to him lines up with my understanding of his town play. Granted, he's probably self-aware enough to be able to mimic his town-play really well, but this is exactly how I feel like town-Thor would play this out.

Sky, what do you think about volxen being one of the first players to engage with Thor during RVS? Do you feel the same applies to volxen that he'd be too cautious to engage with Thor and draw his attention as scum?

That's a good question. I don't think a post like this shows a particular lack of caution:

Thor, why do you want to put RC at L-2 so early in the game? Do you really believe that his vote for Reundo was serious rather than RVS?

It feels like a really obvious question to ask, and he doesn't back up this engagement with a vote. Even by his post 21 it feels like he's starting to form light stances (well, more implied stances from the questions he's asking) and ask the sort of questions that would normally be leading the town out of RVS but he still keeps his RVS vote. By the time Thor is at L-1, volx is the only player that questioned Thor about his comment about bringing RC to L-2 that hasn't voted for Thor yet. While wagoning a player to L-1 (Reundo, RCE, xwing) shows a distinct lack of caution that you'd see from newer scum players, not placing a vote on a player you've been questioning does show some sort of restraint/caution in my opinion.

Not enough for a full scumread, but volx's engagement with thor doesn't give me the same town pings that your vote, RCE's vote, and xwing's votes have.

She seems to be saying here that she isn’t full-blown scumreading me, but a few hours ago she was willing to place the hammer vote on me?

Scum now knows the setup, by the way, as we're definitely in row 2.

this feels like tmi

This was just… odd. Here NotNova was just stating a blatantly obvious fact: since I had just role claimed Jailkeeper, that meant we are in row 2 of the matrix. So unless she was doubting my role claim, then why suggest that this statement was “tmi”? If NotNova believed my role claim (which seems to be the case since he switched his vote), then it would be reasonable for him to point this out.

Scum now knows the setup, by the way, as we're definitely in row 2.

this feels like tmi

why?
nova's statement is factual..even i agree that mafia knows the setup now, assuming volxen is JK..
town, on the other hand..is sorta blind still..there might either be a doctor, a tracker, or no more PRs for us...

Nova's statement is correct if volx is the JK but the way the post is worded it feels like Nova

knows

that the claim is true.

Not doubting volxen at the moment but that doesn't mean someone who implies that the claim is 100% true doesn't have too much info

I think this is

incredibly

reachy. NotNova’s post does not come across like he has scum knowledge, which is what Sky seems to be implying here.

Another interesting thing about Sky is that she sorted every slot except for NotNova’s, which could potentially point to a NotNova/Sky pairing:

Here she lists Volxen, Ceejay, and Haylen as scumreads:

would lynch between CJ, Angel, and Volxen mostly on PoE

Volxen feels better to me than CJ and Angel.

Intent to hammer after an Angel replacement is found unless the deadline is extended.

And here she lists CT[RC], Reundo, xwing, and Thor as townreads:

I'm not exactly sure if xwing or Reundo have any clue of Thor's apparent reputation, considering Reundo at one point pretty much said he would never trust Thor's reads and xwing expressed surprised at his "celebrity" status, as he said. Not sure for RCE.

I'm not sure how the celebrity status thing changes much. He's still an IC. xwing putting him at L-1 on page 2 shows a distinct lack of caution that doesn't feel like it comes from scum regardless of Thor's celebrity status or IC status. Do you think I shouldn't be townreading those three, then?

Who are your strongest townreads, then? Could you give some more reasoning on them?

RCE/Reundo/xwing are strongest, Thor not as strong

because I'm assuming he's self-aware enough to be able to mimick his town thought processes but he can hopefully be sorted better through PoE later on (I'd still sheep the heck out of him for the info, though).

I've already given reasonings (lack of caution/meta). If more stuff comes up as I start to actually play I'll be sure to mention it but I've done my read through and that's what I got from it.

Although in fairness to NotNova, he did question Sky about the fact that she didn’t sort him:

I didn't mean the unvote when I was talking about "going back on it", I meant the general thought process behind voting Thor in the first place.

Considering there's a player in the game who played with xwing before, staying passive could in all likelihood earn them heat. If I have to pick between playing to perceived town-expectations as scum or continuing to do what you've been called out for, I pick the former as the likelier and overall smarter decision.
I can see your angle, but I don't think I agree.

I notice you haven't really mentioned me so far — do you have any read on me so far?

Do you give credemce to volxen's scumread on me? Have I been difficult to read or did something ping you wrong about my play?

At this point I am convinced that Sky is scum. And I know that there was scum on my wagon, and I don’t believe it is either Ceejay or Reundo. xwing/Sky seems like the most likely scumteam, but I haven’t ruled out the possibility of a NotNova/Sky scumteam yet either.

VOTE: Skygazer

[volxen]

And regarding Ceejay, his roleclaim aside I started to get town pings from him from these posts:

@Volxen do you have a previous game that I can parse? Or is this your first?

@Volxen do you have a previous game that I can parse? Or is this your first?

My only completed game is Newbie 1885 (I was town in it). Here is a link to it: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=77049

You played well there. It doesn't merge with what I see here. I'm more certain now that volxen is scum here. He's much more townie and straightforward in this game he linked.

I got town pings from him for these two posts because he 1) was having a hard time reading me and was willing to put in the effort to read one of my previous games to do so and 2) didn’t try to get any town credit by doing so.

And actually, I could see how he could arrive at the conclusion that he did (even though it was wrong) – that I was scum in this game because my gameplay in this game was different than my town gameplay in Newbie 1885. The truth is that circumstances were very different for me in that game, namely that it 1) had a

MUCH

slower pace than this game, 2) most of the posts in that game were very short compared to this game having a lot of wall-posts, so reading and responding takes a lot more time in this game and 3) I wasn’t working at the time that I was playing Newbie 1885, so it was easy for me to be one of the most vocal and active posters in that game right off the bat, whereas in this game I genuinely got pretty busy in the beginning of the game, which unfortunately ended up making me look scummy (i.e., like I was purposefully active lurking). So putting all of that together, I did in fact have a stronger “town presence” on day 1 of Newbie 1885 than I did in day 1 of this game. So even though Ceejay was ultimately wrong about me, I could see how he could reasonably come to the conclusion he did by comparing my gameplay in this game to my town gameplay in Newbie 1885. The fact that he did all of this, without trying to gain any town credit for himself, leads me to believe that he is town, as I don’t really see any scum-motivation for him to do this.

[volxen]

Well I've never been in this situation before, so I would like to hear from others. So there are really two possibilities:

Scenario A: What I described in my post. The mafia roleblocker blocked CJ and Skygazer tried to kill me, but the kill failed because I put her in jail.

Scenario B: The no-kill gambit. The scumteam purposefully doesn't kill anyone so they can frame the JK target to be mislynched on day 2.

The problem I'm having with scenario B is, does it really provide a greater benefit to the scumteam in the long run compared to scenario A? it also has some risk, in the event that I actually do end up jailing scum, as opposed to a townie, which means they have to abort the entire plan of framing the JK target for the day 2 mislynch.

So why is that better than simply nightkilling (or at least trying to nightkill) one of the town power roles? How does scenario B benefit the scumteam going into night 2 and day 3?

It just seems very plausible to me that scenario A is the reality, and this is the scumteams fall-back plan to scumpaint CJ and make it look like he orchestrated all of this to frame the JK target (Sky). So if there is a lot of merit to scenario B realistically being more likely than scenario A, please help me understand why.

[volxen]

Another issue I take with scenario B is, I did list CJ as one of my top scumreads on day 1. So what if I had jailed CJ instead of Sky, whom I only started to seriously suspect during night 1? So if CJ is scum, considering he was one of my top scumreads, I would think the scumteam would seriously consider the possibility that I would jail him, despite his roleclaim at the end of day 1. So in that scenario, they 1) lost an opportunity to kill a power role and 2) wouldn't be able to pursue their plan of getting the JK target mislynched. It just seems like scenario B presents a lot of risk to the scumteam with no guarantee of any benefit.

[volxen]

Volxen I appreciate your argument however I'll refrain from commenting until others have checked in and CJ has responded to the current arguments.

Well you are still my strongest townread, so I'm definitely eager to hear your take on things.

[volxen]

@Thor, I would like you to respond to the viability and likelihood of this whole no-kill gambit thing as both Thor the player and as the IC, if you don't mind.

[volxen]

if mafia RB blocked volxen, would volxen prison on sky still go through?
i mean would it be blocked, rendering JK action null?

if yes, would JK know if they were blocked? i think not, or else volxen would have mentioned it already, but asking to make sure..

No, if they role blocked me then Sky wouldn't have actually been placed in jail. And no, I wouldn't know if I got role blocked.

[volxen]

OK... Sky just self-hammered herself. The five people voting for Sky are: Volxen, NotNova, Ceejay, Reundo, and Sky.

If Sky flips scum, I will target

xwing

tonight. If Sky is scum, I still believe the scumteam is either Sky/xwing or Sky/NotNova, with the former being more likely than the latter.

[volxen]

OK... Sky just self-hammered herself. The five people voting for Sky are: Volxen, NotNova, Ceejay, Reundo, and Sky.

If Sky flips scum, I will target

xwing

tonight. If Sky is scum, I still believe the scumteam is either Sky/xwing or Sky/NotNova, with the former being more likely than the latter.

you're wrong about me, but i'll wait and see what action scum will do..
if notnova is scum, i've been hoodwinked bad..but let's see..

Who do you think is Sky's scum partner?

[volxen]

Actually, I would like anyone who pops into the thread before the mod locks it to share who they think Sky's potential scum partner is so we have as much information going into day 3 as possible.

[volxen]

hmmm i'd still think it's ceej, and my belief is we're in C2..
what were the chances that on D1 we would out both PRs..
scum!ceej knew you were likely to jail him so asked partner!sky to submit kill..
also explains why supposed doc!ceej still alive..
cuz if we're on A2, safer play will be to sure kill doc and block JK to ensure one PR kill..but WIFOM..
cuz your scenario A seems plausible as well..

if we're on A2, i really am not sure who to point out..
by gut alone my skin is breaking into hives with CT..just too towny..
but really though, the rest are town for me other than ceej really..sorry im not much help..i need to read ISOs but cant do that until later this evening..

So basically if Sky flips mafia goon you think her partner is Ceej, and if she flips mafia roleblocker you think her partner is CT?

[volxen]

Also in case I do die tonight, I just want to go on record saying that I do

NOT

think any of these scumteam combinations are likely at all:

Sky/CT
Sky/Thor

Because either of those scumteam combinations would mean that my wagon was all-town, as the four people on my wagon were NotNova, xwing, Ceejay, and Reundo. I find it extremely unlikely that the four-person wagon against me was an all-town wagon.

Sky/Ceejay is possible, but I think it's probably not the case because remember that Horror went out of his way to vote for UC on day 1 when he wrote his "catch up" post:

I'm reading the game through right now and I'll be commenting on my thoughts as I go in a stream of consciousness dialogue style. I'm almost certainly going to be rehashing some things were already covered and explained, but as mafia is a game largely based on reactions, I believe in being as transparent as possible regarding what I'm thinking as I read the thread.

- UC's 16 really confuses me. The vote and unvote is purely semantic, and his entire intro to the game is "I want to vote for Thor because he scares me but I don't want to actually apply pressure to him right now."
- I like Thor's early push for an RVS wagon. While I personally am not great at RVS analysis, being able to get an early wagon on someone allows us to gauge the overall gamestate and test reactions, thereby allowing us to move out of RVS and into the game at hand.
- In the same breath, I dislike Thor's comment about claiming that you don't want to lynch someone on page 1 is in any way AI [alignment indicative]. Yes, you want to place a vote on the person you would like to be lynched

eventually

, but there's definitely nothing wrong with saying that you don't want to lynch someone right this second when the game is a few hours old. ***Slight interjection as I'm about halfway through the thread - this is one of the aforementioned "hashed to death" issues in this game and further discussion of it would likely be inconsequential at this point in the game, but that was my first thought when I read this post.***
- Volxen gets town points for 21

Reundo can confirm we are in fact, not scum partners.

This reads as potentially buddying to me.
- I'm really not a fan of xwing's 27. The reasoning for hopping on Thor's wagon seem very forced, even going so far as to admit it's a sheep of Reundo and RC's case.
- (Quick side note, I actually really appreciate that this game appears to be more content driven without the spamposting that is the meta on most other parts of the site.)
- 41 looks like xwing trying to drum up reasoning for being on the wagon after being called out for their initially weak vote. I also don't like that they admit they would be voting elsewhere except that they wanted to put Thor at L-1. I'm a fan of early wagons, but when you're on page 2 I feel that there's nothing you would get from an L-1 vote that you wouldn't get from L-2, so intentionally joining the wagon is suspicious to me.

Looking at the wagon again, unlike RCE, I think it lost momentum over time and don't see any particular reason to suspect him.

I disagree with this. The wagon was still at L-1 at this point with at least 3 slots (mine, UC, and the one currently being replaced) without a single serious post in the game. I don't know how you can properly judge the wagon with over 1/3 of the game inactive.

Your second point is semantics. Yes that is exactly what a conversation is, yes you are swaying player A's vote in both examples. That's manipulation if it pushes your agenda.

Pointing out here that town have an agenda as well - their agenda is to lynch scum. Scum is more likely to intentionally use misinformation to get town to mislynch, but that doesn't mean that a misguided townie can't do the same thing unintentionally. The best way to sort these actions is to sort

how

they're conversing, and you learn a lot more about those interactions after a flip.
- xwing's 90 feels genuine to me, as if they genuinely realize they made a mistake hopping on Thor's wagon without much explanation. Whether it's remorseful town or backtracking scum is to be determined.
- Initially thor/RC is reading as tvt.

what kind of pressure do you expect me to put on UC? have you read my rock solid case on him? (hmm maybe not yet but you will later..continue reading til the later pages).. i leaned scum on him on what..page 2..on why..his first post..do you think he will be pressured if i put my vote on him now? do you think others will be convinced and follow suit? honestly?
now it's more like im waiting for him to speak/address my question..when he comes back then i can engage with him more..

The thing is, it's honestly a pretty suspicious thing for you to not be voting for your strongest scumread at the moment. There's no such thing as a pressureless vote, and it's advantageous for town to use their vote with this knowledge in mind. Will you voting for UC cause people to suddenly drop everything and lolwagon him? Probably not. But your decision to pressure one of the inactive slots would at the very least be consistent with some of the reads you've posted so far, and it has the potential to get other players to look at the slot more in depth.

Frankly though, if you're town aren't you basically game throwing right now and being a jerk to all your fellow town team by not bothering to read posts to help catch a scum member or figure out a town member?

In xwing's defense, they have stated that this is their 2nd game on the site, and it's already far more in depth and requires a lot more attention than I would say is standard for a newbie game. Even I've had to resort to some skimming to help get through my readthrough - I don't think you necessarily have to read and absorb every word of a game to be able to play decently.

HEY YAY I'M CAUGHT UP ON THE THREAD.

I'm probably going to be doing some ISO reads and other things tomorrow to help me sort my thoughts on the game as a whole, but for right now

UNVOTE:
VOTE: UC Voyager

I'm okay pushing this button and seeing what comes out. There are some interesting associatives with xwing that I want to explore as well, so I would be good with a wagon on either right now.

[volxen]

These are my final thoughts that I want to leave everyone with in case I'm not around for day 3:

- If Sky flips scum (99.99% chance of that happening with the self-hammer),

I will target

xwing

tonight

. On the 00.01% chance she self-hammered as town, then I will go with my gut regarding who I target.

- As far as I am concerned,

Sky flipping scum means that CT and Thor are both confirmed town

. I just don't think it's plausible that the wagon against me on day 1 was an all-town wagon, considering how close I came to being lynched. Yes, I feel that strongly about this.

This means there are really four possible scumteams. Here is how I would rank them from most likely to least likely:

1. Sky/xwing
2. Sky/NotNova
3. Sky/Ceejay*
4. Sky/Reundo**

*If Sky flips mafia roleblocker, we can completely clear Ceejay as confirmed doctor as that would prove that there is a doctor in this setup, and no one has counter-claimed Ceejay on being doctor. Any doctor counter-claim on day 3 would be

HIGHLY

suspect, because the real doctor should have already counter-claimed if CJ is in fact lying about being doctor.

**This is possible, but I would think that if the scumteam is Sky/Reundo, then Reundo rather than Sky would have attempted to nightkill me on night 1, considering that I listed Reundo as a townread on day 1, whereas I listed Sky as a nullread:

@RCEnigma,

I’m not seeing what is so grounded about NotNova’s case against me. He really brought up two valid points against me:

1) That I didn’t have an early game reads list
2) That I had a period of inactivity

And those two things are equally applicable to all of the other lurker slots: Ceejay[UC], Sky[Horror], and Angel. But it’s as if he is holding me to a different standard than everyone else, because he has chosen to ignore the other lurker slots rather than taking the more equitable approach of presenting cases against all four of us.

If his theory is that it is very likely that one or even both members of the scumteam are among the lurkers, then how is it possibly the most logical approach to tunnel on one out of those four slots and completely ignore the other three? Even if he suspects me the most, should he not have made an effort to engage and question/pressure the other three lurker slots? Admittedly in the case of Angel this would be impossible since that slot has not checked in, but he has had ample opportunities to start seriously engaging/questioning/pressuring the Sky[Horror] and CeeJay[UC] slots. Especially in the case of Ceejay, who has been UC’s replacement for a while now, yet he has made no effort engage, question, or pressure him. In 260, he basically says that the best usage of his limited time to is death tunnel on my slot and ignore all of the other lurker slots because he doesn’t have an unlimited amount of time to devote to this game (as if any of us do).

For example, in 70 he asks me for a readslist. Why has he not asked the same of the Sky[Horror] and Ceejay[UC] slots? This is one of his two major points against me, yet he is unwilling to be equally critical of their slots for not having early game readslists.

His lynch pool also seems to be {Volxen, Volxen, Volxen, and more Volxen}. I haven’t seen him list the name of anyone else that he would seriously consider lynching. And we are on day 1 of a nine-player game that has two scum slots. And I seriously doubt anyone has uncovered the exact scum team, so at this point in time wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect NotNova to have at least 3 serious scumreads anyways? The only two people he has mentioned as scumreads are myself and xwing, and in 223, he said that xwing is “far below Volxen” on his list of scumreads, so I’m not even sure at this point how serious of a scumread xwing is for him.

Meanwhile, while it did come late, I did clearly list four scumreads in 258. To be more specific, this is how I am currently sorting everyone:

Town: {RCEnigma,

Reundo

, Thor}. Out of these three I feel the most confident about RC being town, but I really suspect that Reundo and Thor are both town as well. If either Reundo or Thor are scum they are doing an incredibly good job of covering up their agenda, because nothing in their interactions (with each other as well as with everyone else) or individual ISO’s stands out to me as being likely to be scum motivated.

Null: {

Sky[Horror]

}. This slot would be a scumread for me if Horror hadn’t made that catch-up post in 155, which was a fairly decent catch-up post.

I still think it’s possible that the Sky[Horror] slot could be scum

, but I think scum is much more likely to be residing among {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. For now the Sky[Horror] slot is null until I see more content from Sky.

Scum: {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. I already talked about these four slots in 258.

Ironically, even though he does have a lot more content than I did in the beginning of the game, I am currently taking a much more holistic and open-minded approach to this game than he is. He is insistent on death tunneling me, whereas I have shared a total of four scumreads, any of whom I would be OK with lynching. To be perfectly clear, that means my lynch pool is {NotNova, xwing, Ceejay[UC], and Angel}. I wouldn’t be adamantly opposed to a Sky[Horror] lynch, but I believe that any of my four scumreads would be a better lynch.

One of my biggest concerns regarding NotNova is that if he is in fact town, he is setting himself up to look unnecessarily scummy with my mislynch (if I am lynched on day 1) going into day 2. Let me put it this way:

Scenario 1:
A = NotNova death tunnels Volxen
B = NotNova ignores the other lurker slots (Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel)
C = Volxen is mislynched day 1
D = scumteam has a much easier time scumpainting NotNova on day 2

A+B+C=D

If I am mislynched on day 1, NotNova is undoubtedly going to take heat for my mislynch, because it is a wagon that he has started, and he has been very forcefully pushing for me to be lynched today. Xwing has also tunneled on me to some extent lately, but no one else on my wagon has been death tunneling me the way NotNova has been. He has been death tunneling me and ignoring the other lurker slots, period. So if I am mislynched and flip town, it’s not exactly going to be hard for the scumteam to start making the argument that NotNova was pushing a scum agenda with my mislynch (and possibly push for NotNova own mislynch on day 2). They could make similar arguments to what I have been making – that he has been highly inconsistent in his push against me while completely ignoring the other lurker slots. The difference is that at that point I would be confirmed town, so the point about him being inconsistent becomes even more valid. And his whole theory that scum is likely to be among the lurkers won’t be a valid defense for him to fall back on, because of his singular focus on only one out of the four lurker slots (and the one with the most content out of the four to boot).

Scenario 2:

A= NotNova equally focuses on all four lurker slots (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel)
B = Volxen happens to be one out of the four lurker slots that is chosen to be lynched
C= Volxen is mislynched day 1
D= scumteam has a much harder time scumpainting NotNova on day 2

A+B+C=D

If this

were

the case, this would be the much better scenario for NotNova going into day 2, because it’s going to be more difficult for the scumteam to scumpaint paint him (and push for his mislynch on day 2) if he were equally pressuring all four of (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel) and I just happened to be the one that was lynched. He could defend himself by falling back on his theory that scum is likely to be among the lurkers (Volxen, Sky[Horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel). It then becomes harder for the scumteam to suggest that NotNova was pushing a scum agenda, because they have to attack his entire premise (that scum are more likely to be among the lurkers) in order to do that.

The problem is that scenario 1 is the current reality. His lynch pool should in theory be {Volxen, xwing, Sky[horror], Ceejay[UC], and Angel}: all of the lurkers plus xwing, since xwing is apparently still a scumread for him. But the only person he has any interest in lynching is me.

Either he has an incredibly narrow-minded and short-sighted town game for day 1 (death tunnel one suspect and ignore all of the other lurker slots) or he is simply scum. If he is town, I would encourage him to start taking a more holistic and open-minded approach to this game so that his death tunneling of me cannot be used against him by the scumteam. Because believe it or not, the most important thing to me is that town wins this game. Of course, I don’t want to be mislynched, but what would be worse than my mislynch is if my mislynch is followed by NotNova himself getting mislynched on day 2 because he inadvertently makes himself look scummy with how hard he death tunneled on me to the exclusion of all else on day 1.

Seriously @NotNova, you need to start taking a more holistic and open-minded view of the game, and you need to start doing that now. Yes, I get it I am your top suspect, but you are aware that there are two scum slots in this game, and you are also not 100% confident of your scumread of me. At this point in the game you should, at a minimum, have 3 serious scumreads, and you should be willing to vote for any of them.

It's possible they just forgot about this and figured that it didn't matter which of Reundo or Sky put the kill through. Still, Reundo is a very observant and analytical player, so I don't think he would have forgotten that I listed him as a townread and Sky as a nullread, and the logical play would be for my townread (Reundo) to try to kill me rather than my nullread (Sky). Especially since I even said here that I thought Sky could be scum despite listing her as a nullread at the time.

[volxen]

Reundo really feels like a logistically likely to me scum due to wagon positioning across the board.
Xwing and Ceejay are also suspect.

Not feeling totally confident on Reundo due to thinking he's just a prickly sort who let himself play b;ind this game - maybe I'm wrong and my initial scumread is accurate, but that's where I'm at with that slot.
Still kind of like the logic clearing Ceejay due to the Horror bus - and in any case, as long as scum wants to play the "theory roleblock" game I'm content to play that.

Pretty much want to flip xwing today unless he was jailed in which case we can "theory" clear him for endgame with Ceejay. (if people are confused by this please ask and I'll walk through it on the presumption I'm dead prior to endgame). If xwing was jailed I'd say it's a debate between RCE and Reundo, I'd probably opt to flip Reundo since I feel less confident there.

I jailed xwing like I said I would. Why do you think xwing is cleared? If xwing is scum and Ceejay is doctor, the only person xwing could

NOT

kill was myself, because I jailed him, he roleblocked either myself or Ceejay, and Ceejay protected me. He could have killed Ceejay or anyone else except for me.

I still think xwing is Sky's most likely scum partner, and he is pulling this move to try and frame Ceejay. This reeks of inexperienced scum, because killing NotNova was not the optimal play, regardless of who is scum. If Ceejay is scum, he cannot afford to go to 3-player LYLO with a confirmed town jailkeeper. He's experienced enough to know this and he would have NK'd me, because if I got NK'd the

ONLY

thing it would prove is that xwing is not scum, since I jailed him. Me being NK’d wouldn't have proven that Ceejay is scum, because anyone other than xwing (whom I jailed) could have NK'd me by roleblocking Ceejay and killing me. Especially since I made it 100% clear beforehand that I would be targetting xwing. So it’s not like scum!Ceejay would be sealing his fate by NK’ing me.

If ceejay was scum, he would have NK'd me and tried to blame someone else (he could have blamed anyone other than xwing). Yes, Ceejay NK’ing me WOULD make xwing confirmed town (because xwing is the one person who could not have killed me since I jailed him), but that’s better than leaving someone who is both confirmed town AND a power role alive (me). I don’t believe that scum!Ceejay would leave me alive and instead NK a vanilla townie.

This just comes off to me as the work of an inexperienced scum (xwing) who isn’t really sure of what the optimal play is in this situation, and he is on his own now since Sky got lynched. I believe he NK’d NotNova because he believes his best move at this point is to try and frame Ceejay, which would explain why scum!xwing chose not to NK Ceejay.

I absolutely believe that if Ceejay was scum I wouldn’t be alive right now, because the optimal play for him would be to NK me. The optimal play for scum!xwing would have been to NK Ceejay (so he could NK me next), but I believe at this point he is just desperate and wants to try and secure Ceejay’s mislynch, and out of the VT’s he chose to NK NotNova because he perceived him to be fairly towny.

[volxen]

VOTE: xwing

[volxen]

Xwing, I already explained this but Ceejay NK’ing me does

NOT

invalidate his doctor claim. Think about it, there are realistically only two possible scenarios regarding Ceejay*:

1) Ceejay is in fact the doctor, as he claims. Since I am the JK, this means we are in A2, which means there is a Mafia Roleblocker. Sky already flipped mafia goon, which means the remaining scum is obviously the mafia roleblocker. Thus, ANYONE can kill me EXCEPT for the person that I jail (which was xwing). They can do this by 1) roleblocking Ceejay and 2) killing me.

The kill goes through as long as it’s not made by the person that I jail

. Thor, CT, Reundo, Ceejay – any of these four could have NK’d me. Again, the ONLY person who could NOT kill me was you xwing – because I jailed you and Ceejay protected me, and you can’t roleblock both of us at the same time. And I furthermore announced ahead of time that it was you that I would be jailing, so if any of those four were the mafia roleblocker, they knew full well that there was a 100% guarantee that a NK against me would be successful. And if any of them were the mafia roleblocker, I am convinced that is exactly what would have happened. There is no benefit to scum!Thor, scum!Reundo, scum!CT, or scum!Ceejay in keeping the confirmed JK alive. And no risk of the NK failing when I announced ahead of time that I would be jailing xwing.

But scum!xwing did not have the option of killing me

.

2) Ceejay is scum. Since I am the JK and no one has CC’d Ceejay on being doctor, this means we are in C2, which means there is no mafia roleblocker. Since I didn’t jail CJ, this means he could have killed anyone he wanted to, including me. Logically, NK’ing me is what Ceejay should have done if he is in fact scum.

*And yes, this is making the assumption that Ceejay did not fakeclaim doctor as VT, as I don’t think that scenario is even worth entertaining. So he is either doctor or scum.

I’ve yet to hear a truly compelling reason why this NK is more likely to come from scum!Ceejay than from scum!xwing. Honestly, if anyone other than you was scum xwing, I fully believe I would be dead, because there is no logical reason for anyone other than yourself to kill a VT. We’ve got one confirmed tpr (me) and another tpr who people still find to be scummy (Ceejay), and yet we are both still alive. This makes the most sense only if xwing is scum, because you physically couldn’t kill the confirmed tpr (me) and you wanted to setup the other tpr who people still find to be scummy (Ceejay) for a mislynch.

[volxen]

OK, so do any of you seriously think the last remaining is NOT xwing or Ceejay? I would like everyone to consider the following:

1) Mislynching Ceejay (as doctor) has

much more severe consequences

than mislynching xwing (as VT). If Ceejay is mislynched and flips doctor, then guess what happens on night 3? I get nightkilled, we lose both town power roles, and worst of all NOTHING can be inferred from my nightkill. I mean think about it – if Ceejay flips doctor, that proves we are in A2 and there is a mafia roleblocker, so REGARDLESS of who I target and jail, ANY of you could still nightkill me by simply roleblocking me and killing me. Thus, no one could even be cleared as confirmed town through my nightkill. So we lose BOTH town power roles, and my nightkill cannot even be used to clear anyone. How is that good for going into mylo and lylo?

2) On the other hand, think about what happens if we mislynch xwing. Xwing is still my top scum suspect, but if he is not scum then I believe Ceejay is.

If xwing flips VT, then on night 3 I can jail Ceejay

. Remember that if Ceejay is scum, that means we are in C2 (since there has been no doctor CC) and there is NO mafia roleblocker. Thus, if I jail Ceejay on night 3 and he is scum, this 100% guarantees there won’t be a nightkill on night 3. To test and make sure this wasn’t some BS no-kill gambit, we could even all vote no lynch on day 4, and I jail Ceejay again on night 4, and we see if there is no nightkill again on night 4. Rinse and repeat as much as necessary. Do you guys see where I am going with this? If Ceejay turns out to be scum,

we really leave him no out

, because I can literally make it impossible for him to nightkill. So if my scumreads are way off and both xwing AND Ceejay are somehow both town, then eventually the last remaining scum will be forced to nightkill someone – and this will at least clear Ceejay, who could not possibly perform the nightkill (as a mafia goon) if I am jailing him. So the best case scenario is Ceejay is scum, which we can test with several days of voting no lynch (followed by no night kill), and the worst case here is that he isn’t scum, but the inevitable nightkill at least clears Ceejay as being town.

So please think about this. Xwing is absolutely the best lynch when you take all of this into account. There is a tremendous amount of risk in lynching Ceejay today.

[volxen]

EBWOP: OK, so do any of you seriously think the last remaining

scum

is NOT xwing or Ceejay?

[volxen]

The thing that's wrong with volxen's plan is that rb will just keep NKing until town decides to lynch me. Sigh.

I kinda think that the best way to progress is to have me lynched anyway, since there will always be doubt on my slot.

This would mean volxen dies tonight tho.

There is no way that would happen, though. If I jail you and a nightkill still happens while you're jailed, it's literally 100% proof that you aren't scum. Not 99%, 100%. Because it's been established that you are either 1) town doctor or 2) mafia goon. Aside from myself (as confirmed JK),

you are the one person in this game who CANNOT be a mafia roleblocker

-- because that would imply that there is another town power role out there, and they would have counter claimed by now to prove that you are scum. So if I jail you and a nightkill still happens, you automatically become

confirmed town and unlynchable

. Period.

I will also point out that you, Ceejay, are the only person I can clear as confirmed town by jailing. Because if anyone else besides yourself is scum, they are the mafia roleblocker, and thus cannot be cleared by me jailing them.

And either way, my plan guarantees that at least one town power role makes it to day 4. If you are a mafia gown, there is a 100% chance that there will be no nightkill on night 3 since I would be jailing you. If you are town doctor, then the mafia roleblocker cannot kill both of us on night 3.

Lynching Ceejay at this point in the game is a horrendous idea and I will NOT support it.

As I've mentioned previously in post 509, xwing's slot has a lot of scum equity and he certainly has strange interactions with both Horror and Sky. In addition, he is the one person who was on

ALL THREE

of the major L-1 day 1 wagons: Thor's wagons, Ceejay's wagon, and then my wagon. This is why, as I said before, I believe that the scumteam is most likely xwing/Sky. I do still believe that lynching xwing to see his flip is the optimal play for town to make today, but no lynching at this point would be better than lynching Ceejay.

[volxen]

volxen (4) - NotNova, ceejayvinoya, xwing, Reundo
ceejayvinoya (2) - Thor665, volxen
angel7399 (1) - RCEnigma

Not Voting (2) - Haylen, Skygazer

@Reundo - this is the big vote count that's bugging me.
Since we know for a fact that Volx is scum I would be beyond amazed if zero scum were willing to vote for him right here.
Nova was town.
That leaves

RCE

, Ceejay, and yourself - I'd wager $20 our last scum is one of you three.
RCE kinda feels town, Ceejay feels scum but has a claim on the table, that leaves you - ergo you become a top lynch option for me today.

@Thor, did you mean

xwing

, Ceejay, and Reundo? CT[RCE] was never on my wagon, which was one of the reasons why I previously said that a CT[RCE]/Sky scumteam is extremely unlikely, because it would mean that my wagon was an all-town wagon. xwing, Ceejay, and Reundo are the three living players that were on my wagon.

[volxen]

aaaaaand im still saying you're wrong about me..just as how you're wrong with notnova (my strong tr)..to be honest im annoyed that you're presenting a case against me based on player's playing experience rather than actual posts and gameplay..

i've already mentioned in post 556 what i thought would be the optimal play i'd expect scum to make..but just because something's optimal doesn't mean that scum would do it..

can you at least iso dive me and create a case where im being anti-town based on my posts? i mean you suspecting me via VCA was fine with me (even though i know you're wrong) coz it's analytical..

i dont get how you can

ABSOLUTELY

believe that you'd be dead if ceej is scum..i can think of at least 2 scenarios which makes a stronger case for scum!ceej with you being not dead.. -_-" (3 if i count thor's idea)

1. if we're in C2, scum!ceej wont be able to kill you at all or else his doc claim goes down the drain (since there's no doc in C2, hence no cc as well)..
2. if you got NK'd, then it would clear me..why would scum want to clear me when im being such a good lynchbait?

why would RB!xwing go to the trouble of mislynching doc!ceej when i can just outright kill him? being JK'd doesnt matter at all..
do you think mislynching a claimed doc is easier than NKing him? i mean thor is experienced as heck but has stated he still wouldn't lynch ceej even though he strongly suspects him! [paraphrased]

notnova was starting to change his outlook on me from scummy to townie..why would i kill a potential ally?? after all the effort i've done engaging notnova to convince him of me being townie, only just to kill him? -_-"

im just highlighting that you being ABSOLUTELY sure is too strong of a word and im not confident leaving this earth (being lynched) with you being this close-minded..

unless you're ABSOLUTELY sure we're in A2 as well??

can anyone comment re no lynch idea? is this an anti-town move right now?

@mod: weekends are coming on my side of the globe..i'll be on V/LA but will try to come online..

I already presented my case on the viability of a Sky/xwing scumteam in post 509. Do I need to repeat it again? I'm not suspecting you just because of your experience and what I think you would or wouldn't do as scum, but also because of everything I said in that post. The way both Horror and Sky have treated your slot just comes off as highly... unnatural (e.g., Horror writing practically an entire essay about you but then voting for UC instead, Sky dismissing you as basically confirmed town because you were the L-1 voter on Thor's wagon, etc.). And you managed to literally be on all three of the major day 1 wagons (Thor, Ceejay[UC], Volxen), and you didn't really join any of these wagons for your own original reasons, but rather you kind of just went with the flow and joined whichever wagon was the most popular at the time (a point which NotNova also brought up, by the way). You were also on two different wagons with Horror (Thor's and Ceejay’s[UC’s]) – and in both cases you joined the wagon after Horror did.

That being said, the nightkill of NotNova could be explained from either the perspective of scum!xwing or scum!Ceejay. From the perspective of scum!xwing, killing NotNova makes sense for several reasons. For one thing he was considered a fairly towny player, and importantly, on day 2 he flat-out said that he thought you were the most likely person to be Sky's scumbuddy in his final post 562 before being nightkilled:

I've been preparing to move out of town for uni again, so I haven't had too much time to think about what's been happening in the game.

That said, xwing's most likely to be scum in my eyes

. They've been conveniently going along with the stream for the majority of the game and the interactions between Sky and xwing in hindsight look a little weird. I've been super wary of ceejay as well considering, but I'm unsure of the viability of a possible fakeclaim — it's super hard for me to assess its theoretical benefits and viability.

Again, I'm really sure about either of these reads and I haven't given them all too much thought, but I'll try to reread and give a more solid take whenever D3 rolls around. There are still a lot of interactions from D1 I have to consider that are hars to assess considering how drawn-out the entire day was.

I realize none of this is super helpful and I want to apologize — the end of D1 and all of D2 have been really confusing and chaotic for me and I've lost a fair bit of confidence in my play as a result. I'll try to make more of an effort to clear things up for myself, for now it's hard for me to know what to think.

Secondly,

scum!xwing did not have the option of killing me

, since I jailed you, and if you are scum that means Ceejay is doctor and thus protected me. So your choices were to kill Ceejay or one of the VT's (or no-kill, but that wouldn't make any sense). Why kill NotNova instead of Ceejay, who is a PR if you are scum? Because if you nightkilled Ceejay, then you would have to try and setup a brand new mislynch on day 3, which wouldn't necessarily be easy. If you are scum then you need two more mislynches to meet your win condition and based on the current state of the game, Ceejay is arguably by far the easiest player for you to secure a mislynch against. Ceejay has already taken a lot of heat, so scum!xwing could have rationalized the NotNova nightkill as follows: "on night 2 I will kill NotNova, because he is a strong town player and he strongly suspects me of being scum anyways, so I might as well deal with him now. Then on day 3 I will push for Ceejay's mislynch by making the argument that NotNova's nightkill is the work of scum!Ceejay, because scum!Ceejay would avoid nightkilling Volxen to strengthen his doctor claim. Then after taking out Ceejay on day 3, I will nightkill Volxen on night 3 and get ready for mylo on day 4". So by the time day 4 starts, you have taken out both PR's AND one of the strongest town players who had you as their number one suspect. I would say that's a lot of motivation for scum!xwing to nightkill NotNova.

On the other hand, the nightkill of NotNova *could* also be explained from the perspective of scum!Ceejay. Ceejay knows that you are my top scum suspect, and if he has been closely following the thread, then he is also aware that in NotNova's final post he listed you as his top scum suspect as well. So from the perspective of scum!Ceejay, this could be an attempt to frame you and make it look like you took out one of the strongest town players who was also scumreading you. At the same time, he may have reasoned that this would also solidify my scumread of you, which definitely would work to scum!Ceejay's advantage. And while me being nightkilled wouldn't prove that Ceejay is scum (because anyone other than scum!xwing could have nightkilled me), it would most likely bring him under more scrutiny, which could be additional motivation for him to nightkill NotNova instead of me.

Still, what is Ceejay’s endgame plan if he is scum? Say we mislynch xwing today. If that happens, then I jail Ceejay on night 3, and if he is scum then obviously no nightkill happens. This can only mean one of two things 1) Ceejay is mafia goon and simply cannot nightkill anyone because he is jailed or 2) the mafia roleblocker* is purposefully choosing to no-kill to continue to frame Ceejay. Theoretically, if number 2 is the case the mafia RB could keep doing this indefinitely, but eventually something has to happen, and the mafia RB is not playing optimally if they keep forfeiting nightkills just to try and frame one person, as that gives complete control to the town with lynches and makes the game effectively nightless. So if Ceejay is scum in this scenario, he basically has to convince all of us that number 2 is the correct scenario – the mafia RB is purposefully forfeiting nightkills to try and frame him. Ceejay being scum 100% guarantees that I’m going to lylo with him (no more nightkills), so the only way he can win is if he can convince me that the third person with us is scum. And this is assuming he is able to get enough mislynches to even get to lylo in the first place – that’s going to be very difficult with me taking away his ability to nightkill. So if Ceejay is a mafia goon, he took a

HUGE

gambit by choosing to keep me alive on night 2. In order to win, he quite literally has to play this game going forward as a solo scum in a nightless game.

*Personally, if xwing and Ceejay are both town (highly unlikely, but I won’t say it’s completely impossible), then the only other person that makes sense to me as the mafia RB is Reundo, who was the L-1 voter on both my wagon and Sky’s wagon. It’s possible – his L-1 vote for Sky could have been to help her self-hammer so she could try to end the day early to end discussion prematurely – but I think Reundo being scum is a lot less likely than either xwing or Ceejay being scum. And I would think scum!Reundo would simply nightkill me and try to frame Ceejay for the nightkill. Unless if his plan is to try and line up both Ceejay AND xwing as his two mislynches. It’s possible, but it’s definitely a gambit for scum!Reundo to keep me alive for an extra day and night phase.

So assuming that one of {xwing, Ceejay} is the last remaining scum (which I think is highly likely), in either case one of you is trying to frame the other with the NotNova nightkill. That much is obvious. Based on everything that has happened in the game to date, I am inclined to believe that NotNova's nightkill was the work of scum!xwing trying to frame Ceejay, as opposed to scum!Ceejay trying to frame xwing.

[volxen]

@xwing, I just want to say that if Ceejay is in fact scum,

he literally has no viable path to victory. NONE.

Objectively, you are, in my honest opinion, the most likely person to be scum, based on everything that has happened to date, namely your votes as well as your interactions with both Horror and Sky. You simply have more scum equity than Ceejay does.

You need to understand that

mafia RB xwing is a MUCH more significant threat than mafia goon Ceejay

to the town for night 3 and beyond. If you are in fact scum and we mislynch Ceejay, then you simply follow up his mislynch by nightkilling me on night 3 to get ready for mylo and lylo. If Ceejay is in fact scum and we mislynch you, then there are NO more nightkills going forward and Ceejay has to play this game as if it were nightless. So if we mislynch you today and Ceejay is scum then:

There is no nightkill on night 3 since Ceejay is jailed as a mafia goon.

Day 4 consists of {Volxen, CT, Thor, Reundo, Ceejay}.

Do you see where this is going? In order to win as scum, Ceejay would LITERALLY have to convince me to mislynch all of CT, Thor, and Reundo. I haven't completely ruled out the possibility of scum!Reundo (but I think it's definitely less likely than scum!Ceejay), but CT and Thor are basically confirmed town for me. There is no way that Ceejay will ever convince me to mislynch either CT or Thor. And I'm fairly positive that CT and Thor both feel pretty confident about the other being town as well, so there is a strong townbloc of {Volxen, CT, Thor} between the three of us. Ceejay is not going to be able to break that townbloc and secure the necessary amount of mislynches that he needs in order to win.

So if I am wrong about you and you are in fact town xwing, then I will apologize to you in advance if you get mislynched today, but be rest assured that scum!Ceejay is still going to lose in the end, because he simply has no path to victory whatsoever.

If Ceejay is scum and we mislynch you today, you are still going to win as town

. But currently my scumread of you is far too strong for me to agree to a Ceejay lynch, and I do not want to have to worry about mafia RB xwing on night 3.

[volxen]

OK, xwing is at L-1. I just want to clarify some things in case he does get lynched today:

- if xwing is lynched and flips town, I will target and jail

Ceejay

tonight. If a nightkill still goes through on night 3 despite me jailing Ceejay,

remember that this 100% clears Ceejay as confirmed town

. At that point, I would say you guys should focus all of your attention on Reundo, who is the only other viable scum suspect besides xwing and Ceejay.

-

This is also a 100% commitment on my behalf to jail Ceejay on night 3

. If I die on night 3, you guys don't need to wonder whether I jailed Ceejay or not.

[volxen]

Here is where I am at with everyone:

Most likely person to be

scum

:

xwing

Second most likely person to be

scum

:

Ceejay

Probably

town

, but could be

scum

:

Reundo

Confirmed

town

:

Volxen
CT
Thor

[volxen]

Volxen can you ecplain to me why you think Thor is conf town? If xwing flips town and ceejay survives + theres an NK I need you all to rethink the Thor townread and consider reundo/thor objectively. This is assuming I'm the NK in this scenario. But what is more likely is that the JK is NK'D but just in case don't fall into the trap of autolynching reundo without considering that Thor has been shading him all game. If It's reundo, Thor and I then I will make sure to use all the time available to sort everything transparently.

I listed Thor as confirmed town for the same reason that I listed you as confirmed town: I am 99.99% certain that there was scum on my wagon. The four people on my wagon were NotNova, xwing, Ceejay, and Reundo. All-town wagons on town are incredibly rare. For example, I came across this VCA thread from a few years ago, which included VCA for wagons in newbie games specifically:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=59076

One of the most important results that was determined in that thread is that all-town wagons on town are incredibly rare: it only happens in about 13% of games overall. And furthermore, usually on a day 1 wagon on town, there will be scum among the first four voters. Granted the thread is a few years old and it isn't 100% proof, but it does mean that the odds that xwing, Ceejay, and Reundo are ALL town are astronomically low.

Here is how things will play out if I'm correct in my belief that the last scum simply HAS to be among {xwing, Ceejay, Reundo}.

We lynch xwing on day 3. If he flips scum, well then GG, we have already won.

If xwing flips town, then that means either Ceejay or Reundo is scum. Since I will be jailing Ceejay every night from this point forward if xwing flips town, then that means that there will no longer be any nightkills if Ceejay is scum.

If Reundo is scum, then he has to make a choice on night 3: to purposefully no-kill to try and frame Ceejay, or just go ahead and nightkill to bring him closer to lylo, even though doing so will 100% clear Ceejay as confirmed town.

The thing is, if I am right, in the end it doesn't matter which of {xwing, Ceejay, Reundo} is scum. There are only so many ways this can all play out, and they all result in a town victory -- as long as everyone is on board with my belief that scum is definitely among {xwing, Ceejay, Reundo} and you and Thor can trust each other.

Assuming we lynch xwing on day 3 (which is definitely the optimal play for us to make), here are the scenarios:

Scenario 1: xwing is scum (we've already won)

Scenario 2: Ceejay is scum (no more nightkills)

Day 4 is: {Volxen, CT, Thor, Reundo, Ceejay}

Here we either lynch Ceejay and win outright, or if we were to mislynch Reundo then day 5 would be:

Day 5 is: {Volxen, CT, Thor, Ceejay}

And we lynch Ceejay at that point and win.

Scenario 3: Reundo is scum

Scenario 3A: Reundo purposefully no-kills on night 3 (to try and frame Ceejay)

Day 4 is: {Volxen, CT, Thor, Reundo, Ceejay}

Here we either lynch Reundo and win outright, or if we were to mislynch Ceejay, then at that point Reundo most likely would nightkill me on night 4, which would mean:

Day 5 is: {CT, Thor, Reundo}

As long as you and Thor trust each other, you beat Reundo here.

Scenario 3B: Reundo nightkills me on night 3

Day 4 is: {CT, Thor, Reundo, Ceejay}

With Ceejay being 100% confirmed town and unlynchable here. Again, as long as you, Thor, and Ceejay all trust each other, you beat Reundo here.

So as long as you and Thor (and possibly Ceejay if he ends up being cleared via a nightkill happening while he is jailed) can trust each other, then it's impossible for scum to win.

[volxen]

@CheekyTeeky, I think we need to try and resolve whatever reservations you have about Thor before we go to the night phase. If lylo ends up being you, Thor, and Reundo, then it's going to be absolutely critical that you and Thor fully trust each other so that you guys don't get endgamed by Reundo.

Is there anything in particular that is giving you second thoughts about Thor?

Objectively speaking, I just don't consider Thor's slot to really have any scum equity in this game. In the end, our votes matter more than our words in this game, because town wins by lynching scum and scum wins by causing townies to get mislynched. Thor was on Ceejay's[UC's] wagon on day 1, and when my wagon became the popular wagon and Ceejay[UC's] wagon dissolved, Thor stuck to his guns and stayed on Ceejay's[UC's] wagon instead of switching to my wagon. As scum it would have been easy for Thor to go with the flow and switch to my wagon, but he didn't do this. Reundo on the other hand was quick to jump at the opportunity of joining my wagon after it became popular (despite previously advocating quite strongly for lynching Haylen's[Angel's] slot).

Also, Reundo was on Thor's wagon together with Horror (Sky's predecessor). And he did put Sky to L-1 on day 2, which if he is her partner makes sense because that helped her to self-hammer to try to end the day early to stop us from planning for the upcoming night phase.

I don't think it's all too likely that Reundo is actually scum, but objectively speaking Reundo does have some scum equity in this game, whereas Thor doesn't really have any.

[volxen]

But I have second thoughts on ceej as his post before sky lynch seemed townie for me.. So next on my list would be thor

......Why Thor?

[volxen]

I'm starting to get concerned that Thor is getting scumread due to his playstyle and personality, as opposed to actually advancing a scum agenda.

[volxen]

@Reundo, my overall point is that at the end of the day, scum has to actually take action to advance their agenda – and their agenda is to get townies mislynched. It’s not about debating and making wall-posts, it’s about getting townies mislynched, and votes are required to do that. The votes are what matter the most, and that’s why VCA is such a critical component of scumhunting. As scum, you don’t get to just sit back and do nothing and watch as townies keep mislynching themselves while you conveniently stay off wagon after wagon. In theory that would be great as scum, but that isn’t realistic. In other words, as scum you can’t expect town to fulfill your agenda for you – if it were that easy, then scum could win every game by just waiting for all of the townies to pile on town wagon after town wagon and start mislyching themselves. In the vast majority of cases, in order to actually lynch someone on day 1 (which requires five votes), scum presence is required on the wagon. It’s very difficult, and rare, to find five willing townies who will all vote for a fellow townie.

And just to point this out as well, in the thread that I linked they also analyzed where scum occur on wagons. For day 1 wagons on town, it was very rare to see the first four voters being town, and scum only being the fifth vote (hammer vote). In the vast majority of most cases, you will absolutely find scum among those first four voters on any day 1 wagon on town. And by the way, when there are two scum the most likely combination is that one scum is on the town wagon and one is off the wagon, followed next by both scum being on the town wagon, and both scum being off the town wagon is just incredibly rare.

That’s fine that you had a game where an all-town wagon on town happened. It’s not impossible – it happens in about 13% of all games overall. So extremely rare, but not impossible, as I have been saying. But your game is most certainly the exception, not the rule. And if we are going with anecdotal examples from firsthand experience, in the last game I was in one of the members of the scumteam tried to advance the narrative that the day 1 wagon (which resulted in a towny mislynch) was an all-town wagon. Guess what the actual reality was? Both members of the scumteam were on that day 1 mislynch wagon – and they were both on the day 2 and day 3 mislynch wagons as well. Not a strong example by itself, but neither is your anecdotal example of your previous game.

And to your point about Horror being inactive, it’s not really about that. Him being inactive does not make it more likely that my wagon was all-town. What I’m actually saying is, it’s extremely unlikely that I would have ever gotten to L-1 with four people voting for me without direct scum presence on my wagon. So, for example, if both members of the scum team were inactive, then statistically I would have never gotten four votes against me in the first place. The fact that I did get four votes against me suggests scum presence on my wagon.

It’s simple, really. Getting townies mislynched is legitimate work (arguably HARD work in many cases), and it’s not something that’s likely to happen without direct scum involvement. Scum involvement is needed to advance the scum agenda (mislynch townies), just as town involvement is needed to advance the town agenda (lynch scum). Yes, from a scum perspective it would be nice to be some sort of scum mastermind that manipulates events from the background in his/her favor without having to get directly involved and staying off of mislynch wagons as he/she watches the town destroy itself from the shadows, but that’s fantasy rather than reality.

So there is an 87% chance that Thor is town (meaning there was scum on my wagon) and a 13% chance that he is scum (meaning my wagon was all-town), just going by the VCA numbers from the thread that I linked. In addition to that, we have two people (xwing and Ceejay) that have quite a lot of scum equity in this game. And objectively speaking, Reundo you do have a bit of scum equity yourself as well. This is why I am not seriously entertaining the feasibility of scum!Thor at this time.

[volxen]

Aside from Thor not being on my wagon, the interactions between his slot and Horror/Sky’s slot also suggest that Thor is very unlikely to be scum.

First, Horror is the first person to vote for Thor on 9/8/18 at 12:34 A.M. PST in post 6:

Yay ice cream!

VOTE: Thor

Tom Holland

Spiderman is clearly superior.

Next, Reundo votes for Thor on 9/8/18 at 7:58 P.M. PST in post 22:

2. I think his vote was both RVS and serious at the same time - to think that anything is 100% random lies madness - my vote was also both RVS and deadly serious, considering I have no scum reads *stronger* than him right now why shouldn't I want to get him to L-2? Does sitting at L-3 help me more somehow?

Something not being 100% random doesn't correlate with it being "serious", assuming that "serious" in this case means content relating to alignment. You can ask RCE himself if he initially voted me because he actually thought I was scum, but I think the answer is already pretty clear.

Who would you like to lynch right now?
And if the answer is 'no one' I submit you are scum playing poorly or town who fails to understand that we can't catch scum without lynching someone, and that you're allowed to reassess your vote regularly if you find a read becoming weaker/stronger, yeah?

There's a difference between voting for someone and wanting them to be lynched, especially when we're still largely in RVS. Most accusations made at this stage are pretty flimsy and non-tangible, which is fine when there's not much to go on, but to want anyone lynched at this point, especially for the reasons you're pushing, is a bit far-fetched. Even if I hypothetically did have a rock-solid scum-read on RCE on page 1, it's still far too early for a lynch and I'd rather linger a while longer to find his potential partner. The fact that you correlate not wanting to lynch someone right now with skill level bothers me.

RCEnigma responded to your initial question about why he'd want to lynch someone who has a good scum game, so why didn't you follow up with his response if he's your strongest scum-read? As far as I can tell, a no-response is as good as the issue being resolved, so I don't see why he's still a scum-read to you if this is the case, and if this isn't the case then I don't see why you would just let his response fly under your radar. I'm seeing a lot of telling but not a lot of showing from you, and if RCEnigma truly is a scum-read I'd expect you to treat him more like one instead of just stating he is one.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Thor665

Then RCEnigma (CT’s predecessor) votes for Thor on 9/8/18 at 8:46 P.M. PST in post
23:

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Thor

Hypothetically, as scum, does it seem viable for me to come out strongly against one of the few players I recognize? Especially one that I have seen firsthand has a lethal town game. On top of that I do I add the RVS angle and then try to ride that to an end of day lynch? Certainly not, but I suppose it would make sense if I tried to work that angle with Reundo as a partner potentially. Reundo can confirm we are in fact, not scum partners.

The lack of follow up is troubling but even more troubling is your decision to talk around me to the rest of town, about me. Instead of interacting directly with me, which feels manipulative for one. Or this is a disingenuous read in the first place and your efforts would be better placed elsewhere. So let me take your
model a step further and ask what you think of Reundo and Volxen both of whom have soft defended me early. Do you find either of them to be scummy with me? They cant both be scum if I am indeed mafia.

I would suggest as the theory most experienced player there is probably a certain increased value to trying to sort me early, which I can see as a valuable strategic play.
Not sure why you'd be generically afraid though? Do you think you should be generically afraid of me more than anyone else? In pure statistics I am more likely to be town than scum, so therefore should you not be generically trusting of me? (I submit the answer to that question is clearly no - but then suggest your inverse of fear is also clearly no and wonder why you want me to debate it like a valid concern)

This also puts me off a bit. As town there is less reason to fear anyones town game, while being wary of their scum game. While I havent seen Reundo roll scum I know what he is capable of and can imagine him playing a town-looking game as scum, which is dangerous. Though I know what to look for when he is town, I dont know what to look for when he is scum and what he can artificially present.

With that said it is perfectly acceptable for Voyager in this case to put more emphasis on his wariness towards your scum game since he can be disproved later with less risk than the inverse of accepting you as town when you could be Scum. Which has those immediate implications as well as skewing reads around it later.

Then xwing votes for Thor on 9/9/18 at 4:09 A.M. PST in post 28:

edit (messed the vote tags)
VOTE: thor

L-1

So as of 9/9/18 at 4:09 A.M., Thor is at L-1.

Then the mod posts this vote count (with Thor at L-1) on 9/10/18 at 10:02 A.M. PST in post 67:

Votecount 1.2

Thor665 (4) - horrordude0215, Reundo, RCEnigma, xwing
NotNova (1) - volxen
RCEnigma (1) - Thor665
xwing (1) - NotNova

Not Voting (2) - StandingWind, UC Voyager

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2018-09-18 02:50:39).

Then 29 minutes later at 9/10/18 at 10:31 A.M. PST, Horror makes this post:

Prod received, sorry all, just phone posting right now. Haven't had time to catch up reading, will have time later today or tomorrow at the latest.

@Mod and all, for future reference I'm usually V/LA on Sundays and Mondays

So at this point

Thor had been at L-1 for over 36 hours

, and just 29 minutes prior to Horror making this post, a vote count is posted that clearly shows that Thor is at L-1. Horror couldn’t have missed this vote count post. I could understand Horror initially voting for his scum partner in jest during RVS as a joke (this actually happened in my last game), but if Thor is his scumbuddy why would he show a complete lack of concern and just leave Thor at L-1?

Horror may have genuinely been busy IRL at the time he made that post, but if he had time to make that post, then he also had time to do a quick unvote. All he needed to do was say something along the lines of “going to remove my RVS vote for now until I get caught up” and then unvote Thor. But he didn’t – he was completely content to leave his RVS vote parked on Thor and leave his supposed scumbuddy at L-1. And it’s not like anyone would have criticized him for unvoting on an RVS joke vote. I think if Horror and Thor were scumbuddies, Horror would be inclined to remove his vote at this point in time to try and dismantle Thor’s wagon, as opposed to showing a complete lack of concern to the fact that his scumbuddy was at L-1.

And here are the vote counts of when Thor was at L-1, Ceejay was at L-1, and I was at L-1 side-by-side:

Votecount 1.2

Thor665 (4) - horrordude0215, Reundo, RCEnigma, xwing
NotNova (1) - volxen
RCEnigma (1) - Thor665
xwing (1) - NotNova

Not Voting (2) - StandingWind, UC Voyager

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2018-09-18 02:50:39).

Votecount 1.7

ceejayvinoya (4) - Thor665, horrordude0215, xwing, volxen
volxen (2) - NotNova, ceejayvinoya
angel7399 (1) - Reundo

Not Voting (2) - angel7399, RCEnigma

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is currently frozen at 1 day, 21 hours, 35 minutes until all replacements have been found.

Votecount 1.9

volxen (4) - NotNova, ceejayvinoya, xwing, Reundo
ceejayvinoya (2) - Thor665, volxen
NotNova (1) - CheekyTeeky

Not Voting (2) - Haylen, Skygazer

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2018-09-21 02:47:13).

So if Sky[Horror] and Thor are scum together, that means there was one scum on Thor’s wagon (Horror), two scum on Ceejay’s wagon (Thor and Horror), and zero scum on my wagon. Considering out of us three I’m the only one universally considered confirmed town, the odds that Ceejays wagon would have two scum on it while my wagon simultaneously had zero scum on it are astronomically low. If Thor is scum that implies Ceejay is town, and it doesn’t make sense that Ceejay’s wagon would require TWO scum to get L-1, but yet my wagon gets to L-1 with NO scum involvement? No, the much more logical and likely explanation is that both Ceejay and myself got to L-1 because of scum involvement on both wagons. Especially since my wagon was the counterwagon to Ceejay’s already established wagon. Reundo your argument suggests that scum had an incredibly heavy hand in setting up the Ceejay wagon, but then had absolutely nothing to do with the transition from Ceejay’s wagon being at L-1 to my wagon being at L-1. I don’t see that major of a wagon transition happening with no scum involvement. If Thor is in fact scum, then if anyone’s wagon should have been all-town it should have been his, as all-town wagons on scum are MUCH more common than all-town wagons on town (because of scum reluctance to bus).

[volxen]

Also in Sky's second post, she arguably engages in pretty obvious buddying up to Thor:

Oooh lots of walls, that's exciting. I'll dig into this tonight finally, I just got through my first recital of the semester!

Hi RCE! Hi Reundo! Hi CJ!

Going off of meta and not content I think RCE and Reundo are more likely to be town for their walling, but I haven't seen either of their scum games and haven't even begun to read this game yet.

I'm excited to play with Thor especially after reading his interview with ffery!

Why would Sky buddy up to her own scumbuddy? That doesn't make sense. What does make sense is for scum!Sky to buddy town!Thor for two big reasons. 1) scum!Sky makes the assumption that town!Thor will take on the role of "town leader" since he is the IC, and she wants to get on his good side and hopefully secure a townread from Thor, whom she perceives to be one of the strongest town players against her and 2) if she ends up getting lynched, then it might increase the chances of getting town!Thor mislynched by association -- and if she perceives town!Thor to be the biggest threat to achieving her win condition, then it absolutely makes sense for her to buddy up to him.

[volxen]

Here are other examples of Sky buddying up to Thor:

Gonna try to mostly town sort in my catchup because I'm better than that than at catching scum

Page 1:
Thor coming in with the early pressure on RCE is pretty much exactly how I'd see him approach this as town based on his interview thing, applying pressure to an early scumread to push the town out of RVS and find reactions.

...who will support me in that push and who will oppose me...

...Does sitting at L-3 help me more somehow?

This may be kinda moonlogic but the way he uses "me" here feels very transparent in that he's open about his motivations right off the bat and in a way that I think comes from town.

Like, I see scum being too cautious to attach the word "me" to an early wagon.

On the other hand, I have early town pings from Reundo and RCE for their willingness to throw early votes at Thor. I feel as though relatively new scum would be too terrified of town Thor to vote for him that early (if he is town). I don't think scum would want to draw the attention of the IC/a player that's been on the site for almost 10 years.

......So, she is giving town points to Thor for literally using the word "me"? This just looks like someone who is desperate to impress Thor and win his favor.

More examples of Sky buddying up to Thor:

I'm not exactly sure if xwing or Reundo have any clue of Thor's apparent reputation, considering Reundo at one point pretty much said he would never trust Thor's reads and xwing expressed surprised at his "celebrity" status, as he said. Not sure for RCE.

I'm not sure how the celebrity status thing changes much

. He's still an IC. xwing putting him at L-1 on page 2 shows a distinct lack of caution that doesn't feel like it comes from scum regardless of

Thor's celebrity status

or IC status. Do you think I shouldn't be townreading those three, then?

Who are your strongest townreads, then? Could you give some more reasoning on them?

RCE/Reundo/xwing are strongest, Thor not as strong because I'm assuming he's self-aware enough to be able to mimick his town thought processes but he can hopefully be sorted better through PoE later on (

I'd still sheep the heck out of him for the info, though

).

I've already given reasonings (lack of caution/meta). If more stuff comes up as I start to actually play I'll be sure to mention it but I've done my read through and that's what I got from it.

So here she 1) calls Thor a "celebrity" and 2) talks about how much she would enjoy enjoy sheeping him for information.

These are unlikely to be SvS interactions.

[volxen]

@xwing, there's a difference between giving someone an "easy" townread versus outright buddying them. Yes, Sky gave you especially a very "easy" townread ("xwing is town because he put Thor at L-1"), and she was quick to give RC (CT's predecessor), Reundo, and Thor all townreads as well. But the only person that she actually buddied up to (quite blatantly) was Thor.

I literally do not see any scum motivation in anything Thor has done in this game up to this point. What is it I'm missing, @Reundo? What is Thor's mastermind scum agenda, and what

TANGIBLE

evidence (i.e., including

VOTES

) is there that establishes that Thor has done things that have directly advanced (or at least have attempted to advance) the scum win condition?

Why are you, @Reundo, more likely to be town than Thor?

[volxen]

@Reundo, I want you to summarize your entire case against Thor and explain to me why you are so convinced that he is likely to be scum.

[volxen]

@xwing if the final three end up being CT, Thor, and Reundo, then it's 99.99999999999% likely that Reundo is the scum in that scenario. CT has been nothing but towny from the moment she entered the game, and her predecessor RC was consistently towny as well. The one thing I really disagreed with CT on was her unvoting Sky and voting for Ceejay after sky did that flip-flop (from "guys make sure to lynch the JK target" to "wait nevermind I take that back since I'm the JK target"), but I guess CT had her own reasons for believing Sky's "no-kill gambit" story (even though it was blatantly obvious to me that Sky pre-planned to make that flip-flop since she knew I was going to be presenting my case against her soon, and it was a last ditch effort on her part to try and come across as towny). And it would take quite a lot of extremely compelling and tangible evidence for me to change my mind about Thor being basically confirmed town.

[volxen]

yeah i didnt like that CT flip flop, that's what got me all tangled up on her slot..she went guns ablazing on sky, then flip flopped at the end..it doesnt make sense for me..

im just worried both reundo and thor are town and CT ends up being RB..

do i have to claim and stuff, i think it's pretty obvious what im gonna claim though so what's the procedure here..

pedit: oh okay..hmmm i thought i was thor's choice for flip..but in that link he said it's reundo..must have recalled wrongly..eh..

I think CT may have done that because just by looking at the odds, I had a 1/7 chance of correctly jailing the person that tried to kill me (at the time there were 8 players in the game including me), so she momentarily entertained the feasibility of Sky's "no-kill" gambit story, believing that it was unlikely that I correctly jailed the right person. And If I didn't jail the right person, then the only other viable explanation for there being no nightkill is that the scumteam purposefully chose not to nightkill anyone. CT might not have initially realized how heavily I cased Sky during night 1, and that I didn't choose to jail Sky by random chance, but rather because I found extremely compelling evidence that she was scum as I closely scrutinized her slot during night 1.

I'm not saying CT switching her vote to Ceejay was the right thing to do, but it's also not indicative of a scum agenda either.

[volxen]

of course we all prefer that..but im saying that after my lynch, next step is volxen would be jailing ceej..
if ceej turns out to be town..gotta have to plan the next step..do we wait until then (there will be less people to discuss with) or would we prefer to do it earlier?
or are you saying you want to lynch ceej over me? coz i believe thor and volxen wont budge on that..and im not a good candidate to go to the finals..

No, we are definitely NOT lynching Ceejay before I have even had a chance to potentially clear him via jailing him. One way or another, there is going to be confirmed town in this group on day 4 (either Ceejay or myself).

That being said, there are still important topics to discuss, so there is no reason for us to rush to the night phase. One thing I want completely cleared up before we go to the night phase is the entirety of Reundo's case against Thor.

@CheekyTeeky, I would preferably like to have a clear idea on where you stand with Reundo and Thor before we go to the night phase, since I may not be around on day 4 and beyond.

[volxen]

LOL, nice! I guess Ceejay realized I really meant it when I said that scum!Ceejay literally had NO path to victory!

[volxen]

I'm glad it played out this way, I would have felt bad mislynching poor xwing. Why did you have to do so many suspicious things, xwing! lol

[volxen]

@CheekyTeeky, sorry I guess I made you put in effort into casing Reundo and Thor for no reason.

[volxen]

@Ceejay, why didn't you nightkill me on night 2? Were you really convinced that if you did you would have gotten autolynched on day 3?

Considering the plan that I came up with, do you now wish you had nightkilled me on night 2?

[volxen]

It was unfortunate for Ceejay really, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sorry for replacing out but thumbs up Cheeky for really showing you were Townie.

Volxen was super strong post claim. I called it by the way, I could see how that first game influenced your play and halfway through Nova's case on you I was just like damn he rolled a pr AGAIN lol.

LOL, so you already knew I was a PR? Nice. It's actually pretty funny because I've now completed three newbie games, and I've been a town PR in ALL of them!

Newbie 1885 -- I was town doctor
Newbie 1888 - I was town cop
Newbie 1889 -- I was town jailkeeper

And I won't complain if I get to be a town PR in my next game either.

Being town jailkeeper in this game was just pure AWESOME though. Correctly jailing Sky and stopping my own nightkill from going through is my best experience on this site to date.

[volxen]

Ceejay was basically doomed to lose the moment he claimed and his partner was caught.

Probably would have benefited them to have Ceejay perform the kill on Nova not Sky - that way at least if he was jailed he could have tried to argue the lack of the kill was due to him being the target. I think trying to kill Nova prior to Volx was a reasonable idea - they just lost track of which scum was never going to make it past lylo.

Pretty solid game all around, I think a lot of town played *really* strongly. Look forward to seeing you all catch more games.

If you'd like me to offer more specific feedback on your play this game feel free to ask and I'll do so.
I can also offer any insights you'd like on my play, or any lingering playstyle/game theory questions you may have - my IC duties don't end with the game

Sky and Ceejay could clarify this for us, but I think the reason Sky tried to nightkill me on night 1 (rather than Ceejay) is because I listed Ceejay as one of my top scumreads on day 1, whereas I had Sky as a nullread. They probably anticipated that I would jail one of my scumreads (NotNova, xwing, or Ceejay), and didn't take into account that I would hardcore case Sky during the night.

[volxen]

This was a scary game to play scum in and I honestly thought I was replacing into a town slot >.>

Lol it's funny because I've had the following happen in the three newbie games that I have played:

First game -- BOTH SE slots were scum (and one of the slots replaced out)

Second game -- one SE slot was scum (and this slot replaced out)

This game -- BOTH SE slots were scum (and both of the slots replaced out)

I think going forward I will be keeping a very close eye on SE slots that replace out.

[volxen]

if we extend volxen's scenario A and then think we're on column C instead of A, i will daresay both ceej/sky scum team..ceej avoiding to do the kill from fear of being jailed by volxen coz of suspicion..then volxen correctly jailing scum!sky preventing the kill..

first time to call scum team correctly yeeeey!! anyway sorry town i played really poorly especially at the start..what was i thinking..ugh..i dont think i could ever recover zzzzzz..

good job everyone twas a fun game! think i learned a lot here!
thanks mario for modding!!

@volxen: CT's gonna kill you for forcing her to do extra work hahaha! but i think correctly jailing sky when she targeted you was the best play of the game definitely!!!! (though i still dislike VCA logic and stubbornness to lynch ceej but i blame myself lol)..

@thor: sorry for my early attitude towards you..dunno but i really felt really annoyed/exasperated at your slot early on.. :-s
i had a lot of questions during the game, i should have listed it down! i'll just jot down some that i remember..if you would be so kind..

1. why were you so adamant of not lynching claimed doc until lylo for this specific game, given the very suspicious nature of it?
2. near the end of D1, we were having trouble deciding who to lynch but universally didn't want to no-lynch..as town who is holding the swing vote, what's the play to make?
3. how do you ask the "right" questions as town? conversely, what do you use as a guide to call someone town or not? i notice you dont give these out hastily/easily..

I kind of was starting to feel a little bit of doubt about you being scum, but I didn't want to say anything too early as I didn't want you to get too comfortable and think that you were out of the woods. In other words, I wanted you to keep posting under the assumption that you were still definitely going to be lynched today, so I could continue to evaluate your posting knowing that you were writing your posts under that assumption. I wasn't sure if your whole "I'm OK with you guys lynching me if it will help us win the game" was genuine, or if it was reverse psychology to perhaps guilt trip us not into lynching you. Especially since Ceejay did the same thing when he said "You guys should probably just lynch me", which of course we now know in his case was reverse psychology to try and get town points for himself.

If you would have really made yourself look towny (and I mean REALLY) before the deadline of day 3, then I may have considered switching the plan from "lynch xwing" to "no lynch", and have everyone just vote "no lynch", and then I would have jailed Ceejay, and we would have seen what happened during the night. After no nightkill happened on night 3, I was going to have everyone vote "no lynch" again on day 4 to see would happen on night 4. Then on day 5, after two consecutive nights of no nightkills, I probably would have just agreed to lynch Ceejay at that point. Maybe I would have asked everyone to vote "no lynch" a third time, just to annoy the mafia RB if there was in fact a mafia RB purposefully no-killing to try and frame Ceejay. Technically the mafia RB could indefinitely purposefully no-kill during the night phase to keep trying to frame Ceejay, but at some point the game would just come to a complete standstill (town refuses to lynch and scum refuses to nightkill), and I would assume that the mafia RB would realize that's ultimately not a winning strategy, and eventually give in and nightkill someone even though doing so would have completely cleared Ceejay. So all in all, this strategy 100% guaranteed that scum would not be able to suddenly wipe out all confirmed town in a single night phase.

But yes, you are correct. Despite how much scum equity Ceejay had, it would have been an extremely bad play to just go ahead and lynch him on day 3. It was imperative that we had at least one night phase where he was in jail, to ensure that we would have confirmed town among us (either Ceejay or myself) on day 4.

[volxen]

Thor I think newer players tend to be more suspicious of ICs being scum. His tunnel on you could be construed as scummy but if you'd stepped back from his tunnel his thought processes were very townie particularly in the beginning of his ISO. No way scum can verbalise and be flexible in an argument like he was in your guys thunderdome.

LOL yep, in my first game that's all I did was hardcore tunnel on our IC, who actually turned out to be town. But in my defense I wasn't the only one who did, as RCEnigma was in that game and we both hardcore tunneled the IC together.

[volxen]

It's weird because I've yet to be in a newbie where the IC slot has been scum, but in all three of my newbie games at least one of the SE slots has been scum.

[volxen]

@xwing, I will say this, if your goal was to stand out more in this game compared to your last game, I think you definitely achieved that goal. Just not in the way you probably intended to!

[volxen]

Fwiw Xwing I thought you were pretty Townie when I went back and read through the game again. Your pushes were unfortunate choices but only because Thor can easily defend himself as either alignment I would think, and Volxen ended up being JK with a town slot defending him.

When I went back and read your posts it really seemed like a steady conscious flow and your hand was open. One of the good things about town is that you can post this way uninhibited because you only have to catch scummy behavior, not force scummy behavior of that makes sense.

The only problem is, and I have to work on this myself, when you run into a scum roll and you have to figure out how to replicate that and still get town where you want it.

This is why I'm content to just keep getting town games (preferably town PR games ) for the time being -- I think it's helpful to have a really established town game before you can start being really good at scum. You need a lot of experience doing the real thing (scumhunting) before you can start convincingly faking it.

[volxen]

@nova, you were strong town for me coz i can easily understand where you're coming from, and why you decide to do certain things..what were you thinking..proofs to back up your claims without misreps..you were transparent and i felt there was no hidden agenda coming from your actions..we knew where you stand..

basically you have the same play style with reundo, and it resonates well with me..in your final post (before NK) i liked how you made a decision to scum read me even if you were unsure based on everything so far in the game, i think it's still helpful for town than having no reads at all..i just found it a bit too hard to convince you of my alignment and friendliness/intentions, tis all..but that could be coz of my initial bad play so my slot has a permanent black ink on it already so my bad..

fwiw i townread both reundo and RCE because they are willing to admit where they are wrong, and they are open to poke at their own arguments, or admit if their reasoning is a bit flawed or weak..in short they are self-critical up to a certain point..i mean when someone attacks their ideas and it made sense, they were willing to back down or admit it..but if the attack didnt made sense, they were critical of it and expressed it so..

for reundo another point was i felt his conviction that he was on to something on thor, and he was relentless towards that..yes i dont agree on the tunnel, but i nonetheless found it very townie..

and for both RCE and nova, though the scenario was different, i really got the genuine feeling of exasperation coming from town players who want to advance/win the game but are being hampered by some situation..

i agree it was a good that we outed PR volxen early..it's like he suddenly transformed from an ugly duckling into a beautiful(?) swan

and was able to voice everything he wanted to say and became a leader with a good plan to boot..but sometimes i feel you're too stubborn and serious in game..i like your post-game tone better..and i like it most when you're not pushing for my death!!

for sky, i think it was unfortunate she got jailed while doing the NK (well it was fortunate for townies )..i think she could have lived longer into the day as she didnt completely stand out as scummy..she had a bit good going for her when RCE vouched for her entrance as townie..it was enough to sway me to think she was townie even though i had reservations on her buddying..i found your "oh" comment in the mafia PT funny (when CT switched her vote to ceej coz of your cheeky post)..i hope you're feeling better now after your bout with flu..

for ceej, i really enjoyed how you "faked" your emotions..you know with the "sigh" and "lols" and "lynch me for town to win" and my favorite, "are you voting me coz you think im dumb" hahaha..you know near the end i was getting convinced that you were a real doctor!! i think if you and sky started the game, the two of you would have performed great..i mean i sense that you both have the same posting style and that you gel well..

for CT, i find you very natural, so even when you were flip flopping i didnt find it suspicious at all (except the last bit on sky/ceej)..i found it funny when during your entrance you were berating sky like "eh L-1 on thor makes xwing townie how exactly?" then go on to the next post saying "nvm xwing's town for now but im not explaining why next please"..i mean in hindsight..how scummy is that?? but i dunno it just came off so natural no one even bothered to comment on it..
i like how you tend to make bold statements (like you were so sure and all..i wish i can do this..) but back track as needed..maybe it's what unconsciously make me townread you..

for haylen, apologies that we werent able to play with you for long and had to lynch you coz of deadline..

for thor, you were good both as an IC and as a player..i really appreciate your style of helping newer players without spoon feeding them directly and letting them think for themselves..i didnt get it at first and was seriously annoyed/exasperated coz i felt like you were deflecting using sarcasm/word play/rhetorics/playing to win the argument..you know with the oily fish and wimp stuff and wink face and all..but after cooling down a bit then re-reading, i felt the genuine desire to help us improve our play..especially when you called me out for not reading properly..and i think it's a good thing to be exposed to your kind of play style as not everyone is gonna play the way you want or expect them too..i refrained from thanking you in game coz it might be seen as buddying, but i really appreciated it.. but seriously though, give the newbies a little bit more slack, i seriously considered quitting the game and all you know!! and for unsolicited advice, try to use this --> (smiley, happy, friendly, makes heavy statements a bit lighter) and not this --> (sarcastic, cheeky, a bit condescending..makes heavy statements heavier or more sarcastic, especially with your style of writing) hahaha!!

Lmfao. I'm glad that you think I'm a beautiful swan. That's signature material right there...

[volxen]

@Thor, any comments or feedback on my gameplay?

[volxen]

One thing I found interesting in this game was the extreme early game aggression between the two members of the scumteam. Horror didn't really do much in this game, but the last thing he did before he vanished was vote for his scumbuddy UC, who was already being voted for by Thor at the time, thus making it a wagon. And one of the first things Sky did when she replaced in was list Ceejay as a scumread and expressed a willingness to lynch him (and seemed to even prefer lynching him over lynching me).

Is this type of extreme SvS aggression more common in newbie games than I may have expected? I guess I kind of made the assumption that in a newbie game, scum would not go out of their way to try and get their scumbuddy lynched early on, especially on day 1. I know busing is a thing and some people are even known to bus a lot, but since there are only two scum in newbie games, it seems like quite a risky play to go out of your way to try and get your scumbuddy lynched on day 1 and cut the scumteam in half, especially if it would be easy to get a townie mislynched instead. And yet, both Horror and Sky seemed more than willing to bus UC and Ceejay on day 1, respectively.

So I guess my question is, is busing (or at least making a serious effort to bus) on day 1 actually somewhat common in newbie games? It didn't happen in my first two newbie games, which is why I think it threw me off a bit here and led me to giving some town points to Ceejay that he didn't really deserve.