Open 812 Guardians of the Fortress - Game Over

[absinthe]

Wtf does TWBTAW mean in mafiaspeak

[Dunnstral]

too wolfy to be a wolf?

[absinthe]

I guess. I wondered why duplicate TSTBS though.

[absinthe]

doesn't really fit though. TWTBAW. maybe it was just out of order.

Anyway. I'm reading through the Innocent Things game. I see some similarities and some differences. I needed some town games that you're using for comparison purposes to calibrate.

[absinthe]

Pushing unwnd feels like you're burning bridges (and then they end up being scum half the time anyway)

What games have you played with scum-unwnd?

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=85197&user_select[]=32950

Scum partner here is FL and you can see how unwnd performs theatre, andhas some complaints, and posts a lot. Big word count.

After looking that game over I wouldn't feel comfortable towning them for anything in this game, they put their all into scum

His posts in that game are a lot more focused than here. Here he's been so much on the back foot, really from the moment Anastasia went after him.

I've been worried about the lack of focus in this game, and that his posts aren't easy to understand and follow. In the game above, his stances were pretty damn clear throughout.

I've actually been comparing the incomprehensibility to his replacement scum game that Luke and I were in.

I have more reading to do.

[unwnd]

I've been worried about the lack of focus in this game, and that his posts aren't easy to understand and follow.

Do you really think that this game?

[catboi]

So, on a reread of Briar for interactions:

I feel very confident her and Lukewarm aren't teamed. I was feeling that way anyway (brief flash of paranoia earlier in the day aside), but this more or less solidified the read to the point I'd be fine with having the hammer passed to him right now. Although the questioning/back and forth in 138/153/164/197 isn't strictly non-partnery in content, it feels like a free-flowing back and forth rather than something staged and Lukewarm's responses look natural. Considering Ydrasse's tendency to not pay as much attention to her teammates I wouldn't expect her to go out of her way to talk to a teammate like this in the early game. The exchange between the two in 330/332 is where I decided they were just absolutely never teamed, though. The way Lukewarm expresses apprehension and she tries to placate him would be an impressive move coming from an inexperienced scum player. 353's "I pressed on it again because I didn't want it to get lost in the fray" also shows her following up on an interaction, which she wasn't particularly consistent about doing in dark waltz. Could she, theoretically, have patched this hole in her game? I suppose but I wouldn't expect her to be aware of this blind spot and people generally don't shift their playstyle until they get burned by it. Again her confidently asserting Lukewarm in 370 seems more likely to be a read on a townie. 437 is another interaction that doesn't feel partnery at all, lukewarm making comments about not wanting to let briar brute force her plan, her going "Oh Luke don't do this to me" in response, it would be a wholly unnecessary level of theatrical paranoia toward each other but the way she speaks to him feels more thorough than her talking to teammates in Dark Waltz III, where it all felt very terse. In 493 she suggests the possibility of Luke being in the group at the keep. While theoretically I could see this as an attempt to engineer a master plan where she puts Lukewarm at the wall and then swaps him out, lukewarm doesn't hop on it and she defers to letting Anastasia pick the 3rd. There's also Lukewarm's response in 511 catching my eye - "But I am still incredibly frustrated by her locking herself in without letting the thread talk about it". I simply don't see a new player talking this way about their partner. The one time Briar expresses doubt of him is in 894, but only fleetingly, in 1544 she's back to calling him town and in 1568 she's calling for dunn and unwnd to cross. That feels like one of those moments where scum say something truthful, give the clear to a townie because they don't have to lie that way. I just don't expect scum to assert their partner should get hammer in a situation like this, they'd feel a little more doubt.

Looking over her interactions with Dunn is where concerns started to creep up. While I realize Dunnstral isn't the most verbose player, it seems as though she barely acknowledged his existence for all of the first phase - she mentions him in her reads and her theoretical wall assignments, and then not again until 999's "I don't know what I'm supposed to make of Dunnstral picking the Wall if anything." This is followed by 1009 where she's again very fencesitty on his actions. She talks to Dunn about in 1045/1061, but there's not a lot to the exchange. Compliments him on his short ISO in 1071, asks him a very simple question in 1077. There's weak shade on him in 1087, pitching the hypothetical "But is the simple answer that Dunn hopped in that group to avoid auto-lose and we should just not waste our time here?". But then after that she makes a small response to him suspecting lukewarm, saying "I'll read over [Lukewarm], then, regarding the associatives." but it goes nowhere considering she self-hammers not long after.

I wouldn't say anything between them is necessarily a glaring red fag but taken as a whole the body of interactions between them

looks

like it fits the bill of how she's interacted with partners before this. There's some cursory questioning but not much else and she mostly just talks

about

him, rather than

to

him, while slotting him in the lower part of her POE for most of the game.


By contrast her approach to unwnd even early on is...well, openly flirtatious (59/76/79/80). I can't rule out her acting this way toward a partner but the whole vibe of her approach toward him feels super-pockety, see 101/139/142/155. Of course, this is all very early in the game but the expectation is that scum are going to try to build personal connections early on and the dynamic between the two of them continues throughout the game. She also goes out of her way to address him in 413/426 where in previous games she hasn't paid much attention to her partners. There's the whole dynamic in 454/464 where she's discussing her read on me with unwnd, it's not impossible for it to be theater but she's actually bothering to pay attention to him in a way that feels like she cares about what he thinks? I don't know if that's a coherent explanation. And then further on, the pockety vibes continue with 898/937/1151. I almost...I have a hard time seeing her acting toward a teammate this way. I feel like I need to review dark waltz III again to see how she approached him there.

The moment she finally bows to the pressure that's been on unwnd for most of the game is 1394, and from there she shades him in a few posts in 1452/1496/1497. She speaks to him in 1502, but contiues to begrudgingly scumread him in 1544. I guess the question is would she bother to walk back a townread on a townie she was white knighting? She could simply keep defending him regardless until she flipped. But then I don't know why she'd bother distancing from him so late, either. Or why she keeps talking to him like she does in 1555/1562/1576. It looks like she wants his support still by complimenting him? I almost feel like the "you're doing great" comment would be something she'd say in the scum PT rather than in-thread, but that's really stupid reasoning. The vibe of 1589 is, I don't know, conciliatory even. Looking at the whole ISO threw my read in doubt because it doesn't feel like an interaction pattern that makes any sense as intentional distancing. If I had to guess at an explanation for her turning around and shading unwnd after acting pockety toward him for most of the game it'd be because she was shifting her reads to align more closely with Anastasia so Ana would be sure to vote for her.

Gosh, I need to take a nap, that took forever. (⌯͒ᵕɪᵕ⌯͒)zzZ

[absinthe]

I've been worried about the lack of focus in this game, and that his posts aren't easy to understand and follow.

Do you really think that this game?

Well, maybe lack of focus is a bad way to describe it. I said something about being on the back foot, too, which just puts you in a reactive mode. And, yeah I've had trouble processing your posts. And that could be on me.

[unwnd]

It could be on me too and I am willing to take blame

I don't think you've actually seen me in a XYLO as town but this is very close to my behavior

I need to think about catboi's above post and actually read it lol

[Dunnstral]

I don't think you've actually seen me in a XYLO as town but this is very close to my behavior

[absinthe]

Catboi is moving into the "if scum I'm gonna cry" zone.

[Dunnstral]

scum are not holding back this game

[unwnd]

I say very close because I have thrown my own dignified behavior for exhaustive and continual presence

Call it impulsive lol

[absinthe]

I don't think you've actually seen me in a XYLO as town but this is very close to my behavior

?

[Dunnstral]

Luke, the reason my read on you changed was because once you got over the mechanics and started trying to sort alignments you came across as genuine

[Something_Smart]

Catboi is moving into the "if scum I'm gonna cry" zone.

what exactly is difficult for scum to fake in that post

70% of it is literally just recapping what happened
20% of it is saying stuff does or doesn't look like a partner interaction with zero explanation
10% of it is based on Ydrasse meta which is the only actual analysis there but that's so easy to fake

or is it just, you would feel bad voting against someone who's put in so much effort?

[Something_Smart]

scum are not holding back this game

there are two very different ways to read this lol

[Dunnstral]

scum are not holding back this game

there are two very different ways to read this lol

[Something_Smart]

I assume you meant it as "this game, scum are not holding back"?

[Dunnstral]

yes

[Lukewarm]

Luke, I'm pretty sure you're town. There is some doubts in some places but I'd be very impressed if you were scum here. I do note one behavior however and that's within your analysis you don't really come to a proper conclusion. Even your recent posts about you leaning back on Dunn, it sort of just ends. Your thought goes full circle and you pretty much say 'I can see town!dunn and scum!dunn doing this'. It begs the question why you wrote that all up and went through the trouble just to not formulate an endpoint. It's fine to give heady analysis and think about both perspectives, I do it all the time. That isn't my problem here, rather I just wonder what's stopping you from your own commitments. I remember your conviction being much stronger in the last time, but I am also aware that you are being more cautious after being wrong on ffery. I don't want to make that a proper excuse for you however.

I made a conclusion on my posts, but I left it at the top -

If you think that Unwnd's posts for the first half of the day were coming from sleep deprivation / frustration, then I am back to thinking it was Dunn.

I listed a lot of reasons I thought he could be scum. Then the one thing you are pointing out there at the end. Like, I was giving Dunn some townie points because when he said that he jumped in to block Infinity it felt genuine. But now he does not deserve those townie points, because it could be genuine from either alignment.

So, I listed a lot of reasons I scum read him, and explained that he lost the thing that was giving him townie points.

Maybe the post was sub-optimally structured.

[unwnd]

I still would like to know your S_S/Catboi read

[Lukewarm]

Who do you lean when it comes to Catboi/S_S and why

I currently think it is catboi. I thought I mentioned it in my post on Dunn, but maybe I forgot. I plan on making a case when I get some proper time to work on it.

[absinthe]

Catboi is moving into the "if scum I'm gonna cry" zone.

what exactly is difficult for scum to fake in that post

70% of it is literally just recapping what happened
20% of it is saying stuff does or doesn't look like a partner interaction with zero explanation
10% of it is based on Ydrasse meta which is the only actual analysis there but that's so easy to fake

or is it just, you would feel bad voting against someone who's put in so much effort?

Who do you have as the scum at the Wall now?

[Something_Smart]

Who do you have as the scum at the Wall now?

still unwnd, I think? but growing less confident in my opinion, and caring less since it's becoming clearer that the Wall is getting resolved before the Keep.