Baton Pass [Game Over!]

[Ankamius]

ego

[Ankamius]

if I don't really have any choice, then asking me is a waste of time

-Edmund Duke

[Ankamius]

Hi reminding people that enter requested no day end yet

-Edmund Duke, Alpha Squadron

Did he explain why?

He's not comfortable with where his spots are atm and he might have more to say when he gets back, I've been leaving some notes with him

-Edmund Duke, Alpha Squadron

Who are your top two scum reads and his top two scum reads?

Town:
Oversoul
Shoshin
Nachomamma8
Oh (Enter + Ankamius)
Cephrir
Gay Dance Gone Wrong (Bitmap + GuyInFreezer)
Celestial Coordinates (Nancy Drew 39 + RadiantCowbells)
Wisdom
Sakura Hana

Rest:
Goodies (Anon. 3-headed hydra)
PMysterious
Dannflor
Something_Smart
Kagami
YukzYuk

-Edmund Duke, Alpha Squadron

[Ankamius]

Sakura and gay dance are my weakest townreads btw

-Edmund Duke, Alpha Squadron

[Ankamius]

I'm going to give this game time even though I'm pretty sure that town is going to powerlose this game thanks to the extreme circlejerk that happened yesterday because I'm a masochist who likes making myself suffer for this abomination of a pasttime over and over again.

First: (these are links btw)

183 - This was mistyped. My intended meaning was the

original

baton holder. I put myself there because we were either going to be locktowned and I'd rather have myself up on the table for a nightkill in order to prevent future paranoia LIKE WHAT ALWAYS HAPPENS WHEN I DON'T STAY HYPERENGAGED ALL GAME, or we won't get townread early and I can directly refute any bullshit about how I want to be bulletproofed or whatever. Gay Dance and Wisdom were slots I thought at that time were going to be likely townreads that were very low equity nightkills. Nothing was about reads for these, it was entirely based on what I know about their personality and their playstyles.
290/293 - Both of these posts are me.
469 - This was Enter.

Second: this game has been so utterly awful to play in (for reasons I'm going to go into later after I rebuke this entire case that is based on my posts), saying I "wasn't doing anything" and using that as a point basically ignores how I've been feeling about this game since the beginning, since I LITERALLY CALLED RC OUT FOR HOW HE WAS APPROACHING THE GAME.

I will grant that he seems to have understood at least part of why I did it when he realized the timing of it.

Third: yeah no fucking shit I wasn't comfortable with the game state, I was only bitching about it the entire game

Fourth: this makes sense when you approach the game like I'm scum, but when you look at it from a neutral perspective, you see a "ank doesn't like how the game started -> ank got overruled and stopped caring -> ank found a way to get into the game -> ank wants time to get into the game using that -> ank sees problems with the gamestate -> ank wants to get into RCs head to see where he went wrong" mindset which is easily as plausible as what you've posted... which is more repeating what I said and saying that makes no sense rather than trying to actually understand what I was trying to do.

The case is basically bogus, but it's the type of bogus that more shows that Nacho doesn't really have the experience with us to be able to read us properly. That's not his fault and really I don't blame him or think he's bad for the read. And beyond that, I'm going to let you all in on a little secret:

WHENEVER I ROLL TOWN IN AN RC GAME, I PLAY LIKE THIS
WHENEVER I ROLL SCUM IN AN RC GAME, I PLAY NORMALLY

RC is not that fucking hard to beat as scum. All you really need to do is have whoever he deathtunnels be the team sacrifice and them kill him night one. Immediately his influence is gone and the way he goes about getting his lynches tends to shut down enough town that it's a fucking cakewalk in a lot of games to win from there. You don't beat RC by trying to beat him at his own game unless you have a specific sacrifice in mind because he WILL beat you in it and he WILL scumread you for it or look to drive a lynch on you when you go that route. Or, other scenario, it tilts him so hard that he just stops trying in the game and you can just work around him normally.

This is literally how you play scum against people that just take over the game and hard push whatever the hell they want, that's why this playstyle is so volatile for any game that it appears in and is so frustrating to play with as town.

And guess fucking what: Wisdom is another player who used to have this type of playstyle and I've abused that to stomp town in the past too. Players with this playstyle are so easy to abuse because they create so much apathy and discord among towns just by existing and doing their thing, so literally all you have to do for an easy game is to just weather the storm until they either are on a course to correcting their bad reads or you can kill them to remove their influence from the game.

SO WITH THIS IN MIND, WHAT EXACTLY AM I LOOKING TO DO THIS GAME AS SCUM?

And even beyond that, this game has been endless torture to try to play in because the way the game has been played is so monstrously bad for town that I HAVE to disengage or otherwise I'm going to beat my head against a brick wall called RC. and yes, I've tried. All that happens is that the status quo remains and I get so pissed off that I either replace out because of how maddening the game becomes or just endlessly beat my head against that wall until the game is so derailed that town just instantly loses.

Here's what I said about the setup initially:

Subject: Baton Pass [Night 1]

As an additional note, if we're not planning all the baton passes as a group together we're wasting the potential town equity of this setup.

Let's not do this please

Subject: Baton Pass [Night 1]

And no I'm not going to be leashed to a target, I will choose someone I think is town because I'm not interested in the entire game being about the setup

This shit is how towns get to endgame and realize that there really isn't enough there to reliably fish out the last scum.

It's a TRAP.

Subject: Baton Pass [Night 1]

Best case scenario, build a townblock and all agree to pass to each other first, then free for all

Micromanaging the entire baton pass order is not optimal for the setup because the setup is designed around TOWNBLOCKING, NOT BRUTE FORCING EXTRA LYNCHES

I'm going to shout this until the end of time because the majority of the site doesn't seem to get this, but guess what wins town the game. Right, it's KILLING THE LAST SCUM ALIVE. EVERY SCUM BEFORE THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO TOWN'S WIN CONDITION. ONLY THE LAST ONE MATTERS.

I get so much shit for when I say not to lynch obvious scum because apparently lynching scum is always a good thing.
I get so much shit for when I say day one scum lynches are a bad thing because apparently lynching scum is always a good thing.
I get so much shit for when I emphasize specific lynches that aren't my top scumread because apparently lynching scum is always a good thing and you should always be voting your top scumread.

You can play to lynch your top scumread at all times and look to flip scum as early as possible, but any half decent scumteam will hardstomp that playstyle because the game fundamentally isn't about lynching scum. The game is about whether town can come together and trust each other enough to BE ABLE to lynch every single scum reliably. Literally my entire playstyle is based on this fundamental fact of the game, and if you look at the hardest stomps on the site, I would bet anything that a significant amount of town correctly townreading each other (or an overabundance of mechtown) is the ultimate reason why town completely stomped the game. It completely destroys scum's ability to take over the game because there's too many threats to kill off and not enough time to do it, the ability of each town in that block to have correct reads increases DRAMATICALLY, and you don't even need anyone with particularly high charisma because anyone outside of the townblock is already likely to be lynched with momentum anyways.

So when you look at Baton Pass from this angle, what do you get?

1. The ability for a townblock to reliably avoid any of them getting killed by the baton pass, barring scum literally outing themselves which is legitimately stupid for any scum to do unless it's gamewinning.
2. Micromanaging in this setup is not necessary because even if everybody in the townblock doesn't necessarily agree with everybody else being in the townblock, it's hard to hit a situation where the entire townblock isn't above everybody else
3. If somebody in the townblock is put below people outside of the townblock, that's information. If that person flips, then you weren't ready for the baton pass in the first place.
4. Everybody outside of the townblock gives information by who they choose.
5. If you're THAT WORRIED about scum just chaining themselves and scum trying to be the last person in the townblock to set up a chain, then just have everyone in the townblock agree to pass to their weakest townread in the block so that any potential deepwolves get thrown higher up in the chain.

That's fucking it, you're reducing the PoE, getting information from two PoE flips, and everybody's choices can be analyzed later. Scum have to take more chances if they want to reliably double-kill town and give more opportunities for town to properly PoE the team, and you only need a 33% correct lynch rate to reach the 2:1 LyLo situation, which reasonably is doable even with a double town lynch first phase because you should be keeping your townblock consistent enough that the PoE just drops like flies long before you run out of strong townreads. And then when you get to LyLo? There's plenty of information to go over in order to reach the correct decision.

When you play the game by micromanaging the entire game, you basically hit a solo carry situation where one person matters and everybody can frankly go fuck themselves because they straight up don't. And don't forget that if they're scum, you immediately lose the game and have to play the entire game out before you even realize it. Plus, there's a high chance of people deviating from a plan because they don't agree with it, which is inherently more likely to come from town because no fucking shit it is, and you hit a situation where people who don't want to play ball with exactly what the few people who matter want to do get pushed out of the game for ~NoT pLaYiNg OpTiMaLlY~ when nothing they do matters in the first place because they have no agency because their choices are either fall in line or get instalynched for not falling in line

Fuck that noise.

That creates toxic as fuck gamestates and even in gamestates where two scum gets lynched in the first baton phase because of it, people just shut their brains off like what happened when Nacro made his case on us despite people really should be knowing better than to think that Enter is even remotely close to his scumgame or that I would try to defend a partner that half the game is hellbent on powerlynching with the threat that going against the majority is going to result in you also being lynched and DO YOU GUYS REALIZE HOW STUPID THIS SHIT SOUNDS?

This relates to my points above about me getting a lot of shit for doing things that aren't immediately obvious, but I am well aware of what I'm doing and how to win the game, and generally when I argue for things that sounds really stupid on the surface,

maybe I'm seeing a way for scum to gain an advantage and want to stop it before it's too late???
maybe I see a lose condition for town and want to avoid hitting it???
maybe towns on this site run into the same basic traps over and over again and they're so simple to avoid

this game is falling into the day one scum lynch trap where people assume that lynching scum day one means that the rest of their reads are good. (Hint: good scumteams can abuse this, and I would bet anything that Wisdom and Kagami are competent enough players that they can help set their two partners up to last a long time in the game). This game is also falling into the trap where trying to micromanage the setup reduces the ability of town to accurately parse what town are doing and scum are doing. This game is also running into the trap where you're going to have to force too many policy lynches to be able to lynch scum properly.

There's so much basic shit that town is doing functionally wrong this game that can be traced back to this idea that the entire game has to be micromanaged for town to have a chance when really town just has to not be a bunch of imbeciles to have a good shot at winning this.

And guess what.

Town are acting like a bunch of imbeciles.

Bye!

(PS: anybody who circlejerked Nacho's case has no business saying they can read me at all)

-A

[Ankamius]

Oka legit question

have you just decided to stop playing the game in favor of taking potshots at me

-A

[Ankamius]

Damn Volpe

That was really damn impressive, good job

[Ankamius]

I'm really good at the game if you let me be

And I don't think town really let me be this game tbh

I faced resistance on SS, 7/11 townies resisted GP/Wis and essentially every townie resisted Shoshin

Like if your takeaway from this game is trust me less, you're going the wrong way by far.

The only person who thought she was scum on D1 was me and I couldn't get momentum to lynch her.

The problem with your play this game is that you basically shut down 1/3 of the player list on day one

How is anyone NOT going to have shit reads when the game is impossible to get reads in?

[Ankamius]

The problem with your play this game is that you basically shut down 1/3 of the player list on day one

How is anyone NOT going to have shit reads when the game is impossible to get reads in?

But if I shut the game down more until I could kill Shoshin we'd have won. See how that works?

I don't care about winning at all costs

I want to test my own skill against a strong plist and having zero agency to do anything because the entire game is locked down to the point where going against the dictator is grounds to be instalynched is a great way to sap all motivation and reason to care for the rest of the game

And of course this small part of me that REFUSES to give up when I see the future loss coming from this causes me to shit all over the thread as a last ditch way to derail it and ofc it doesn't work either

And lo and behold, as expected you fell off after your day 1 double scum kill and nobody else was in a state to pick up the slack

Its predictable as fuck because this is how it always goes in games like this

It even happened in starry night and the only reason town won is because we stepped back as a group and talked it out

[Ankamius]

Ok rc

You completely ignored my point

I'm going to leave the thread before I get really heated all over again

[Ankamius]

Don't play with me again RC

Gg

[Ankamius]

does anyone have a stat on the wr of town lynching scum d1 ?

i feel like town has a vry high wr if that happens, its just losses are a lot more memorable so survivorship bias

I'd be shocked if that was the case

I see it a lot actually

[Ankamius]

does anyone have a stat on the wr of town lynching scum d1 ?

i feel like town has a vry high wr if that happens, its just losses are a lot more memorable so survivorship bias

I'd be shocked if that was the case

I see it a lot actually

I think town wins less than would be expected mathematically from lynching 1 scum
There's fewer associatives

This game Volpe replaced in to a slot whose readability was bombed to hell and back and only had to control associatives with one person
Bussing S_S was brilliant if you think about it since Volpe basically just had to play like a SK in a chaotic to win

It's a pretty simple thing:

1. Usually the first scum to be caught is the easiest scum to catch
2. Town's morale tends to rise to a point beyond where they're critically thinking about the game
3. There's less raw information since scum can use a simpler gameplan to achieve the same result, which is harder to catch

Its those three combined that make the game seem a lot easier than it generally is; towns tend to be overconfident after an early scum lynch when in reality, it's better to step back afterwards since unless you have the entire scumteam nailed and can push them all through, the game is going to be harder if you play like you do

It's very high risk and basically an all-in strategy

[Ankamius]

I agree with that!

[Ankamius]

I was mainly against you because you were trying to dictate the entire baton order, not because of any reads

[Ankamius]

I was mainly against you because you were trying to dictate the entire baton order, not because of any reads

Do you not understand

That we HAD to do that to have a chance of lynching scum

I explained it in thread over and over and over

Incorrect

[Ankamius]

You just need a big enough town block to where its inevitable that you will chain lynch scum because the information you get per phase is exponential

Doing the baton phase as a set order just invites people to go against you and create even more chaos

[Ankamius]

Then town isn't town blocking correctly

Which is probably going to happen with how you play the game since you get overbearing as either alignment

That's a very valid strategy in general.

[Ankamius]

I don't see it sorry

[Ankamius]

ok I'll just blame the setup for the game being insufferable then

[Ankamius]

If you actually listened to me telling you that this is how things had to be on D1

I did say on D2 now is a time for real discussion and I need help

But everyone was already burned out from D1

I need info to do anything

shrug

[Ankamius]

I literally can't get reads from games where scum have no real options in doing anything

[Ankamius]

I'm not sure what was supposed to be done about that

Do you dispute my assertions about how this game functions mechanically

I think you are getting caught up in what more you can do or should be doing as well as optimal mechanical play, and it's causing you to miss and account for other players.

*and fail to account for

I feel this way too

[Ankamius]

Like I would have killed Shoshin no matter what if I were solo.

I think you are getting caught up in what more you can do or should be doing as well as optimal mechanical play, and it's causing you to miss and account for other players.

I don't quite follow?

you play to solo carry in a lot of your games

[Ankamius]

the damage was already done after D1

once I saw the scumflips I was pretty certain the game was going to be a huge uphill battle if not an outright loss

[Ankamius]

that's usually the main problem with d1 scum lynches yes

[Ankamius]

what do you mean math

[Ankamius]

it's fine I think nobody active on the site can actually read me in the first place

[Ankamius]

you can just

ask

lol

[Ankamius]

big reason I don't focus primarily on read strength

[Ankamius]

you don't need to be the one holding town together

enable town to find each other and bloc themselves

once town has a strong enough bloc to win the game with, suddenly it literally doesn't matter how people read you

[Ankamius]

like

back in that one game of yours years ago, this is exactly why I went apeshit on shoshin and tunneled her for the rest of the game

WE HAD LITERALLY DONE THAT and would've won the game if she had just eaten the bullet

but she played selfishly and destroyed the game-winning townblock we had made and I saw that as scum realizing the game was lost if the block was allowed to proceed

[Ankamius]

What happens when there's scum in that bloc

Like Shoshin

this is why I advocate for high information lynches over LHF scum lynches

it's a lot more likely to result in finding out whether there's town being heavily townread or not

[Ankamius]

Or me? I mean you've lost to me a dozen ish times simply because you can't townspew as hard as me and you can't get a scumread on me reliably. Sacrificing the ability to be either townier or have a more trustworthy scumread on someone they townread more is a dangerous game.

I can't townspew in your games because I can't get a foothold in them in the first place

and that's true when you're scum AND when you're town

[Ankamius]

ya atm I really don't care

I'm more interested in learning the game itself since I think what you're striving to do is far more doable with that route

[Ankamius]

Like if being able to beat me or my ilk as scum isn't important that's fine

But I pride myself on being able to eliminate big game

ya atm I really don't care

I'm more interested in learning the game itself since I think what you're striving to do is far more doable with that route

[Ankamius]

Or me? I mean you've lost to me a dozen ish times simply because you can't townspew as hard as me and you can't get a scumread on me reliably. Sacrificing the ability to be either townier or have a more trustworthy scumread on someone they townread more is a dangerous game.

I can't townspew in your games because I can't get a foothold in them in the first place

and that's true when you're scum AND when you're town

This has been going on a long time and I wasn't always as I am now.n

I also didn't make any real strides until last year

[Ankamius]

we'll see

I theorize that the majority of mafia as of now is unexplored and I'm more interested in trying to figure that out than anything

[Ankamius]

Edmund Duke still died to spawn broodling.

WOW

[Ankamius]

idk RC

like

if we end up TvT in any future game, the only way we wouldn't get into a fight and basically destroy each other is if I literally didn't play the game and just did nothing but vote

I'm not willing to do that.

[Ankamius]

yup

[Ankamius]

ya idk volpe

I think I could've gotten work done if given the chance but apparently if the setup is really that broken then I guess it doesn't matter

[Ankamius]

and again gj

you got me good with that bus

[Ankamius]

if I was at the point where I could judge shit like that, I would've been universally townread and impossible to lynch

[Ankamius]

idk what that means bitmap

[Ankamius]

Alisae v Pine was nowhere near as toxic as this game

[Ankamius]

Congratulations and thank you for replacing in, kagami

[Ankamius]

That sounds like a 3p lylo where people vote for a town read instead of a scumread for a win unless I'm missing something

[Ankamius]

Subject: Baton Pass | Mafia Hideout

Her scum hunting method is seeing every slot do their own thing and how the game state is flowing along that.

One person holding so much control over the game state is the complete opposite of a game Ank would feel engaged in.

Oh shit someone gets it

Its not entirely correct but this is impressively close

[Ankamius]

I'd rather fix the parts of the setup that make it less fun than make it less scumsided

The site could really use more scumsided opens honestly

[Ankamius]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

Having recently played scum in a very high swing game swung towards town, it really isn't

[Ankamius]

Rather I don't think that playing in a game where scum viewed the game as already lost and few players took the game seriously because the odds were that town would win sounds enjoyable at all.

I think I get what is being said.

For this game town had to play almost perfect to win at all, which is a bad thing because one small misstep and we lose.

If scum had to do more to win the game they wouldnt sit back as much and let town eat themselves alive by allowing them to do it. It would force scum to have to make moves to try and win, or they will just lose eventually.

It takes the impetus off town to play perfect, and it puts the sword at scums feet to not fuck up too much.

It goes the same way in the other direction too, except the majority of the people that play on the site are significantly worse at scum so the game is far more likely to be shut out really early on