"Don't look too town as scum"

[Ankamius]

As scum, kill the players most likely to catch your team over time

When none of those are left, kill those who hold town together

When none of those are left, kill those that are least lynchable

Done.

EDIT: first two can be switched, but those are the two you need to target, not the most town. If you are needing to hit the townblock to not lose, your team fucked up badly, because that is the strategy with the least damage to town per kill

[Ankamius]

Consider this - "You can always reinvent yourself as scum and you always need to be doing stuff that people won't point to recent scum experiences and be like HEY HE DID THAT AS SCUM."

My point is that you can't just reinvent yourself AS SCUM. Anything you do that will make it harder for you to be read as scum, will necessarily also make it harder for you to be read as town. The two go hand in hand.

Actually, you should be trying to reinvent your scumgame every time you hit scum because that's how you 'improve' as scum.

Skill with both alignments are scaled to each other, so improving at one will naturally decrease your skill as the other; becoming a better scum player will make your influence as town equivocally harder to gain while becoming a better town player will make your play harder to emulate as scum. This is why players with very strong scumgames commonly have a lot of issues getting anywhere in their towngames regardless of their town play; it's also why players that very commonly have a big impact towards their team winning as town can't get very far in the majority of their scumgames.

[Ankamius]

That's probably more indicative of towns on this site being... well, not very good in a lot of instances.

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

That still counts, since he really only miscalculated the won endgame state and played his cards too quickly

Scum would have won that game otherwise since town was herpaderping

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

That still counts, since he really only miscalculated the won endgame state and played his cards too quickly

Scum would have won that game otherwise since town was herpaderping

Yeah, that and we were also foiled by Drixx’s ingenious plan.

And leaving two people who can sync up against scum creature

[Ankamius]

That seems like an awful lot of mistakes :P

Scum is a lot harder when you can't take over the game through force of will, since you can run into those pitfalls a lot more easily

[Ankamius]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

It's horrifying for the state of towns on this site if a 55-60% win rate as scum is just average

[Ankamius]

Well yeah town CAN hard carry games

It's just a lot harder, same with hard carrying as scum

[Ankamius]

That seems like an awful lot of mistakes :P

Scum is a lot harder when you can't take over the game through force of will, since you can run into those pitfalls a lot more easily

It’s also at least partially dependent on your teammates. Having Numbers force us to bus him, didn’t give us a good start and then there was that insane list, where he outted the entire team that Muffin almost caught. :facepalm:

I caught three of you day one >_>

I just happened to let my read of you go

And then I caught a fourth when I was waiting to reenter the game

[Ankamius]

It was my first scumgame ever. I made the mistake of just trying to mimic Titus.

But you also thought Numbers had “town markers”. :lol:

That was more me tilting from the way you were responding to me than anything else

Titus being elected snapped me out of that real quick

[Ankamius]

I'm still the only person who will ever be the first person that caught you as scum though

don't forget that ;)

[Ankamius]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

It's horrifying for the state of towns on this site if a 55-60% win rate as scum is just average

Yes, it is. The good town players have a winrate that ranges 40%-50%.

I remember calculating it a while back and I had like a 44-46%, somewhere in that range

And I was embarrassed

[Ankamius]

As for town, I think you'd really want to be the good player scum wants to kill.

I find that my survive/endgame winrate is significantly better than my nightkill winrate.

So yeah, having good town players making long into the game may be one big step to win as town.

If you frequently get endgamed by scum, maybe you might be the bad player scum leaves alive for lategame.

This is exactly why I think read strength is vastly overrated on this site

If you are the only player with good reads, you need to be alive in order to exert your influence on the game enough that town can be pushed onto the right track before scum catch on and kill you.

Town wins when the last scum is killed, so you need to push the game in a direction that will result in every scum being lynched, even if it will take time to do.

Every convincing town victory I've ever taken part in functioned like this. There was always at least one scum that managed to stay hidden while their team collapsed, but it was impossible for town to lose since the game was on a trajectory towards eventually resulting in their death anyways.

Yet whenever I see postgames where town loses, a lot of the complaining is that people didn't have correct reads or went to bat for a scumread that they locked town, etc. etc. when a little bit of inspection beyond that would show that the problem is as simple as town universally ridiculing their reads when they first state them or something similar.

I kinda feel like this is a side effect of the community at large more than just the mafia side, since I feel like this issue only started around 2014 or 2015; at least my 2011 and 2012 games felt a lot different than they have the last few years; the older games focused on reads more since that was the prevailing issue that was losing town games if I remember correctly

[Ankamius]

I remember calculating it a while back and I had like a 44-46%, somewhere in that range

And I was embarrassed

A sub .500 town win rate even on this site SHOULD be embarrassing for anyone who thinks they're good as town
(I believe I'm at 46% :P - fortunately I'm well ahead of the game in terms of blaming setup/teammates/luck/etc :P )

My playstyle is a bit too different from the norm here to be consistently usable I think

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

[Ankamius]

I have a lot (a LOT) of games where I can't get any headway at all and it's the worst feeling.

idk u well enough to have any advice on how to avoid that feeling, sorry :(

I don't think it's fixable without a big meta shift tbh

[Ankamius]

As for town, I think you'd really want to be the good player scum wants to kill.

I find that my survive/endgame winrate is significantly better than my nightkill winrate.

So yeah, having good town players making long into the game may be one big step to win as town.

If you frequently get endgamed by scum, maybe you might be the bad player scum leaves alive for lategame.

This is exactly why I think read strength is vastly overrated on this site

If you are the only player with good reads, you need to be alive in order to exert your influence on the game enough that town can be pushed onto the right track before scum catch on and kill you.

Town wins when the last scum is killed, so you need to push the game in a direction that will result in every scum being lynched, even if it will take time to do.

Every convincing town victory I've ever taken part in functioned like this. There was always at least one scum that managed to stay hidden while their team collapsed, but it was impossible for town to lose since the game was on a trajectory towards eventually resulting in their death anyways.

Yet whenever I see postgames where town loses, a lot of the complaining is that people didn't have correct reads or went to bat for a scumread that they locked town, etc. etc. when a little bit of inspection beyond that would show that the problem is as simple as town universally ridiculing their reads when they first state them or something similar.

I kinda feel like this is a side effect of the community at large more than just the mafia side, since I feel like this issue only started around 2014 or 2015; at least my 2011 and 2012 games felt a lot different than they have the last few years; the older games focused on reads more since that was the prevailing issue that was losing town games if I remember correctly

Yeah, as someone who's often pointed out as having above than average reads yet being completely ignored during the practice, I can relate to this.

However, another thing I can relate to is that your reads D1 are often more likely to be wrong than your lategame reads. So if you're killed N1, you won't have the chance to fix your reads by adding something new and so it results on either: players ignoring you for your reads being "outdated", or players following your wrong reads.

It doesn't matter whether town simply sheeps the best player or not, everybody needs to actually have a decency when making reads. There gotta have multiple players that pose as a danger to scum so they can't get rid of all them before they solve the game.

That is true in theory, but I don't think it holds in practice.

I think the problem is that the pool of competent players depletes faster than they can

create

more competent players; once the pool depletes... well, it's very much more difficult to reach a point where your reads can be good since the remaining town are either being just wrong or are being pushed in that direction by scum manipulating them.

It doesn't matter what exactly each player is doing, since as long as their trajectory results in eliminating the scum team or being a threat to it, they have to be taken into account for the scumteams nightkills.

[Ankamius]

Obligatory addendum that I'm referring to okay reads vs good reads vs great reads

Obviously if your read strength is just bad in all your games then you need to work on it, but you can have strong town games with okay reads; as long as you're able to pick out which scumread to push, the accuracy of the rest of your reads at that point matter a lot less.

[Ankamius]

A lot of that is recognizing how valid your reads are in general though

If you're seeing the same scummy nonsense pile up, they're probably scum. If you're scumreading someone for an offhand comment they made 50 pages ago, you should probably reassess.

[Ankamius]

That's probably linked, Nancy

Town that's hyperengaged is a threat to scum

[Ankamius]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people. :(

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Go read through Necromancer again, it's a very good example of this in action

[Ankamius]

Obligatory addendum that I'm referring to okay reads vs good reads vs great reads

Obviously if your read strength is just bad in all your games then you need to work on it, but you can have strong town games with okay reads; as long as you're able to pick out which scumread to push, the accuracy of the rest of your reads at that point matter a lot less.

I have much better reads than average but I don’t do well at explaining them, so town all too frequently underestimates me, to its detriment. I’m terrible at casing people, especially.

Start small and work your way up

Start with people who are scumreading your top scumread but not very much, they'll be easier to convince. Then go to nulls. After that, it should be easy to shift enough people for a lynch.

You can also try to convince the nonentities first or those that aren't super engaged, at least then people will

have

to pay attention to your read.

You can also cockblock the wagons on your townreads and convince enough people that they are town that they have to restructure their reads, which is an opportunity to get another wagon going.

There's a lot of ways to do it, you just need to find one that will work for that specific game.

[Ankamius]

I don't really think RC is sacrificing her towngame. At worst she can be paranoia lynched, but that's it.

I know plenty of players that are good as scum but atrocious as town, but I don't think RC is one of them.

RC has much better than average reads, he’s also really good at pushing those reads. My weakness is the latter. If town listened to me more, they would lose less but I really suck at convincing people. :(

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Go read through Necromancer again, it's a very good example of this in action

If you recall, scum bullied me and I sort of flaked. Part of the main reason I can be super aggressive, is to guard against that.

I'm referring to day 2, look at how the day started and how the game shifted to an overwhelming town win by the end of the day.

[Ankamius]

There's a lot of ways to get your way outside of convincing people that your scumreads are scum

Faking guilties on them.

If you want people to stop trusting you in the future sure

[Ankamius]

What’s the absolute most frustrating thing to me, is that while most of my reads are based on logic. the conviction comes from a strong gut read and people don’t listen to that, eventhough my gutreads have an extremely high accuracy rate. I basically just absorb all the information in like a sponge, make the logical connections in my head and get a confident read but when I try to explain it, I more often than not, get shut down and it’s so extremely frustrating.

If we roll town in our hydra game whenever that happens, I'll help teach you how to go about it at least

I was the exact same a few years ago and it really just needs a mindset shift to fix

[Ankamius]

I don't actually hate you RC, and none of the things I posted here were specifically aimed at you

I wasn't impressed with some of the things you did in the past, but that's really about it.