Mini 2079 - Guns & Roses [Game Over]

[Blake Belladonna]

My case on implosion isn't as much why he's scum as much as why you and hito don't make sense as partners barring an explanation for why N2, D3, and N3 went exactly the way it did for one of those teams.

I just don't see it.

[Something_Smart]

What doesn't make sense about it? They killed their failed N1 hit and a universal townread on N2, and then LLD spent the day trying to confuse people while hito spun his wheels and eventually decided it was time to bus, and then hito shot obvtown Kagami whom he judged was most likely to go their own way instead of listening to him in 4p MYLO.

[implosion]

Another question implosion, why do you feel different than you did in Coalition?

Entirely RL reasons. Mostly that last week was the last week at my job, and so it and the time leading up to it I've been really distracted. If you look at my early game here, it should feel very similar to coalition.

My case on implosion isn't as much why he's scum as much as why you and hito don't make sense as partners barring an explanation for why N2, D3, and N3 went exactly the way it did for one of those teams.

How do N2 and N3 factor into it? WRT N2, pops was suspicious of hito and ceph was both universally townread and suspicious of LLD, even if he was calling hito town. WRT N3, Even if he flipped opinions later, Kagami spent most of yesterday very solidly pushing hito+lld, and I think hito was just afraid he'd be the most likely person to go back to that. I agree it's a little weird? I'm kind of surprised he didn't leave Kagami alive for the chance of me being wrong but it's not like it's an especially weird kill from that point of view. I also don't think straight wifom kills are that uncommon in this meta though I might be wrong about that, and this is a situation where making a wifom kill would potentially be reasonable since most players hadn't clearly articulated where they stood going into night and leaving Kagami, the only player who really had, alive would more than likely make Kagami rethink fairly seriously.

As for yesterday I'm honestly not certain why it panned out the way it did; all I know is that it did. hito flipped on kagami late in the day, and then voted LLD even later. He flipped when the votes were already 2 (kagami+S_S) on LLD and 1 (LLD) on Kagami. Notably he voted for LLD before you re-voted Kagami (and then flipped to LLD), so from his point of view, it's entirely likely that a Kagami lynch actually didn't look likely. One possible explanation is that because he's generally active once or twice a day, he knew he wouldn't be able to quickhammer, and didn't know if I was going to vote before deadline and he had already committed to flipping on Kagami at that point, and figured that getting credit for bussing LLD was better than a possible no-lynch where he waffles at deadline or him awkwardly going back to Kagami and hoping both you and I don't see anything suspicious about it.

To be clear I'm not saying this is certainly what happened, but that or something similar to it would explain the arc of hito's reads and how the wagons formed yesterday with him as scum.

[implosion]

or yeah you could just say the same thing in like a tenth of the words

[Something_Smart]

Implosion, do you have any idea why your earlygame reads were so atrocious?

[implosion]

My really early reads were really bad. My reads like a week into the game were *okay* at least. I was sketchy on both hito and LLD at least until I then separately called them both town again later >.>

My early reads aren't very consistent, and when they are any good I get shot early decently often. Coalition is I think the only towngame I have that's at all recent at this point and in it I also had pretty mediocre reads (given that the two scum were skygazer who I vaguely townread despite cheating-RAS denouncing her, and weiss who no one had any read on bc he lurked all game).

[Something_Smart]

A few other things that are factoring into my read:

- Obviously, LLD was bussed at some point. It makes a whole lot more sense for it to be on D3, after she was already almost confirmed scum from three townies' POVs, than on D2, when an LLD lynch would have shut down the Pine wagon for good.

- The way hito played around Pine obviously has a lot of scum equity, and I can imagine LLD telling him that he can hammer and she'll take the fall for the wagon. Implosion, if scum, would have probably been angling for towncred off of defending him. Had he gone that route, he could also have been shielded from TMI accusations by the fact that I was defending Pine even more. But 580 makes absolutely no sense from the "defend the mislynch for towncred" angle, and it also makes no sense if you assume that implosion saw the wagon failing and wanted to make sure it went through, because he never even voted Pine.

- The scumteam was LLD/?. They decided they'd take a N1 gun and a N2 gun. Which player takes which is irrelevant, except that the N2 gun needs to, you know, survive to N2. Now I don't know how strong implosion's scumgame is overall, but I know that in his most recent scumgame he was lynched D2, so I would expect their selections to be reversed. And he was quick to bus in that game, which would not square with him holding out so long on D3 as LLD's partner, even though it was clear LLD knew she was going down.

[hitogoroshi]

Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that LLD thought there was a world where someone other than her was lynched that day?

Sure she does. She needs me and one of you/Cyan and she wins the game with implo using the hammer he's puttering around for. So she's working me the whole time and trying to take whichever one of you two she can get. I wrote 773 to try to make her commit on one specific buddy, and she sort of half-commits to Cyan scum and you town in 774. Then Blake comes in scrumreading Kagami - at that point, LLD just needs to switch to TRing Blake and SRing you, and she literally wins the game when I vote Kagami. I had quite a few bits of Kagami's posting I found suspicious - why doesn't she think she can win that?

What doesn't make sense about it? They killed their failed N1 hit and a universal townread on N2, and then LLD spent the day trying to confuse people while hito spun his wheels and eventually decided it was time to bus, and then hito shot obvtown Kagami whom he judged was most likely to go their own way instead of listening to him in 4p MYLO.

But Kagami is the

least

likely person to change their mind, not the most, right? Kagami has already priced in the idea of an LLD/implo scumteam, and so seeing LLD flip red doesn't adjust their reads at all. Conversely, Blake believed in Kagami + ???, and so being disproven means that Blake has to totally reindex, with no clear indicator on who she'd think the most likely buddy is.

- Obviously, LLD was bussed at some point. It makes a whole lot more sense for it to be on D3, after she was already almost confirmed scum from three townies' POVs, than on D2, when an LLD lynch would have shut down the Pine wagon for good.

Don't think this works out with the chronology of what actually happened. If you say "when LLD would have shut down the Pine wagon for good" to imply that the strength of her attack on Pine means that LLD-scum would imply Pine-town, LLD went off on Pine in post 500, and in his very next post (531) implosion switched to a town read on LLD and voted me instead. So it's not like "implosion was voting LLD back when it was costly to do" - as soon as a cost came up, he bolted.

- The way hito played around Pine obviously has a lot of scum equity, and I can imagine LLD telling him that he can hammer and she'll take the fall for the wagon. Implosion, if scum, would have probably been angling for towncred off of defending him. Had he gone that route, he could also have been shielded from TMI accusations by the fact that I was defending Pine even more. But 580 makes absolutely no sense from the "defend the mislynch for towncred" angle, and it also makes no sense if you assume that implosion saw the wagon failing and wanted to make sure it went through, because he never even voted Pine.

Isn't that exactly what scum want, though? Make sure it goes through, but without your fingerprints on it? implo put himself in a spot to hammer Pine wagon if he needed to and just didn't need to. If you hard-defend every ML you're not on, you end up pretty easy to catch as scum.

- The scumteam was LLD/?. They decided they'd take a N1 gun and a N2 gun. Which player takes which is irrelevant, except that the N2 gun needs to, you know, survive to N2. Now I don't know how strong implosion's scumgame is overall, but I know that in his most recent scumgame he was lynched D2, so I would expect their selections to be reversed. And he was quick to bus in that game, which would not square with him holding out so long on D3 as LLD's partner, even though it was clear LLD knew she was going down.

I mean, I think if you're an implosion/LLD scumteam and you know there's going to be 5 (!!!) newbies in the game, I think you just pick for tactical advantage and price the chances of being a D1/D2 lynch as very low. Probably LLD needed the N1 gun because she's a likely person to take it as town and would have truthfully claimed her gun were the gun/rose distribution not so skewed.

[Something_Smart]

I had quite a few bits of Kagami's posting I found suspicious - why doesn't she think she can win that?

Because it requires selling a very specific scumteam to multiple townies and very possibly making her partner obvious in the process of it fails. That definitely seems like it will work less than 50% of the time.

Alternatively, she can set up for the 1v1 between you and implosion by interacting with the two of you in a way that makes her partner look better, which is at least marginally more than 50% if you think she's any good at doing that.

Do you really think that, in that situation, the first option is the more sensible one?

[Something_Smart]

But Kagami is the least likely person to change their mind, not the most, right? Kagami has already priced in the idea of an LLD/implo scumteam, and so seeing LLD flip red doesn't adjust their reads at all. Conversely, Blake believed in Kagami + ???, and so being disproven means that Blake has to totally reindex, with no clear indicator on who she'd think the most likely buddy is.

I don't know Kagami. They'd already changed their mind at least once (they were pretty deadset on you being scum at the start of the day), so I'm really not sure. I don't really think you would never kill Kagami here.

[Blake Belladonna]

Hi, I'm still around.

I promise I will have more here tomorrow. I've been trying to mull over how I want to present my thoughts here, and I guess I ended up procrastinating instead.

The general tl;dr is that I'm not convinced hitogoroshi has to bus when he did, as we as both scum specifically needing to go out of their way to lynch an unCCed town gun. Both plays feel unnecessarily sloppy and I need those two answered to be able to see hito as scum in this scenario.

[implosion]

Sure he doesn't *have* to bus, but it's a perfectly valid option for scum-hito to do there, for the reasons I mentioned. There was a lot of ambiguity in how the end of yesterday was going to play out and I think hito had already moved close enough to voting LLD over Kagami that he didn't have an option when push came to shove with me afk. He was likely holding his vote hoping that he didn't have to actually bus LLD but was then forced to when I didn't show up to vote Kagami because he couldn't pivot a vote onto Kagami and he couldn't vote nobody.

As for both scum pushing Pine, I think in retrospect LLD probably did as a bit of a power play and hito just did it because he was emulating the kind of playstyle he has as town. He's very by-the-book in general; hence him staunchly criticizing people that weren't voting earlier. He probably just saw an opportunity to use that to push a bad mislynch. I doubt it was specifically both scum going out of their way to coordinate a push on him. They can each have had their own individual reasons. I'll note hito reacted to the n3 gun claim before LLD did, and that LLD was already pushing Pine at that point; it's a perfectly reasonable time for hito to pivot onto the mislynch wagon. And it's not like LLD went out of her way to lynch an uncc'd town gun; she'd been tunneling him for a long time.

[hitogoroshi]

Because it requires selling a very specific scumteam to multiple townies and very possibly making her partner obvious in the process of it fails. That definitely seems like it will work less than 50% of the time.

Alternatively, she can set up for the 1v1 between you and implosion by interacting with the two of you in a way that makes her partner look better, which is at least marginally more than 50% if you think she's any good at doing that.

Do you really think that, in that situation, the first option is the more sensible one?

I mean, it's not like she has to pick between trying to win or being bused? I'm sure she figured she had paths to victory while she was bused, and she simultaneously worked towards a path to victory where she won today. I think this idea that she decided 100% that she was gonna die and so any evidence that looked like she was trying to win is automatically backwards WIFOM is pretty dismissive to a player of her caliber, tbh! Actually hearing you casually say that obviously LLD was getting lynched is kind of annoying because I put in a lot of work figuring out the pairing and if you are assigning any possibility to me being scum you think there's a chance that implo earnestly believed his nonsense LLD/kagami and hito/kagami teams. In which case...if hito votes Kagami, Blake does as well, and it's all up to implo who has pivoted to not expressing any sort of value judgement on LLD/Kagami for days and days. Where is your confidence that a Kagami lynch should have been perceived as impossible coming from? because it kind of feels like it's cheapening All That God Damn Reading I ended up doing. like buddy do you know what two hours of your meta does to a mans soul

also if hito and LLD are sitting around N2 worried that the Pine wagoners will be considered lock-scum, surely we just...don't kill the other Pine wagoners right?

I don't know Kagami. They'd already changed their mind at least once (they were pretty deadset on you being scum at the start of the day), so I'm really not sure. I don't really think you would never kill Kagami here.

Right, but Kagami changed in reaction to new information that contradicted their priors ("hito responded to Blake's scum read on Kagami by clearing Kagami"); whereas the LLD flip and any green flip on not-implosion would not constitute new information to Kagami, who had that theory already. You're right that I'm not so sure I'd "never" kill Kagami - I think hito-scum probably kills you here actually, figuring that Kagami can guilt Blake more easily, but I haven't really thought about all the plays that'd be available to hito-scum there. The point is that if I did kill Kagami, it wouldn't be because of the fear that they'd change their mind, because I know exactly WHY Kagami changed their mind and it wouldn't be a factor in D4.

[Blake Belladonna]

Oh dear.

If you think meta reading Something_Smart is painful, you'd probably be absolutely miserable trying to read mine.

[hitogoroshi]

Oh dear.

If you think meta reading Something_Smart is painful, you'd probably be absolutely miserable trying to read mine.

let me tell you: even though your Kagami read was obviously hella wrong, the fact you and Kagami was the only sensible scum pairing for either of you and your entrance basically nuked it from orbit was actually what broke the game open. tbh an incredible proof of my thesis that being engaged and making hard commitments is more important than being right

[Something_Smart]

VOTE: hito
It's not that I've necessarily decided but nothing's happening right now.

Ank, when do you think bussing was more likely? Regardless of which it is, they bussed at some point.

[Blake Belladonna]

- Obviously, LLD was bussed at some point. It makes a whole lot more sense for it to be on D3, after she was already almost confirmed scum from three townies' POVs, than on D2, when an LLD lynch would have shut down the Pine wagon for good.

I think it's a lot more relevant to think of this in terms of "Early day three", "Late day three," or "Not at all," since that ultimately makes more sense to look at than the actions of day two. This is with me knowing that there was a brief LLD wagon towards the start of the day there, which is particularly interesting in implosion's case, since it gives a good chunk of information based on how he went about the rest of the game from that point.

The biggest thing that would impact it for me, which is also sadly something I would have difficulty answering by myself, is what type of plan LLD would have for endgame in this specific scenario. Aiming for a lynch on a confirmable town is inherently risky by its own right, and it's important to note what kind of prerequisite conditions have to be met for that to be a worthwhile risk to take. It's fairly clear to me that she had taken into account being lynched for it the day after based on how she handled day three, so it's probable that the scumteam either had few options that lead them to a victory (if not only the one), or it was the simplest option they had.

With this in mind, the biggest key to me for sorting hito as either alignment once and for all is whether he necessarily had to push the game towards both specific lynches D2 and D3.

[FakeGod]

VoteCount 4.1

implosion [1] - hitogoroshi
hitogoroshi [1] - Something_Smart

Not Voting [4]

- implosion, Blake Belladonna

With 4 alive it takes 3 votes to be chosen.

Countdown to deadline: (expired on 2019-07-15 21:00:00)

[Blake Belladonna]

- The way hito played around Pine obviously has a lot of scum equity, and I can imagine LLD telling him that he can hammer and she'll take the fall for the wagon. Implosion, if scum, would have probably been angling for towncred off of defending him. Had he gone that route, he could also have been shielded from TMI accusations by the fact that I was defending Pine even more. But 580 makes absolutely no sense from the "defend the mislynch for towncred" angle, and it also makes no sense if you assume that implosion saw the wagon failing and wanted to make sure it went through, because he never even voted Pine.

I'd expect that the second biggest priority after getting that lynch pushed through would be to make sure that the second scum wouldn't get lynched for it. The problem is, I can easily see that applying to both slots; implosion for his mostly posturing-type play throughout the day (especially around Pine, who he loosely was suspicious of, but never pulled the trigger) and hitogoroshi for his hesitance in voting the slot despite supporting it.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that I don't feel either are necessarily better on day three, sadly. I did have a glance at implosion's ISO, and I can quite easily see a case being made for him specifically looking to lynch hitogoroshi today for the win while also giving enough room to allow a day three victory with a Kagami lynch. A game where the scumteam make plays as risky as they have this game requires planning and setting up a favorable endgame to win with, and I believe implosion has done more to fit into that mold than hitogoroshi did, despite hitogoroshi having the more scummy 'actions' of the two.

[Blake Belladonna]

- The scumteam was LLD/?. They decided they'd take a N1 gun and a N2 gun. Which player takes which is irrelevant, except that the N2 gun needs to, you know, survive to N2. Now I don't know how strong implosion's scumgame is overall, but I know that in his most recent scumgame he was lynched D2, so I would expect their selections to be reversed. And he was quick to bus in that game, which would not square with him holding out so long on D3 as LLD's partner, even though it was clear LLD knew she was going down.

I'd just like to note that this can potentially be observed from another angle.

If LLD was the primary wagon at the start of day two with someone who wasn't entirely confident in securing two mislynches by themselves, would it not suddenly make sense for LLD to be willing to risk a play like that? In this specific scenario, with Pine having lockscummed her and having a vigilante shot if he isn't lynched that day, it would be very important to secure the other slot's spot in the endgame as much as possible.

This obviously still applies regardless of who the second scum is, but it's more pressing in this case assuming that the suggested implication is that implosion is a weaker scum player than hitogoroshi is.

[Blake Belladonna]

Oh dear.

If you think meta reading Something_Smart is painful, you'd probably be absolutely miserable trying to read mine.

let me tell you: even though your Kagami read was obviously hella wrong, the fact you and Kagami was the only sensible scum pairing for either of you and your entrance basically nuked it from orbit was actually what broke the game open. tbh an incredible proof of my thesis that being engaged and making hard commitments is more important than being right

Hito, why did you make this post? This feels like a weird thing to say in this situation.

[Blake Belladonna]

I guess this game mostly depends on whether I'm willing to blind trust my gut on implosion when I've already been incorrect once or whether I'm willing to trust that the only other slot I think is town has a good enough idea of where the game sits to have higher odds of being correct than I am.

Admittedly I'm leaning towards the latter if only because I even came into this game knowing that I was going to struggle to get confident reads from the start, but at the same time, implosion is the slot that keeps pinging me as the one with an agenda.

[hitogoroshi]

VOTE: hito
Ank, when do you think bussing was more likely? Regardless of which it is, they bussed at some point.

I think the relevant thing to look at is scale more than time, though, right? Obviously I am biased but I think the much more important comparison is "Which vote on LLD was more likely cast by a partner: the one on D2 that was abandoned as soon as one other player voted for LLD, or the one on D3 that put her to L-1 and forced a player who hard wanted a different lynch to vote for her anyway".

Hito, why did you make this post? This feels like a weird thing to say in this situation.

Partly just as a pick-me-up for you because it was kind of a self-deprecating comment and I wanted to point out that, even though you were wrong, just being willing to commit had a huge amount of positive utility in helping me crack the game state and securing that LLD lynch. (Though I guess 'broke the game open' is an exaggeration; it's what soft-cleared Kagami to me by invalidating you/Kagami as a team, but it didn't convince me off you and s_s as a potential scumteam. It was mostly implo's posting that did that with a bit of LLDs at the end when she got desperate). There's also me being a bit of a stickler about raising the point to S_S specifically, because I had this earlier comment about his stuff when doing the meta dive:

Being wrong helps people get a BETTER read on me?

I've almost never seen that.

I've been mislynched many times for being wrong.

Once I stopped being more confident than I had any right to be, my rate of being mislynched plummeted.

okay I think we found the problem. being wrong can absolutely help people get a better read on you.
maybe in those earlier games you got mislynched for baseless and opaque wrongness or something?
but there are lots of ways to reveal your alignment that are independent of the correctness of your reads

So when you're contrasting your meta with s_s's specifically, I found it extra spicy that you, in this very game, where wrong in a way that helped me get a better read on you and guided the town to the correct lynch.

I guess this game mostly depends on whether I'm willing to blind trust my gut on implosion when I've already been incorrect once or whether I'm willing to trust that the only other slot I think is town has a good enough idea of where the game sits to have higher odds of being correct than I am.

Admittedly I'm leaning towards the latter if only because I even came into this game knowing that I was going to struggle to get confident reads from the start, but at the same time, implosion is the slot that keeps pinging me as the one with an agenda.

I mean Kagami is another slot that you KNOW is town, right? Like, I understand that me bringing up the NKA clearing me is obviously WIFOMy, but since I think I 100% survive a day with Kagami alive I'm still allowed to bring this up - hito-scum doesn't NEED WIFOM, because in a very real sense I think hito-scum would have just won D4 nigh-instantly with Kagami being alive. So if people aren't gonna see the Kagami-kill for the implosion-benefiting move it clearly clearly is, can we at least have a discussion why hito-scum might have thought he needed to kill Kagami here, or something?

[Blake Belladonna]

Oh.

My meta comment was just a simple truth. I have no scumgames on this account and my main account plays in a far more chaotic manner that is noisy and hyperposty enough that I imagine it would be very difficult to get anything specific from it without already having an in-game basis to work from. It's probably very telling how rare it is that people read me using meta until they've seen me as both alignments for exactly that reason.

[Something_Smart]

I guess this game mostly depends on whether I'm willing to blind trust my gut on implosion when I've already been incorrect once or whether I'm willing to trust that the only other slot I think is town has a good enough idea of where the game sits to have higher odds of being correct than I am.

To be honest... I'm not very good at reading old players.

Like I definitely see what you're saying about implosion. Reading the two of them just really demands a grasp on how they thought the gamestate was, rather than how I thought it was, and I suspect those things are pretty different.

UNVOTE:

idk. I would be putting more effort into this game if I thought that more effort would lead me to a better conclusion, which I don't.