Instead of responding to xtoxm I'm just gonna do a giant reads list since that's the best way I know to get myself back into a game.
Dunnstral - Town lean. This read didn't really crystalize for me until my most recent read through of the thread. Before, his semi-frequent pop ins to comment on a few moments before ducking back out felt like it could have been just an imitation of his town persona. It certainly wasn't fakeable and I had him as null. However, his most recent posting has shifted this read towards the green, as I think he displays an attitude towards the thread that shows he's not just picking out moments randomly to comment on, instead there is a thread through his posting that shows genuine thought processes about the game.
Meta wise, I feel his approach to the game is quite similar to White Flag Team Mafia 2020, it's just taken a little longer for him to ramp up because of the large volume of this game compared to White Flag.
There have been a few moments of synchronicity regarding problems with game state reads that unwnd put forth and reads on slots such as hercule. However, these came out after I'd already stated the view so its a tell that holds less value to me than it might otherwise.
Otherwise, I just generally like his read progressions on slots like innocent villager and hercule. I think he's made decent observations. He hasn't obv-towned quite to the extent that he's capable of, but he's definitely making towny noises. As far as the recent unwnd/Dunnstral back and forth, I skimmed most of it because I value my fun, but I also vaguely liked how he handled the confrontation. This could partly be because I'm on the side of Oka in not really understanding unwnd's thought processes here, but I appreciated how Dunnstral repeatedly tried to turn the discussion towards a more concrete discussion on reads like in post
#1826.
ABR - Scum lean. I told my team that ABR was playing passively, as they'd warned me he's an aggressive player and I had noticed none of that this game. Just based off that and Jingle loosely keeping up with the game, they both said he was probably scum. My scum lean here isn't really based off that too much, but I figured I'd put that out there.
Generally, this slot just seems to be playing at a surface level. He makes a lot of statements that sound good but don't really mean anything (and for some reason are being used as reasons to town read him), and then votes seemingly to look like he's doing something and has some sort of progression. But I don't see it.
Votes like these have no real progression between them and don't really support what he ABR says. Like yes, he *says* that "I feel like there's scum in DGB/the worst" because no one is interesting in band wagoning them, but that's just one of those weird nothing statements that don't seem based off the actual game or a real thought process and more just like ABR making up a reason to scum read them. It's also not really congruent with him wanting to flip xtoxm so badly. The vote switches between the worst and DGB just feel like... posting to post. There's no progression, it's just doing something to do something. I haven't really seen a reason to town read this slot but he's also been so content-lite and I'm unfamiliar enough with him that I don't really know how AI that is. Jingle and Pine at least seem to think it is.
Cephrir - Town lean. I have had trouble getting a bead on this slot. There are a lot of players in this game that are pleasant and make pleasant enough posts and aren't really doing anything scummy, but that's not really enough to town read someone in a game where everyone is like that.
Over time, I've just gotten the strong sense that Cephrir is uninformed. That may not seem like a lot and scum can certainly act unsure and fill their ISO with questions over content. However, Cephrir has a good mix of content with his very careful approach of trying to figure out wtf is going on in this game. He hasn't necessarily acted as a "mediator" in the Dunn vs. unwnd type scuffles (which would be an easy way to get town cred) but instead approached such 1v1s as trying to figure out what each party is actually saying and what their reads are. He also has the quality of calling out some of the more bullshit reads and claims such as vague statements about wagon composition/placement and gamestate reads, trying to get people defend their takes with a little less vagueness. He never does this is an accusatory way, or like he's trying to push something, but to try to understand a slot's perspective better.
I liked his Agar push. I like the reasoning behind the reads he's expressed. The only reason this isn't a more confident read is mostly just that it's really hard to get confident reads in a large for me and I haven't gotten a high enough concentration of town!Ceph yet to be like, yes this is definitely town.
mastina - Mixed. I'm just kind of leaving this slot for further evaluation. I didn't much like JV's posting at all. When the worst was suspecting them I largely agreed with what he saw, but I never heavily scum read the slot. It just seemed awkward and not as tempting a wagon target as Agar was.
There have been a couple weird things about mastina's entrance so far. It's strange how confident she is in her reads list based off the the first 15 pages in a near 80 page game. Also, I'm not a don corleone level scum player. That's not me being self-effacing there's just no one who would say that about me with a straight face despite the memes.
But I think mastina gets more readable as her trajectories become clearer, and she hasn't had time to form trajectories yet. So, I'm just shelving this read for later.
A50 - ???????????????????????
the worst - Lean town. the worst is the player here that I am most susceptible to town read because charisma. I like him a lot and his posting is always excellent and it would be so much easier if he was just always town. This is probably why I dedicate some level of scrutiny towards him, more than I might other slots. I didn't really have any read on him for a while this game and found him just mildly underwhelming (although some of this was in part I think to just missing him in thread). But I think he's done enough now that I can feel good about town reading him.
I think I probably was underwhelmed by the worst at first just because he didn't have many hard reads for a while and the ones he did have I was somewhat critical of, but as the day has progressed I've been able to track his progression on certain slots and alleviated any worries I had for the most part. In particular, his progression on the Agar and JV slots are fairly nuanced and make sense based on interactions with them or events that happened in thread. It's not that scum can't fake smooth progressions but I generally find the more genuine fluidity in progressions there is the harder it becomes to fake.
I think the worst's response to me lopsidedly trying to grasp at some sort of read on him was fairly towny as well. Mostly, I liked that he didn't just let me question him uncritically or try to pull any sort of town cred out of the conversation and instead just focused on answering my questioning and trying to figure out why I was asking them or thinking along the lines I was. The strong lillith read is a minor town ping but nothing too consequential.
what else to say about my feelings on this slot
he's very not performative
Okapoka - Town. The last great bastion of transparency, activity, and good vibes. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slot because I don't think he's too controversial of a town read. He's been extremely active in solving, questioning, and memes. His activity does not seem to be an attempt to control the game state or really push any sort of concrete agenda that I can detect from his posts other than him just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and hone down his own reads. The vibes I get here are similar to the ones I get from Cephrir but more active and more concentrated. I think he's pretty pretty town.
Ythan - Lean scum. The only significant thing Ythan has really done is scum read Hercule, before hopping on the Agar wagon later. I just feel like town would have developed more thoughts about the game than is evident in his posts. The disappearance from the game thread hasn't helped too much but mostly this read just has to do with the fact that he's been coasting off of doing basically one thing the whole game. And it's a read I disagree with. I didn't particularly like his post voting Agar either.
unwnd - Mixed. I don't strictly scum read unwnd. However, I think any town read on the slot at this point isn't all that deserved? I don't think he's actually done a lot that is legitimately towny and there's a lot of weird posts that don't really add up for me. But I'm also sensing part of this disconnect could be a difference in play styles or just a miscommunication somewhere. But there's a lot of stuff I personally find icky.
I've already been over how I find the vague game state read of "scum are controlling the gamestate" very unhelpful and essentially empty content. It feels like an easy way to discredit certain wagons and/or players without actually taking responsibility for saying anything specific about the game. I feel like unwnd is capable enough to have these types of gamestate reads but what he's said so far this game feels like an imitation of anything that's actually helpful or represents a town look at this game.
I thought his read on Hopkirk was okay, but it seemed a bit weak to push as a primary scum read at the time. It felt like unwnd retroactively justified the push on Hopkirk with what happened after his initial push. It might've been a push designed to get some sort of reaction but I feel like it would be odd not to expect a rather extreme reaction to being pushed over something that honestly didn't seem extremely concrete to me.
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okay so we're killing xtoxm which I approve of so I'm gonna wrap up this post super quickly
I was going to go over every slot but I'll just put out a reads list roughly tiered so everyone can at least know where I'm at:
okapoka, hercule, innocent villager
hopkirk, the worst, dunnstral, cephrir
almost50, dgb, titus --- null line
uncrowned, abr, ythan
xtoxm, agar
mixed: unwnd, mastina
I can't really add anything more about the xtoxm wagon. I think it's fair and the reasons behind it have been well explained.
In post 1209, Xtoxm wrote:@Dann
could i have a summary of your reads on duun, titus, agar, hopkirk, tw, and myself
I also think this reach out is really weird and it is scummy that it is never followed up on despite me not answering. It feels like the type of post scum makes when they come back to the game and don't really know where to interact or how to start generating content. It's weird.
