TM 2021 Large Normal 2: Wikipedia Integer Facts (Over)

[mastina]

But Titus is just scum this game and has been from her very first post.

The one where she went v/la......

Yeah, and? I explained that in the case.

so mastina you think it's Ythan/Titus scumpair?

Noooooooo, Titus is very much not scum with Ythan and for that matter, not scum with Bell.

Titus very well could be scum, but if she is, it's not with either of them.
Ythan I don't think is scum at all, regardless of Titus's alignment, but if Titus were scum Ythan would go from "I don't think he's scum" to "locktown".
Bell I do think is scum, but I don't think he's scum with Titus.

@mastina, Explain your Ythan read please.

The one and only way I can see Ythan as scum is if his toxicity is being used as a mask for being scum, a la Xtoxm's from last game. However, overall, Ythan's given a bunch that doesn't feel like it comes from scum. He has a bunch of trash pushes, but he has made dozens upon dozens OF pushes, and while most are trash, some of them were actually really damn good. And even the fact that he has so many pushes is a positive indicator. In this game, scum have no reason to push like 10 different people; town however can throw shit at the wall to see what sticks. Also, overall, just gut about him, plus a similarity to last game. Ythan looks a lot like he did last game.

why did that one statement from Titus make you rethink your 4-5 hours on casing her?

Simple:

im not really sure why people strongly TR'd Hopkirk at all, maybe someone can enlighten me there

Hopkirk doesn't post much compared to the rest of the game, but I just feel he's town when he does post.

I think that this is literally the first thing Titus has said all game that I can see as possibly town from her, because as it so happens, yes, it is pretty much this.

(Note that my vote's still there because I fully believe Titus as scum can and will say this, too, because saying it is a scum mediator move, it's just that it's the first thing Titus has said that I have shared her stance on.)

My read on Bell is improving.

Also, where did this come from
Because I can't think it came from Bell directly

It did. Scum!Bell doesn't try at all here. No need for him to.

Okay, but what points to Bell trying here? I was severely unimpressed by his catchup posts that even included team reads. And then he made an excuse for "all replacements are gonna be scummy."

This makes me want to rethink Bell too.

Titus said not one, but two, things that I happen to agree with: Hopkirk is just town whenever he posts, and Dannflor was suspicious of Bell at end of day when Bell's posts have been incredibly lackluster.

If you read my Titus case, do you remember what I said?
"When Titus and I agree on something, it is an incredibly promising sign for her being town. Sadly, a lack of agreement isn't alignment indicative", or something like that.

Prior to those two posts, Titus and I were not agreeing on literally anything--not a scumtell, but an absence of a strong towntell.

Those two posts have Titus and I having common ground--not absolute proof of the strong towntell, but potentially an indicator OF it.

In short: Titus and I mindmelding means that Titus is town. Titus hasn't approached full mindmeld territory, but she posted things that COULD be indicative of the start of a mindmeld--that's enough for me to have some benefit of the doubt, to second-guess my Titus case in favor of voting a common scumread in Bell.

[mastina]

Well I'm exhausted and going to bed. But it looks like A50 fake claimed a guilty on Ythan? Okay. But y tho? A50/Ythan weird scum gambit maybe? Yep, I got a headache thinking about the motivations for each possible combination. It feels dumb.

This is a slot people are not wagoning right now.
This is a slot who we're not wagoning, in favor of wagoning players like Ythan who had an insanely town reaction and Almost50 who almost certainly doesn't pull this stunt if he's scum (it conftowns Ythan which is bad for the scum and puts him in the spotlight which is bad for the scum if he's scum), and Luca Blight for ???.

This is the slot people are glossing over, in spite of his reaction to the A50/Ythan reaction instead of being "okay they're both town", being, "maybe they're both scum?".

We gave the worst a pass on D1 because he replaced out. If he was struggling in this game, which his replace-out proved he was, his lackluster content was excusable.

We gave Bell a pass on D1 because when he replaced in, we were near deadline, so it was understandable that Bell, as a replacement, especially as a player who takes time to get going, would be lackluster at the end of D1 upon replacing in.

But Bell has no such excuse now.

Why is the Bell slot so lackluster even after Bell has had the time to get firmly established in the game?

[mastina]

Mastina, can you remind me why you TR jjh?

Experience.
(Meta stuff mostly.)

Speaking of which tho, updated not-readslist:

I will fight hard against eliminations on:

{Hopkirk, innocentvillager, Xtoxm, hercule/Luca Blight, Cephrir, Dunnstral, Ythan, Almost50, probably-jjh}

I disapprove of eliminations on:

{jjh}

TODAY

(pending further updates in the future)

I don't want to wagon:

{Titus}

I will explicitly wagon:

{AGar, OkaPoka, Bell}

Wagonwise I am now unsure on:

{Winter Flakes}

[mastina]

Counterpoint: Scum also had no incentive to TR them both if they wanted them both dead.

Sure they do, if they don't push hard to dismantle the wagons.

There's a world of difference between saying "DGB and LLD are both town :/" and going, "DGB is town for this this and this, LLD is town for this this and this, I really don't want to do either, can we PLEASE do X instead? Hey, playerA, you were suspicious of X, can you join me? PlayerB, I know you're on DGB but trust me, we wanna do X instead. Player C, I know you're on LLD but can I sell you on voting X? Or if not X, would you consider Y?"

The former is the majority of the players who said it was TvT; it is the scum mediator style where they say something that they TMI know to be true but do nothing to try and actually change the outcome; the latter is a town mediator style where they do their damnedest to try and eliminate scum instead of the two town.

There's a world of difference between resigning yourself to the elimination of town regardless of which wagon (null-at-best, scum-at-worst), and actively trying to change the elimination to not be on town. And most of the people who said it was TvT were the former rather than the latter.

[mastina]

Updated not-readslist:

I will fight hard against eliminations on:

{Hopkirk, innocentvillager, Xtoxm, hercule/Luca Blight, Cephrir, Dunnstral, Ythan, Almost50, probably-jjh}

I disapprove of eliminations on:

{jjh}

TODAY

(pending further updates in the future)

I don't want to wagon:

{Titus}

I will explicitly wagon:

{AGar, OkaPoka, Bell}

Wagonwise I am now unsure on:

{Winter Flakes}

Pagetopping this.

[mastina]

@mastina, If Ythan is town, then I have to go really deep into my bag of tricks and have to postulate Luca scum and that LLD was wagoned as a chainsaw for being right on hercule.

I am more sure on Luca being town than I am on Ythan but I do indeed think both are town.

I'm offering Bell for today with the opportunity to sort further later--take it or leave it.

Unlike you to me I'm not going to go "Titus is scum with Bell for refusing to vote there" if you choose not to; I'm not going to wagon you if you refuse; explicitly there's no consequences to you declining, except that it'll mean it's just that much harder to get a scum elimination in on Bell.

[mastina]

There are currently 5 other slots I'd rather wagon than Bell. You hard TR Luca? Fine. 4 other slots. Can we do Oka?

Sure can, I'd love to.

Can you convince the people defending him that he's scum better than I can? Because I've been trying to explain why he's scum since early D1.

[mastina]

[*]Bell the worst, representing Daylight Savings Time
[*]AGar, representing Pa-Ni-Nis
[*]OkaPoka, representing Suicide Squad

Well we have these three as "in the bottom" in common. (You have them as bottom 7, I have them as bottom 3.)

[mastina]

agar patience

trust the process

i think i know what im doing here

(Obligatory "was this meant for the scum thread?" remark here.



)

[mastina]

You yourself have taken similar positions on wagons in the past. You're intentionally ignoring those past experiences in service to your current reads.

Oh I've called things scum theater before, sure, where things that people thought were TvT were SvS, sure enough.

None of those involved two slots heatedly going at each other, one of them fakeclaining a guilty on the other, the other doubling down on that making the one scum and claiming that as a VT the guilty was utterly impossible, and then the claimer retracting the guilty.

[mastina]

you either agree on something, or you don't agree on anything
if the first one is town!indicative, the second one HAS to be scum!indicative, because as I understand it those are the only two possibilities

No?

When Titus and I are town, we can both have a lack of agreement.
When Titus and I are of opposite alignments, we WILL have a lack of agreement.
When Titus and I are town, we can both have agreement.

Those are the three possibilities.
There's no way to distinguish the first from the second. When there's a lack of agreement, it could be Titus town or Titus scum.
But because when Titus and I are different alignments, we usually don't have agreement, the presence of agreement is a good indicator of Titus being town.

this whole game, you have both spouted many, many opinions

Yes, and the whole time they were polar opposites, until now.

So yes--two things in common IS enough to give massive pause.

It's a part of the Titus-mastina dynamic.
Yes, Titus can agree with something I've said--but coming to the same conclusion as me without me having said it first is where the importance is.

It's a bit hard to explain, but genuinely, two posts is enough to give hesitance on Titus.
It's not enough for a full reversal because the full synergy isn't there in full effect.

[mastina]

I'm literally confused. To believe that Ythan and Luca and I are all town means that all 5 wagons yesterday were on town. It is a conclusion I have trouble getting down with.

May I present you a solution to your dilemma?

Vote Count 1.14

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, Luca Blight, Hopkirk

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Dannflor

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, the worst

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Dunnstral

(1): innocentvillager

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

Vote Count 1.15

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Dannflor

Lady Lambdadelta

(6): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan, Hopkirk, innocentvillager

DrippingGoofball

(2): Dunnstral, the worst

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

Not Voting

(1): Luca Blight

Vote Count 1.16

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, Dannflor, innocentvillager

Lady Lambdadelta

(4): DrippingGoofball, Xtoxm, mastina, Ythan

DrippingGoofball

(3): Dunnstral, the worst, OkaPoka

Hopkirk

(1): AGar

Xtoxm

(1): Lady Lambdadelta

AGar

(1): Hopkirk

Not Voting

(2): Luca Blight, Almost50

Bell was the replacement for the worst.

[mastina]

Btw, now that it's over: I wanted to say that when I originally said, waaaaaaay back, that Titus had an 80% chance of being scum, the remaining 20% was her pulling the same sort of thing she did in DGB Cell Games. (Got 11 pages to catch up on tho.)

[mastina]

Well, I've been told you're an easy sort, yet I am thus far unimpressed, so.

Pretty much, yeah--Why's Bell not impressive this game if he's town?

[mastina]

today bell starts asking questions that look like sorting -> less sus

[mastina]

very briefly, assuming those 3 statements are the true possibilities (im skeptical of this but whatever, i can accept that there's some correlation with how much you "agree" and Titus's alignment), if you only told me Titus and you lack agreement this game, my probability for Titus being scum increases, because we know the 3rd scenario is not possible-so I'd call you two lacking agreement scum-indicative.

Yes, exactly--why do you think that Titus has been such a strong game-long universal scumread, and why literally two posts were enough to throw it into doubt?

Titus and I lacking agreement is not a scumtell because it can happen to her as either town or scum, but the lack of agreement was still a contributing factor in thinking it was probable she was scum; the presence of agreement, thus, inversely, immediately gives doubt to her being scum.

i guess I'm just seeing you go from "hard scumread" to "null-conflicted" on Titus over something statistically not that improbable, so I worry that you're writing her off too early. like you had quite a few unrelated reasons that she was scum that actually weren't unreasonable imo (unless they were severely cherry-picked posts) so I just feel like this seems like a little dramatic to me. idk, maybe some anti-tunnelling skepticism is good tho

I also have that same worry! But I feel that giving Titus some breathing room with a reachout and benefit of the doubt for now can do nothing but good.

If she is town, then it can allow for better solving. If she is scum, then her efforts to divert the town from scum will become more obvious after the fact.

This is actually more or less what I'd normally give to Titus, anyway. I usually give her the benefit of the doubt in a similar fashion--this game I had fairly compelling reasons not to, but two posts is enough for me to reverse that stance back into my normal one. She doesn't get an indefinite pass, but I legit feel that giving her a temporary one is genuinely the best thing to do.

[mastina]

I'd be most interested in the possible pairings from my PoE group. Thanks in advance

I'm quite fond of the AGar-Oka-Bell pairing from your PoE group myself.

[mastina]

Dunn will -rightfully- go berserk over this, but I am the Babysitter.

I mean I pretty much figured that out when you went batshit ape-crazy at me doubting Titus's claim.

Sadly, I legit think that all of the town's PRs are heavily exposed to the scum right now. :S

[mastina]

actually i need dunn in here to convince a50 he's not going to listen to me

Now that the babysitter is outted I'd prefer if it targetted people a50 suspects rather than try to save people, but you shouldn't indicate how you're using it from now on

My solution: use a die, potentially a loaded one, to decide between "legit protection" and "legit try to nightkill".

Say, a 1d6, where if A50 has a preference, 5/6 of the results are his preference with only 1/6 being not.

He'd tell nobody what the results were, he'd tell nobody how the die are loaded, he'd tell nobody anything indicating how he'd use his role, but he's best not fully committing to one or the other, while still having his own preference.

[mastina]

So you think I'm lying about not receiving a message saying I was targeted?

I can see the train of thought.

I have an alternative take:

My read on Bell is improving.

Also, where did this come from
Because I can't think it came from Bell directly

It did. Scum!Bell doesn't try at all here. No need for him to.

Okay, but what points to Bell trying here? I was severely unimpressed by his catchup posts that even included team reads. And then he made an excuse for "all replacements are gonna be scummy."

Titus my main problem with you is you have these seemingly strong reads like LLD!town and the_worst!scum
but I haven't really seen you try to push these reads in any reasonably forceful way. I get not wanting to add noise to the thread but your actions don't seem to line up with what you're saying. Like, you've wound up on the same wagon as Bell, purportedly your strongest scum read. And as someone who self proclaims to pay a lot of attention to VCA, that feels off coming from you.

the only two people I genuinely scum read atm are [titus,

bell

]

But the REAL clincher:

I'm okay with letting Bell post some more for now,

I'm hoping he becomes more readable

one way

or another

What do you suppose "another" way to read Bell is?

[mastina]

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta.

Lady Lambdadelta
just: scum.

Lady Lambdadelta has been eliminated on Day One. She was a

Vanilla Townie

.

I will fight hard against eliminations on:

{hercule/Luca Blight}

hercule/Luca Blight
^This is the townlock: the names that were very very strongly town on D1, but on D2 I'm not sure are townbloc material. I still maintain that they are poor eliminations.

Luca Blight has been eliminated on Day Two. He was a

Mafia Goon

.

(Throws hands up in the air)

I give up.

I was better off in iteration #1 of the game where I had two scum as scum and two scum as locktown.

[mastina]

VOTE: Lady Lambdadelta.

Lady Lambdadelta
just: scum.

Lady Lambdadelta has been eliminated on Day One. She was a

Vanilla Townie

.

I will fight hard against eliminations on:

{hercule/Luca Blight}

hercule/Luca Blight
^This is the townlock: the names that were very very strongly town on D1, but on D2 I'm not sure are townbloc material. I still maintain that they are poor eliminations.

Luca Blight has been eliminated on Day Two. He was a

Mafia Goon

.

(Throws hands up in the air)

I give up.

I was better off in iteration #1 of the game where I had two scum as scum and two scum as locktown.

(I am not

actually

giving up, giving up, that'd imply a commitment to no longer attempting to scumhunt. Obviously I intend to keep scumhunting, I've just given up on accuracy, on any hope of being on the right track. Believing that my reads are all going to be shit is no excuse to not give them so I still will give them in spite of them objectively being shit.)

On that note.
VOTE: Bell.

I am unconvinced that Luca-Bell isn't SvS, tho I understand skepticism to follow me on that.

[mastina]

Oh I suppose I should mention: I am pretty sure Titus is town now.

Bell I don't think is town from the Luca-Bell dynamic.

Titus however from the Titus-Luca dynamic IS.

[mastina]

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8): Winter Flakes, Dunnstral, OkaPoka, Titus, Almost50, Bell, Cephrir, Luca Blight

Almost50

(2): AGar, Ythan

Bell

(1): mastina

OkaPoka

(1): Hopkirk

Titus

(1): innocentvillager

Not Voting

(2): jjh927, Xtoxm

Vote Count 1.5

hercule

(7): Lady Lambdadelta, Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst, Dannflor, Dunnstral, Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(4): DrippingGoofball, hercule, Hopkirk, innocentvillager

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

Dannflor

(1): mastina

Almost50

(1): Almost50

DrippingGoofball

(1): Xtoxm

Not Voting

(2): Titus, AGar

Just quoting the two wagons here--I'm going to bed now (was planning on sleeping before 6 since I intend to be up at 11 so am already 15 minutes overdue), but I want to have these to analyze and see if scum bussed, where they did, on both D1 and D2. How many scum were on the wagon, how many scum were off, common factors between the wagons, common factors off of the wagons, etc. Too tired to do it now, but this is a reminder to do it tomorrow.

[mastina]

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8): Winter Flakes, OkaPoka,

Titus

,

Almost50

, Bell,

Cephrir

Almost50

(2): AGar, Ythan

OkaPoka

(1): Hopkirk

Titus

(1): innocentvillager

Not Voting

(2): jjh927, Xtoxm

Vote Count 1.5

hercule

(7): Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst/Bell,

Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(4):

hercule

, Hopkirk, innocentvillager

the worst/Bell

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

DrippingGoofball

(1): Xtoxm

Not Voting

(2):

Titus

, AGar

(Removed truly alignment-known players; colored green players I am treating as conftown.)

So both wagons at their peak had a lot of the same names on them, with Oka and Bell on both iterations of the wagon with the main difference being Ythan on the first and Winter Flakes on the second.

There's four possible worlds:
Scum stayed off of both iterations of the wagon (3 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar});
One scum was on both iterations of the wagon, but a different one; one scum bussed both (Ythan, Winterflakes as scum, with the third as one of Oka/Bell);
One scum was on both iterations of the wagon, but a different one; the last scum was off (1 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar});
Scum bussed consistently, with 1-2 scum in {Oka, Bell}.

GIVEN:
Luca Blight had heavy defenders that were going out of their way to defend him,
AND:
The case on Luca was fairly shoddy,
AND:
There was a good chance Luca's wagon would dissipate,
I am disinclined to believe that scum were entirely off of both iterations of the wagon.

It's possible all three scum were on one iteration of the wagon, but incredibly unlikely.
But I also believe there's going to be two non-Luca scum on the wagon elimination. It's going to be at least 1 there, so the options are 1 or 2.
On the initial wagon, there should also be at least 1, but it is less guaranteed to be 2.

So, 1-2 scum in {Winter Flakes, OkaPoka, Bell}; 1-2 scum in {Ythan, OkaPoka, Bell} (with Ythan probably being town); by necessity, 1-2 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar}.

I am still pretty sure this is Xtoxm as town.
I am still reasonably confident that the totality of IV is town.
I still feel Hopkirk is town.

So that'd be 1-2 scum in {Winter Flakes, OkaPoka, Bell} and 1-2 scum in {jjh, AGar}.

If my reads yesterday sans Luca were right it'd be Oka+Bell+AGar, but most of these combos are viable, not just that one.

[mastina]

who else did you think was townreading Luca's D2 posting besides you?

I don't remember, but I believe that those who did are hard-town.

im also confused at why Luca self-hammered instead of tried to claim some random PR

By necessity, to make those on the wagon look good and those defending him look bad. That's the only explanation where the pros outweigh the cons.

Cons of a scumflip: those who pushed him as scum look like town and if they are town they're going to be hard to eliminate; we get a scumflip; it's easier to do analysis such as vca; those who defended him, if scum, are going to be exposed and wide open; there's less scum so it's harder for scum to influence the game both during the day and night.

Pros of a scumflip: ends the day early due to self-hammer; gives scum the opportunity to off the vig; ???; ???; ????????.

Which is to say: pros to a scumflip are literally nonexistent

unless

you fill in those question marks with "those who pushed him as scum look like town, but were scumbuddies" and "those who defended him are exposed and wide open, but are town".

I agree there was a lot of bussing going on given that literally nobody else had reasons for voting Luca but the votes just kept ticking up.

Do you now?

VOTE: Mastina

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8): Winter Flakes, OkaPoka,

Titus

,

Almost50

, Bell,

Cephrir

Almost50

(2): AGar, Ythan

OkaPoka

(1): Hopkirk

Titus

(1): innocentvillager

Not Voting

(2): jjh927, Xtoxm

Vote Count 1.5

hercule

(7): Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst/Bell,

Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(4):

hercule

, Hopkirk, innocentvillager

the worst/Bell

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

DrippingGoofball

(1): Xtoxm

Not Voting

(2):

Titus

, AGar

(Removed truly alignment-known players; colored green players I am treating as conftown.)

Because the names on both Luca wagon are literally {Oka, Bell, Cephrir}--if both wagons had, as you say, "a lot of bussing", there's literally only three players, yourself as one of them, who it could be.

And your vote is for someone who was on neither hercule/Luca wagon.

If scum did heavily bus, a sentiment I agree with, you're a prime candidate but even without you Oka and Winter Flakes would be prime suspects here.

[mastina]

agar, Titus don’t seem super partnery with Luca

Titus, sure, but AGar, why?

I’m wondering why Luca self hammered?? maybe he has good amtiassociatices with his team?? idk

If so, if he had good anti-associatives with his team, which players do you suppose that would be?

I can point to Titus and say that, while an example of strong anti-associatives, she thoroughly doesn't fit as a scumbuddy even one with good antiassociatives by virtue of Titus's approach and such.

I can point to Cephrir and say that, while an example of strong anti-associatives, he is just town on his own merits, and quite strongly so.

That limits the number of players with strong anti-associatives, doesn't it?

[mastina]

Town:

Mastina, IV,

Agar

, A50,

Poka

, Dunnstral, Xtoxm, Ceph

PoE:

Bell

, Titus, Ythan, Hopkirk,

Winter Flakes

, jjh

idk, i still think it's very unlikely that Luca literally puts his 3 buddies in the PoE, his posting style was stilted enough that it doesn't seem like he would do some crazy wifom move

Personally, I agree--it's either a 1-2 split of one buddy in town and 2 in poe, or a 2-1 split of two buddies in town and 1 in poe.

I've highlighted my thoughts on which players that's most likely to be.

[mastina]

@A50 did you think Dunnstral was the vig? i wonder if scum was expecting to have a shot at hitting vig or if they killed Dunn more for his reads

IV, there were literally only two people who would've shot DGB N1: Cephrir or Dunnstral. Literally NOBODY else in the game was EVER making a N1 DGB shot. Scum had a reasonably good 50/50 guess there. Now admittedly, I actually thought it was Cephrir due to Dunnstral's D2 opener, but it should be no surprise that when literally only two players were adamant DGB was scum and DGB was vigged, that one of them is the vig and that the scum were smart enough to figure it out.

I said that once Almost50 claimed, the town's power roles were, unfortunately, probably all exposed, and I did so for good reason.

[mastina]

(idk if/how much you played with her before. ive assumed little to none since you're a new player)

This is literally my fourth game with Bell, and while one of those I replaced in after he was dead and a second game I was 3p (albeit a townsiding one who was playing hard-town the entire time), the other two, not so much.

Our first game together was MBOS 10, where I was technically 3p (even tho I was strongly trying to be town the entire time).

Our next game together was Pooky vs FL, where I was town (tho he was scum there so I suppose technically he had no need to sort me there).

Next was Among Us Mafia, tho to reiterate, he was dead by the time I replaced in.

And finally, We have DBZ Mafia, where we were both town.

[mastina]

when scum is mastina like a powerwolfy kind of style?

Traditionally? Circa 2015-2018? Yes, absolutely. I pioneered the saying of "effort != alignment" because I was legit one of the highest-efforting scum players onsite. Even in a game where

I was literally mechanically confscum

, I kept fighting to the bitter end and was so town that the player I had hard-pocketed the entire game in lylo had trouble being convinced to vote me in spite of being literally mechanically confscum. In a game where I was literally a mechanical confscum, I almost still won due to being

that

able to pocket a townie in lylo. (They did ultimately listen to the mechanical guilty, but it took a lot of effort from the town to convince them of the mechguilty in spite of how painfully obvious it was. I knew I was caught dead to rights mechanically, but I still tried to win that game anyway.)

I never believe in giving up. I never believe in conceding defeat. I never believe in surrendering.

Now, granted--that doesn't mean I never accept my elimination! I, explicitly, have very low faith in my ability to carry the game as solo-scum. For the entirety of my career as scumastina, I am pretty sure there's never been so much as a single game where I planned from the getgo to be the last scum alive, and every time it did happen, I dreaded it and was sure I wouldn't be able to pull on through with the victory.

And, in fact, multiple scumgames of mine

hinged on

me being a fairly early elimination. It was planned in Star Wars Rogue One. (Admittedly, it didn't pan out that way, I did end up as the solo scum there, but that was due to a cop guilty on our planned carry. It was PLANNED for me to bus them and them to bus me and for ME to die instead of them, the cop guilty fucked that plan over and forced me into a position I very much did not want to be in.) It was done successfully and infamously in Left 4 Dead Mafia 2 where I rather infamously

openly claimed to be scum on D2

, to discredit the cop guilty on me. (I knew Molla had cop guiltied me, but I had planned to be bussed from D1, telling my scumbuddies to bus me and me bussing them to set up good associatives after I flipped, which payed off big time.) And it was a key strategy in camn vs. Pine, to have ME be the D1 elimination as a useless scum role rather than our actually-useful critical scum roles that then got immediate mileage.

So when I say that I am, traditionally, one of the highest-efforting scum players onsite, it doesn't necessarily mean I will be fighting to survive, since I always 100% of the time doubt in my ability to carry a scumteam and place faith in my scumbuddies to carry me and put trust in them to do what I cannot, but it does mean that over time I do have a plethora of games where I power-efforted.

And in MOST of those games, I largely didn't bus. Some games featured strategic bussing. Any game where I was planning to die had me bussing to set my scumbuddies up after I died. The original XP mafia featured a rather notable cross-bus that was deliberately executed on: Kokichi Oma and I both decided to deliberately hard-bus the other to literally divide the town perfectly in half, with half thinking one was town and the other was scum, but nobody correctly deducing we BOTH were scum. (And it worked, too! I'm pretty sure nobody thought it was TvT, but nobody, not a single townie, thought it was SvS; they all assumed SvT or TvS.)

But MOST of the time, by and large, I didn't bus, having literally wrote the book on not bussing. I high-efforted to keep my scumbuddies alive and slowly eliminate the town players, by and large.

So traditionally, scumastina is about as powerwolf as powerwolves get. While I was smart enough to plan for the specific game with situational awareness, the general trend was to be high effort and always do the most I could.

Circa 2015-2018.

However.

From 2019 onwards, my scumgames have become...somewhat...lackluster.
It actually began in 2018. I literally couldn't keep up as scum.
When I was trying hard, it wasn't paying off.
Even a game I did well in, I ended up being outskilled and losing in.
I began to get burned out from playing scum after a streak of too many consecutive scumgames.
And then, getting my wish, I had a huge, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge gap in games where I had a solid townstreak--I literally had

twenty-one consecutive towngames

.

And then my scumgame that broke the streak of towngames? Was this game. No effort.
And then I replaced into this game. Negative effort.
Finally came Animals UPick, even there a low-effort scumgame where I just couldn't find myself power-wolfing.

And even before I was force-replaced, I had basically zero posts this game. (I think my posts that game can be counted on a single hand?)
Ditto for here, too--also a game I was force-replaced in, but prior to that, would you call any of my posting there efforting? It really wasn't.

So, traditionally, since late 2018 and beyond, into 2019 and 2020, I've had zero real effort as a scumgame.
However, notably, my most recent scumgame did contain effort from me, albeit even there still notably:
-Rather lackluster compared to my townplay,
-Very slow to ramp up,
-Having heavy mechanics talk that is easy to do for scumastina,
-Had possible 3ps for me to theoretically scumhunt and everyone knows that in pseudo-multiball, scum can genuinely scumhunt, making it easier to effort,
-Had a damn good excuse in the form of Dunnstral as town genuinely legitimately being SO underwhelming that he just looked like scum so badly that had I not been scum (who thus knew better) I would've been dead-set on him being scum.

So in 2021, could I effort as scum?

Why, sure, it's possible I could powerscum. The MBOS micro proves it's still

possible

, albeit unlikely. After all, if ever there is a time to look good as scum, it'd be during Team Mafia; what better game than this one to return to prime scumastina form? There's literally no better time than this game to do so. I've fallen from my prime, so playing AT my prime in front of hundreds of scummers would be a statement that, yes, I actually AM good as scum.

So in theory I could be scum.

But I'm not gonna lie: I legitimately, genuinely, don't think I

can

play at prime scumastina form anymore. The skills that I had there are just...

gone

. They don't exist anymore. I lost them. I legit don't think I can get them back. I can maybe get to a level somewhat

close

to the level I had at my prime, maybe, MAYBE. But I don't think I truly can powerscum anymore. I just...lost my heart for it.

[mastina]

lmao how have you not reevaluated your reads

I did--reevaluating reads doesn't mean "oh all of these players I had as scum before are now town and all of these players I had as town are now scum".

Reevaluating means evaluating those reads and reassessing them to see if they still hold.

Some do, some don't.

Not all of my reads still hold--Titus is town, for instance, and Winter Flakes isn't town, for instance, and jjh I'm not defending, for instance, and Cephrir I am locktownning, for instance.

But not all of my reads change--what in Luca's flip gives me reason to believe any of {Oka, Bell, AGar} are town? Surface-level "Oka and Bell were on the Luca elimination wagon" analysis that's shallow and insincere?

No.

Now I admit.

I am in a need of rechecking various aspects of various points in the days. I need to reread, do some isos, check things to see what is the most likely scum pairings. Figure out which players are most likely to be scum and which players are least likely to be scum. My memory of events is not perfect--I may have forgotten interactions that strongly suggest scum-scum or interactions that strongly suggest not-SvS. But reassessing my reads does not require me to do that effort first; that effort is the follow-through to refine and further adjust the reads after the initial reassessment, give me a targeted area to look at more or less.

[mastina]

did you really just edit these votecounts incorrectly to make yourself look better what the fuck

I made no incorrect edits to them pretty sure.

you left dgb one vote and removed your vote on dann?

I am pretty sure that I left things fully accurate.

I removed my own vote because I know my own alignment just as well as I know the alignment of dead players--did I say I was presenting this as objective analysis? I don't recall saying so. I was doing analysis for myself. (I literally said this yesterday when I was going to bed, that I needed to do the analysis.) Why would I include myself when doing analysis for myself? I already know my alignment so having my vote in there is just clutter, it just gets in the way, as an unnecessary string of text. Would you prefer I have left it in and just colored it green? (Speaking of which, whoops, forgot to color LLD's name as green. ) Same effect, just less efficient.

[mastina]

i just read that post and it feels like you are arguing why you are scum

Kinda? I'm not scum but it would be intellectually dishonest to not acknowledge how I

could

be scum. I know I'm not, but I'm not going to lie and pretend it's objectively impossible for me to be scum. Subjectively, I know it is impossible for me to be scum because I know I am town, but OBJECTIVELY, it's fully possible, yes.

I, objectively, think it is not likely. It's objectively not probable, maybe even objectively not plausible, with it being possible but improbable. But objectively, it's not impossible, because of what I have done in the past as scum and what my latest scumgame showed. I legit personally don't think I could perform at this level as scum (I'd need to actually be scum to give you a better idea for that tho), but that's not objective, that's subjective.

It doesn't help give others perspective on my slot if I am dishonest about my past/capabilities/etc. and theoretical abilities. So it takes full disclosure, full honestly, being fully upfront about it to explain.

[mastina]

Not gonna lie: I really don't feel like playing mafia today, but I can't in good faith justify not doing so, especially given what will be happening this weekend. (Friday/Saturday are the last days of my lifeguard recert but I am expecting the fallout to last into the week after--after all, last Friday's fallout was only mostly solved by yesterday.)

(Also, unrelated: my right index finger is badly hurting whenever I type using it or whenever I click using my mouse. I get a sharp pain whenever pressing down using it, feels like some sort of nerve or tendon or something on the top part of my finger, so that also makes today suck.)

i had AGar, Bell, and Oka in that potential pool too

About those three names, IV.
You may note a good reason I didn't have them in the "is a town vig" pool...

i was targetted by a Neapolitan.

Universal backup is a thing

For those scumreading Hopkirk: #gitwrecked.

I feel vindicated in that townread.

With Hopkirk as conftown, it is very reassuring in my reads there.

like this is literally just throwing shade at my play that you have no prior experience of because my reads aren't 100% right? i don't get the motive if it isn't just to hard shade me

Yeah about that.

There's damn good reason Oka's a scumread of mine.

[mastina]

MECHANICALLY TOWN:

Almost50
^Literally a role that's almost definitely not scum here.
Hopkirk
^Almost assuredly an inno. In the very unlikely result of not being one, re-examine tomorrow

Strongly Interaction-based town:

(these are players who, while not mechanically cleared, are incredibly likely to be town from hercule/Luca pushes combined with their play)

Cephrir
^Even without his push on Luca, his play has been insanely town in a way that's on a whole different level. His everything is town, and he had strong conviction on DGB that I think is absolutely indicative of him being town.
Titus
^Titus's content has been getting better and better, and she is more or less directly responsible for us having a scum elimination. While it's possible the Luca elimination happens without her, it's incredibly unlikely. I don't think it was an orchestrated scum bus; I legit think that of all the players who pushed the slot, she is the most clearly pure town push from the bunch.

Individually strong townreads:

innocentvillager
^IV's total presence this game radiates town in a way that I don't think he can do as scum. While he's been largely indecisive and has been all over the place, him having done so is something that I think for him is hugely indicative of him being town. He's genuinely tried to reach out and understand the viewpoints of others, presenting them clearly, and has been a town mediator, who bridges gaps, an arbiter that explains viewpoints, sees things objectively, analyzes them, and overall has just been insanely town.
Xtoxm
^I think that this is beyond the scumrange of what amounts to an Xtoxm/Auro hydra. Xtoxm has been giving a fire and passion to his reads beyond what comes from Auro and you can tell that Auro is actively involved in the game and trying to solve it, but even without Auro Xtoxm on his own merits is a whole different beast than that.

I have good reason to not want to eliminate:

jjh927
^This one comes from an iso of jjh and a strong gut feeling that he's town here. You can revisit this on a later day but he is a bad elimination target today.
Ythan
^Ythan's play has seemed incredibly similar to his play last game and his reaction to Almost50's fake guilty on him was insanely town. His pushes have also seemed to be good, and passionate, and all in all, while he's possible scum since none of these things are hard-clears, he's by far one of the towniest players among the uncleared,

Which leaves the remainder of:

AGar
Bell
Winter Flakes
OkaPoka

I don't have any reason to scumread Winter Flakes whereas I do have good reason to scumread the other three, but I will happily eliminate any of the four, because none of them have reasons to be town and in those four, any combination is a viable scumteam.

[mastina]

VOTE: jjh

jjh is a really bad vote here and I'm basically hard-convinced he is town here. (Titus, I know you don't want to, but please trust me on this for now.)

The wagon on him especially with votes like this is thus: bad.

Voting Hopkirk when Hopkirk has a mechanical result on him is bad.
Voting jjh is very bad.

There are, legitimately, only four slots that should be elimination candidates today:
{AGar, Bell, OkaPoka, Winter Flakes}.

Everyone else should be off the table for damn good reasons.

And I really don't get why people aren't realizing that OkaPoka's been on a game-long campaign to put people down, to shade them, without actually doing anything town.

[mastina]

Can someone explain how Hopkirk self-resolves. My mechanical game is shit. All I got was that he claimed that he was checked by a neopolitan that may or may not be from scum.

Hopkirk was visited by an announcing Neapolitan.
Occam's razor suggests that the announcing Neapolitan is a Universal Backup, who inherited Dannflor's role of 3x Announcing Neapolitan. (Universal Backups inherit the role of the first role of their alignment--a scum UB cannot inherit a town role, and a town UB cannot inherit a scum role so the UB is innately a town one.)
Neapolitans get the results of "Not a Vanilla Townie", "Vanilla Townie", or "No Result".
The Neapolitan having Announced its visit, it won't have gotten "No Result". It thus got either "Not a Vanilla Townie" or "Vanilla Townie".
A result of Vanilla Townie is a hard-innocent: it cannot be scum because no scum, not even a goon, shows up as 'Vanilla Townie' to a Neapolitan.

Ergo, with Hopkirk visited by a UB turned 3x Neapolitan, there is a fair chance that Hopkirk is conftown and even if not, it is best tabled at least until tomorrow (if not massclaim), because the UB turned 3x Neapolitan should still have one more shot left (Dann presumably used one N1, the UB turned 3x Neapolitan used a second N2, and thus the third shot would be used N3).

[mastina]

Fair warning: will be fairly V/LA due to lifeguard training stuff. Can post right now tho, so...

No one ever fucking considered that scum might *gasp*

lie

.

To be fair.
I presented doubt towards Titus for that exact reason.

However.

This is a roleclaim that will literally be confirmed by another player. It's not something scum will lie about, especially not in the way Hopkirk did. The evolution of the claimed result was incredibly genuine.

VOTE: AGar

I'd actually prefer OkaPoka > Bell > AGar > WinterFlakes so AGar's not my first choice, but he's infinitesimally a better elimination than jjh and has a high chance of flipping scum, soooooooo.

[mastina]

jjh is at 2 votes and iv just expressed apprehension about keeping his vote there - are you really claiming this agar vote has anything to do with jjh's wagon?

It both does and doesn't.

jjh is definitely town here, like, 100% town here--I am absolutely sure of it. jjh dropped a sign that he is town that I very very very much do not want to out, but it is a surefire 100% guaranteed towntell here. (Even saying this much is too much imo, but when I said to trust me, it apparently wasn't enough. But I very damn well bloody mean that you need to TRUST ME HERE DAMMIT because jjh is definitely town.)

There is a jjh wagon--joining an alternative wagon helps alleviate the pressure on him.

But more than that.

I have three scumreads: OkaPoka (strongest), Bell (second strongest), AGar (third), with Winter Flakes in the backup if one of those is wrong. (Thus, Oka > Bell > AGar > Winter Flakes.)

However.

Do you see any votes for you, OkaPoka?
I do not.
Do you see any votes for Bell? I was, until my vote change, vanity voting there.

If I have three scumreads but there's a wagon on the third-strongest and absolutely zero votes on either my strongest OR second-strongest scumreads.

Why

wouldn't

I vote for the third-strongest scumread? It's still a scumread. It's not as confident of a scumread. It's not as assured of a scumread. It's a scumread with a higher chance of being wrong. But it's still a

scumread

, but just a weaker one.

I can thus, when switching, both state:
-It is a much, much, much better wagon than jjh, and,
-I would rather OkaPoka > Bell over it.

Because both are true.

[mastina]

VOTE: jjh
pretty sure this is scum

I know for a 100% fact that jjh is not.

Right now my list of possible scum is something like titus, mastina, hopkirk (off limits today), jjh and you, and while I don't have the massive hubris to think I've caught everyone with that list, getting a handle on you would be helpful in narrowing things down

Well, jjh isn't scum and Hopkirk is off the table today.

So from the remainder you get 3 scum with reads on {Titus, mastina, Winter Flakes} and I know that at least one of those names is definitely town.

So there's a guarantee of a minimum of 1 scum being out of your readslist.

If Titus is town which I strongly believe she is, that's a minimum of 2 scum being outside your readslist.

So your possible scum list has at most 1 scum in it, quite possibly having none if Winter Flakes is town.

[mastina]

jjh is going down and down for me this doesnt look like his town game

It very very VERY much is his towngame.

gut is worried agar is obstinate town

Not impossible (he's my weakest scumread because of my paranoia of exactly that pretty much), but pretty much requires Winter Flakes to be scum, since there are, legitimately, only four possible scum candidates as of today, and with three scum left, if AGar isn't scum then the rest are by default scum.

[mastina]

when mastina says “AGar is an infinitesimally better elim than jjh” does she mean way better or barely better

Way better, infinitely better.

jjh is guaranteed town here.

AGar isn't guaranteed scum but has a minimum of a 75% chance of flipping scum here. While he's my weakest scumread, he's in the POE, he IS a scumread, there's zero votes on either of my two stronger scumreads, and he's a significantly better wagon than jjh.

mastina I am gonna want to see some thoughts about the jjh wagon when you have time if you haven’t already given thme

I recognize that players have, fairly valid, suspicions on jjh being scum. While there's definitely possible-scum among them, not everyone pushing him is scum. Players like Almost50 in fact are definitely town, whose thoughts and solve outside of jjh are, largely, in the right direction. (Of them, probably the most wrong yet still town is Cephrir.)

However, while I get that they're suspicious of jjh--they're just wrong because I guarantee you that jjh is town here. I realize my word doesn't mean that much, but I guarantee it's accurate. Whether people like it or not or trust it or not is irrelevant; the fact is I AM right here, guaranteed, and the people who think otherwise will feel dumb when they realize that I was right on something they were totally wrong on.

specifically reasons on town him lol bc again no one has been able to provide

jjh dropped a surefire 100% towntell that guarantees he is town this game. But I admit: without explaining the tell, I'm not sure how to convince others that he is town. In order to explain why he's town I'd have to out the tell, but I don't want to because if I did he'd be the guaranteed nightkill tonight. (The tell is that strong.)

[mastina]

(it's a highly opportunistic vote and I caught her dead to rights for the opportunism because jjh thing, though it sounds good, is a lie if you think for more than a minute about it)

Ah yes opportunism on a scumread I've had since basically the beginning of D2 and have said was a scumread, a rather significantly strong one, for the entirety of that time.

Look at the gamestate when mastina voted AGar. AGar was at 4 votes and jjh was at 2, except AGar was also a building wagon and jjh had you expressing uncertainty.

So what mastina is basically saying is she wants to vote her third scumread rather than pushing me or bell because she is scared of jjh being eliminated?

Because,
1: a jjh elimination is THAT bad for the town,
2: AGar is a building wagon--and AGar is a scumread of mine,
3: There were no votes for either OkaPoka or Bell,
4: Pushing OkaPoka or Bell risks dividing wagons on scum--if town is divided in half with two wagons on scum and scum (with wrong town) unite on a wagon on town, then the risk of a town elimination skyrockets because the town is split in spite of being right on both its pushes.

Why

wouldn't

I vote AGar?

I voted Bell instead of you because at the time there was interest in voting Bell and a wagon on Bell. Yet you were a stronger scumread of mine. The same reason I didn't vote you is the same reason I voted AGar: because contrary to popular opinion of me, I DO compromise,

especially

when the compromise is basically not even a compromise because to reiterate, AGar's not a townread that I'm willing to vote (compromise); AGar's not a nullread that I'm willing to vote (compromise); AGar's a scumread that I'm willing to vote (not a true compromise even if there's two votes I'd rather make more than AGar).

[mastina]

then you say that and not some bs about jjh

I say both because both apply.

I said that my preference was Oka > Bell > Agar > WinterFlakes.
I said that an AGar wagon is better than a jjh wagon.

The two are not mutually exclusive; they explicitly build off of each other.

I am willing to vote AGar specifically because there is a wagon there and he is a scumread of mine, even if he's not my first or even my second choice. So I vote there but note exactly this, that he's my third choice rather than my first/second.
I am willing to vote AGar specifically to save jjh because jjh is town. So I vote there and note exactly this.

[mastina]

If I have three scumreads but there's a wagon on the third-strongest and absolutely zero votes on either my strongest OR second-strongest scumreads.

Why wouldn't I vote for the third-strongest scumread? It's still a scumread. It's not as confident of a scumread. It's not as assured of a scumread. It's a scumread with a higher chance of being wrong. But it's still a scumread, but just a weaker one.

this is the 'legitimate' reason for voting agar
but you didn't mention it, you chose to mention

I'd actually prefer OkaPoka > Bell > AGar > WinterFlakes

so AGar's not my first choice, but he's infinitesimally a better elimination than jjh and

has a high chance of flipping scum

, soooooooo.

I did mention it--the bolded is saying exactly that.

There are three scum in the game.

Voting my third-strongest scumread when there are three scum in the game means...
...Exactly what I said. If I have three scumreads, but no votes on the first or second, that I am willing to join the wagon on the third because they are still a scumread.

AGar is my third preference, not my first.
There's still three scum in the game though.
And AGar has a high chance of flipping scum--not the highest (that's explicitly you, OkaPoka), not the second-highest (that'd be Bell), but still a HIGH chance of flipping scum.

I was V/LA, distracted, in a rush, which I also said. So sure, I could have elaborated on it more ideally, but the intention is there pretty damn clearly and unambiguously and I can prove it, too--because literally the entirety of my iso will back me up in me having precisely that stance. This isn't some sudden out of left-field curve from me where I suddenly shifted my reads or stance; this is a position I've held for the entirety of D3 and partially before then, too.

[mastina]

are you softing?

could've said that when you voted agar but you didn't

Fair warning: will be fairly V/LA due to lifeguard training stuff.

Can post right now tho, so...

This in of itself is plenty a rebuttal.

When I am V/LA I damn well reserve the right to, in my distracted, busy, limited-time self, not be as clear and coherent as is ideal. The fact that I've been defending jjh and that AGar has been a scumread of mine since the beginning of D2 and that AGar has, consistently, been #3 on my scumread list since D2, speaks for itself in backing me up in this not being an explanation I'm bullshitting after the fact.

Or do you wanna have me quote everything I've said on jjh and AGar to prove it?

Like I said. This isn't coming out of left-field as some sudden reversal in stance, some sudden shift that is poorly explained. I have literally the entire game's worth of an iso showing this stance, backing up exactly what I said:
AGar isn't my first preference, he is my third. However, he still has a high chance of flipping scum. He is also a much better wagon than jjh because jjh is guaranteed to be town. None of those positions were new to 4868 and the posts after; they have existed in ALL of my posting since D2.

[mastina]

You’re afraid of splitting wagons on scum. Really?

In this very specific instance where there's a wagon on jjh, more or less, yes. (Because a jjh wagon is that bad.) Splitting votes between scumA and scumB but there's a wagon on jjh, if neither the town on scumA want to move to scumB nor the town on scumB want to move to scumA, then the wagon on jjh remains and gains momentum. In this very specific instance, that's very bad.

If there were three wagons and they were {AGar, Bell, Winter Flakes}, splitting the wagons wouldn't be a problem to me at all.

And in most situations, generically speaking, two wagons on two different scum is nothing but good. If the elimination choice is between scumA and scumB, town wins regardless of which is eliminated. But if the elimination choice is between scumA, scumB, and conftown, town only wins if the conftown wagon dies out, which scum have every incentive to try and avoid and in this instance they have a fairly strong success rate.

I, the one defending the conftown, don't have any real pull this game. The conftown is being suspected by multiple town players, each with strong personalities and most of them having at least some pull.

Since I lack the pull to dismantle the wagon on the conftown, as the only person who was on scumB(ell), I shift to scumA(gar), so that the town has greater unity. If the elimination choice is between scumA and conftown, then weakening the wagon on conftown and strengthening the wagon on scumA is the best move.

but also whatever, are you softing jjh is town?

jjh is town, yes.

[mastina]

no its very clear what you meant. you meant you voted agar to save jjh. that's literally it.

And which of us is mastina, the person who wrote the post and who knows how mastina thinks?

Which of us can say better what it is that mastina meant?

Is it OkaPoka the player who is presenting a specific narrative that flies in the face of reality, or mastina the player who wrote the post?

I think I very well have a much better idea of what I meant, and it was not just to save jjh. It was partially to save jjh, sure! If it wasn't, I wouldn't have mentioned him. But if it was entirely to save jjh as you're insisting, I wouldn't have said AGar had a strong chance of flipping scum and I wouldn't have given my preference list in the first place. I would literally have gone "VOTE: AGar, to save jjh", maybe not that exact wording but pretty damn close. Ignoring that I have an entire iso basically all calling AGar scum and that most of my iso is calling jjh town and that AGar has consistently been my third-strongest scumread (but still being a scumread) and that in the post I acknowledged all three of these doesn't a reality make.

I voted AGar partially to save jjh, but also because AGar is, explicitly: a scumread, my third-strongest scumread and a scumread I have held as having a high chance of flipping scum since D2. He is not my preferred elimination (that'd be you, OkaPoka), because he's not my strongest scumread (that'd be you, OkaPoka), and thus, he's not the slot I think has the absolute highest chance of flipping scum (that'd be you, OkaPoka), but he is still a scumread, a scumread that has a wagon on him that (as Titus so rightly says) is fairly pure, and is thus a much better option to vote than a vanity vote on Bell, and an exponentially better wagon than jjh (who is town).

Being V/LA, busy, and distracted when making the post may mean that I didn't get to write this out all explicitly and in as much detail as would be ideal. But it is very clear that when I point to what I was saying, the meaning is there, especially given the backup of my game-long iso. Because to reiterate: nothing I said in 4868 was new to that post. Everything I said in that post, I can point to earlier posts in my iso (and many, MANY of them) to back that up: AGar being highly likely to flip scum; AGar as my third-strongest scumread; jjh being town; AGar being a better wagon than jjh.

The one and only thing I didn't mention was that I was moving off of a vanity vote wagon (which I admit, I did forget to mention even tho that was one of my reasons for the swap and it was in my head at the time of the vote swap). Which, while I might not have said (even though I was thinking it), the votecount at the time will say for me:

Vote Count 3.3

AGar

(3): Hopkirk, Almost50, Xtoxm

Winter Flakes

(2): Cephrir, jjh927

jjh927

(2): innocentvillager, OkaPoka

Bell

(1): mastina

I had read this votecount, saw that I was the only vote on Bell, saw there was a building AGar wagon, so decided to not vanity vote. So if you wanna say that I didn't mention I was hopping off of a vanity vote, I've no choice but to admit that, in my state of mind, yes, I did indeed forget to say that.

But the rest is very clearly there.

[mastina]

jjh is town like hercule was town and xtoxm was town and abr was town or jjh is town because implosion told you.

Well it's not the former I'll tell you that.

[mastina]

Your whole angle here has quite overtly been to get Mastina or myself to say something more than needs saying

Gee I wonder which alignment has incentive to do that?

Could it maybe be because OkaPoka is scum?

Just food for thought.

[mastina]

agars was interesting. i like his d1 more than his today

- Dann/Hercule exchange in the 800s - I agree with Dann, I find hercule infinitely scummier.

I am under no circumstances yeeting LLD today. Preferred yeets {Hercule/Hopkirk}

Ah fuck, I never responded to the Hercule post:

I'm not gonna look up all the posts you quoted without tags (I can't believe I did that last game) but how is "Hercule has dipped out since pressure has seemingly dissipated on him" your take on the last couple days? I dipped out when the pressure on me was explicitly High in order to just take a breather from the game and approach it back with a clear mind

I mean, it was a chunk of 30ish pages to be read and you were just MIA without word which felt like a direct contrast to how you've been present, and I freely admit that I'm really not looking at timestamps on those notes - they're pretty well stream of consciousness reading and typing out thoughts. I do like how that was the one point you honed in on, because that's like... the least consequential of anything I mentioned.

LLD was a counterwagon to hercule, stop trying to reframe history scum.

the highlights for me, in case you were still planning to do that revisit.

Sure, but, did AGar actually vote for hercule?

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8):

Winter Flakes, Dunnstral, OkaPoka, Titus, Almost50, Bell, Cephrir, Luca Blight

Almost50

(2):

AGar

, Ythan

Vote Count 1.5

hercule

(7):

Lady Lambdadelta, Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst, Dannflor, Dunnstral, Cephrir

Not Voting

(2): Titus,

AGar

Because both wagons at their peak didn't have AGar on them.

[mastina]

You convinced me.

Maybe I can reconvince you: I just confirmed that AGar never voted hercule and I'm pretty sure he never voted Luca, either.

In spite of hercule having a wagon peaking at 7 votes, and AGar hating the LLD counterwagon, he never applied vote pressure onto hercule and never voted Luca, always voting for a wagon other than our flipped scum.

Why isn't that textbook scum distancing without bussing?

[mastina]

is there ever scum in {

oka

, ceph, hop}

As a matter of fact, yes.

Iso me, control-F Oka. See what I've said about him the entire game.

Then, having seen what I said about him, do an iso on Oka and see if you think what I say has merit.

You'll be surprised.

[mastina]

Spoiler: Here I'll save you some time

also i kinda just want to see more of this herc lld thing and honestly, im a bit lazy and LLD is a great opportunity to let someone take the reigns and for me to get out the way. do you guys really want to see me post storm this game. or do you want to see me ascend above all mortals.

I get that Oka may not be able to win TM. I get that Oka may not want to have an identical game to last one. I get that Oka may want to just vibe and chill. But the more Oka strays from being a presence in the game, the more he starts to look like scum.

also mastina, why is oka locktown? he has a solid scum game and i dont feel that what he's put down so far is anything he's not capable of doing as scum.

If Oka is town I'm gonna fucking hate myself for forgetting why I had him as locktown, but I am asking myself the same question; why

did

I have him as locktown? The fact that I'm struggling to answer that, when Oka's posting is far more lackluster this game and lacks the fire of last game, is enough when combined with peer pressure to move him allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down to maybe-scum.

in all seriousness, mastina i feel like you are trying to make me move to LLD, you know im on the fence now is this really how ur going to try and herd me over, by making me return to monke

I have no such pull. If you're scum, then you're scum. If you're town, then your continued vote on hercule is either laziness, denial of reality, or both lazy and denying reality.

You've done just as good a job as I have for giving the proof for why hercule's town this game; you're still voting him. So the options are literally among those three: laziness, denying reality, or scum. (The three are in no way mutually exclusive and can in fact exist in any combination of the 2-3.)

(New take on this old take: Oka was giving reasons for hercule to be town to try and weaken the wagon there while still getting the bussing credit.)

if ur going to scumread me that's okay but making this about presence really feels like you want me to clash LLD and end up voting her

I'm not asking you "why aren't you voting LLD?". There are plenty of players who I am townreading who have said they townread LLD. I've been rather loud about disagreeing with them on that townread and I wish they were voting LLD, but them not voting LLD is not something which makes them suspect.

I am however asking you "why are you voting hercule?". The number of players who are voting hercule who I townread is rather notably smaller, for good reason. There are still players who I townread who're voting hercule for poor reasoning, and I have talked to them and addressed their reasoning, pointing out the flaws in it, and continue to ask them that question.

My read on you is entirely separate of this, however--you, notably, have a much weaker presence this game.
You are also, notably, while in a good position to have a good read on hercule...still voting him in spite of lacking it.
But it is mostly that vibe-wise, aura-wise, you just don't radiate town the same way you did last game. You don't feel town and I can't really describe why you would be town. I can however see why you would be scum. But you're notably not a scumread; you're an in-flux read because I did have that strong townread on you and a lot of the read on you is peer pressure from others scumreading you and me not being able to remember why I was townreading you.

In short: you're not doing anything town right now, and there's things you're doing that could very well be scum.
Not voting LLD isn't among them.
Continuing to vote hercule might be among them, but even lacking that, the things which could be scum are still there.

some of the votes on both the LLD and the hercule wagon over the course of the day have been... really bad

I mean literally almost every hercule vote has been bad but I won't pretend that the Ythan/Oka votes on LLD were good; they weren't. So you won't have trouble convincing me certain slots could be scum, but other slots are a much harder sell.

maybe i just tend to townread Oka's style and that fact that he's even close to hitting a similar energy as last game when I don't think he would really be trying as scum when his team has already lost is +town

Oka's energy isn't even remotely similar to last game--that's specifically one of the reasons he's in my suspect pool.

OkaPoka I am thinking is the final scum for a D1 scumteam, for maybe a stupid reason but a reason nonetheless: we haven't heard from MathBlade at all aside from a singular, probably pregame, mention of my readslists being how to townread me. This, in spite of MB having started to be involved last game and him having ample opportunity to have followed along this game and given feedback. OkaPoka has apparently never consulted MathBlade on Titus in spite of Titus being MathBlade's sibling. Yes, I am fully aware that being siblings doesn't mean he can soulread Titus; he can be wrong on her. But he should still have good insights onto her and have formed, right or wrong, a stance on her, yet we've got radio silence from him.

This also extends to various aspects, such as Oka's push on me. Did OkaPoka not consult his team when he had the 'thought' that I was being political? Surely MathBlade would've had something to say about that theory even if he wasn't following along. Overall, OkaPoka hasn't seemed town to me and the cementing factor as fourth scumread is the lack of his teammate's feedback.

I have fairly good reasons for thinking AGar is scum and I

do

think that, if my read on the gamestate is right, then towning it up be damned, OkaPoka is the fourth scum in spite of how he looks town. (OkaPoka looks like deepwolf scum this game. He is very obviously power"town"ing, but the stances he keeps insisting on furthering are very much pro-scum which means he is probably the scum's highest-effort, deepest of deep deepscums and not actually town. The scum who looks the most town, but still scum thanks to advocating for pro-scum stances essentially the whole game. Scum who dabbles in town stances, but doesn't commit to them, sticking to stances that help scum overall, just faked to look like an organic trajectory where he naturally evolves his thoughts from the protown ones into the proscum ones. In other words. Powerwolfing.)

i personally still like iv a bit although i will admit his eod was kinda ?????????
but dgb/lld both being town makes it feel like a wash now idk

Realtalk; why are people townreading Oka? He's far more guilty of the things he's shading IV on imo.

3 in (

Titus

/

Agar

/

Bell

/Winter Flakes (alt of Uncrowned),

Oka

, JJH, Ythan, A50) + deepwolf?

I'd count Oka as the deepwolf, actually, but yes, pretty much.

OkaPoka - Oka feels kind of like me this game, in that if he is scum, he has been faking all the highs and lows of the deadline scramble, being present when it's urgent, and actively pushing the town to be productive at times when it felt pretty natural to do so. His confidence and excitement on pushing DGB especially when the major wagons we've revealed have all been town feels like an unnecessary amount of weight to be putting behind an elimination, although I'll admit that this could be agenda-motivated because without him DGB probably doesn't become a wagon so maybe NAI. I feel like Oka is more of a town player from his style and I don't believe he can deepwolf this convincingly as scum (if I'm wrong, please link me a game and let me know), nor is he as incentivized to anymore with his team already losing Black Flag. If he's scum I'm kind of fine letting him keep being himself and just get more readable over time. But I'm also open to reconsidering here that he's for some reason decided to effort and play the deepwolf here.

It may be a stupid reason, but.

Last game, Oka felt frustrated, emotional, aggravated, in a way that I've felt is absent from this game.

And yes--that is actually a major part of the scumread I have there.

Last game, OkaPoka radiated the energy that he felt like he was pulling out his hair trying.
This game, OkaPoka radiates energy of...nothing.

OkaPoka - Oka feels kind of like me this game, in that if he is scum, he has been faking all the highs and lows of the deadline scramble, being present when it's urgent, and actively pushing the town to be productive at times when it felt pretty natural to do so. His confidence and excitement on pushing DGB especially when the major wagons we've revealed have all been town feels like an unnecessary amount of weight to be putting behind an elimination, although I'll admit that this could be agenda-motivated because without him DGB probably doesn't become a wagon so maybe NAI. I feel like Oka is more of a town player from his style and I don't believe he can deepwolf this convincingly as scum (if I'm wrong, please link me a game and let me know), nor is he as incentivized to anymore with his team already losing Black Flag. If he's scum I'm kind of fine letting him keep being himself and just get more readable over time. But I'm also open to reconsidering here that he's for some reason decided to effort and play the deepwolf here.

It may be a stupid reason, but.

Last game, Oka felt frustrated, emotional, aggravated, in a way that I've felt is absent from this game.

And yes--that is actually a major part of the scumread I have there.

Last game, OkaPoka radiated the energy that he felt like he was pulling out his hair trying.
This game, OkaPoka radiates energy of...nothing.

Wait I think I can actually give this better wording.
Last game, Oka felt incredulous towards players like me. He felt baffled by what amounts to what he saw as "the stupidity".
This game, he really hasn't been.

Oka last game radiated the energy of basically tryharding and being frustrated by shortcomings in this effort.
This game, Oka's posting a lot, but when the efforts come up short, he...more or less goes "oh well" and doesn't do anything about it other than try something else.
There's just...not the same emotional depth to his play, if that makes sense.

meh he voted ythan to compromise or something
also he didnt open with a ythan vote he waited and used ioa
idk dude it doesnt make sense
i scumread both, my reaction is ????????????????????????????????????????????

I think I can explain it further.
Oka is in some senses an inverse to hercule. hercule last game got incredulous to my scumread on him, with an overblown reaction; in contrast, this game he was fairly calm.

Oka last game got incredulous towards me, just in general, me, but also for the gamestate and everything. In contrast, this game he is fairly calm, in spite of a similar gamestate of sorts.

Like, in the post I am quoting: do you see any emotion from Oka? Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

again multitasking which is why this took so long

Hopkirk is close to a townread but he is not at the level of unwnd or hercule for me. i get the feeling he's just a good player which makes me paranoid of his scumrange. honestly my eyes glaze over his posting (potentially not ideal) but the vibe I get is that it looks like he's being helpful and engaging everyone in an effort to understand what's going on. if he's establishing himself to push an agenda i have a feeling we'll see it later but im very okay having this slot around for now.

JacksonVirgo - mostly a tonal read. i don't love 526 or 533 but the posts i thought were +town are: 534, 597, 598, 599, 647, 648. it's hard to explain it beyond just being openly frustrated and utterly not giving a shit about his thread perception which i have found in practice (in my anecdotal experience) to be a towntell for him.

A50 - this is like exactly the same as A50 in this one towngame we played and not at all how he played in this scumgame we did (granted he replaced in, which is different). there are moments like 112, 116, 619, 622 that ring eerily similar. "but it's just A50's playstyle!" you might say. okay sure maybe, that's why he's one of my weaker townleans i guess. also 737 is a really weird thing to post as scum but i obliged him since someone on my team thinks he can read him ok.

Xtoxm - unprompted and unpostury/interesting notes from Auro are good, i liked 642 for example. don't see an agenda from this slot, not postury, takes are pretty reasonable. other people townreading them too despite lack of content quantity which feels good. weaker townlean probably

TW - ill likely be revisiting this a lot bc im paranoid. here's the reasoning i gave earlier

rn it's leantown i think with the engagement and with the hinting on Datisi scumreading me so early (inside thing where town!Datisi has tunneled early town!me for two games in a row, i like that Datisi gave the read and the worst mentioned it unprompted). his entrance felt forced but on reread it's not bad. could be some confbiasing going on there so im conflicted, idk, im gonna just like worsty be a slow burn read for me.

and i think with your recent interaction with me im townreading you even more. i think your disengagement from this game is fine in the context of being busy and maybe even +town in a vacuum. also i think it's easy for scum!you to try and pocket me and you've done everything but engage with me and pocket me.

I'm ok adding IV to my townblock

i dont think that's how townblocks work

iv is voting you

Haven't got there yet, but I'm ok with putting him in my never eliminate pile.

literally three posts down
like
not talking to you until you catchup because my sanity is gone

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

you know what instead of interacting with mastina
raise your hand if you agree with mastina's interpretation of time and events, if you raise your hand I'll interact with you instead

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

someone translate mastina's posts for me i cant look at them

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

or agar for you: if I voted mastina right now it would be because I can't find a good scum flip and want to go for policy, but i have a couple reads i want to flip so yeah

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

points 3 and 4 mastina, points 3 and 4

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

like mastina think critically about why people haven't flipped to agree with you even though you are posting mega walls with logical steps
you are missing massive amounts of context that everyone else has, stop arguing with me until you've read up

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

fuck it too many people have tmi'd xtoxm as town and literally not one of them can explain why he is town
mastina is the closest but her best argument boils down to xtoxm wouldn't play so shit as scum
UNVOTE:

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

If im a noise generator, you are a fucking banshee

Subject: TM 2021 Large Normal: OEIS Mafia (Part Two Is Out)

Legitimately push a fucking scum case on me jesus

Compare to things like this from last game.

Oka in particular engaging me on Xtoxm was a point of emotion from him that couldn't come from scum because he was town.

Oka in this game has...nothing which he had there.

There's none of that emotion, none of that frustration, none of that.

hmm
checks out tbh

Also, I do want to ask:
Last game, Oka had pretty good solves and even when he had doubt thrown on the solves he had alternatives almost immediately. He had strong stances that he backed with reason and was actively trying to lead the town while dealing with the frustrations of the town doing bad town things.

This game, Oka has...well he has stances but he's pretty passive about it and he's not putting forward many and when he does it's not with much reason. He's more timid, he's more reserved, he's not charging forward.

Why the strong contrast?

a50 pushing a me + ythan scumteam is ridiculously considering what happened yesterday to the point where again i still have nothing to say

Like: last game, A50 pushing an Oka-Ythan scumteam, just as ridiculous that game as this game, would've caused Oka to have a bit of a blowup.

Here, he says it himself: he has nothing to say.

The calmness, the lack of emotion, is itself disconcerning. Oka lacks passion here. He's not exactly lifeless; he's active, he's posting, he's giving stuff, etc. He's just not...showing emotion.

Why isn't Oka voting anyone

Because he's scum.

agar patience

trust the process

i think i know what im doing here

(Obligatory "was this meant for the scum thread?" remark here.



)

today bell starts asking questions that look like sorting -> less sus

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8): Winter Flakes, OkaPoka,

Titus

,

Almost50

, Bell,

Cephrir

Almost50

(2): AGar, Ythan

OkaPoka

(1): Hopkirk

Titus

(1): innocentvillager

Not Voting

(2): jjh927, Xtoxm

Vote Count 1.5

hercule

(7): Ythan, OkaPoka, the worst/Bell,

Cephrir

Lady Lambdadelta

(4):

hercule

, Hopkirk, innocentvillager

the worst/Bell

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

DrippingGoofball

(1): Xtoxm

Not Voting

(2):

Titus

, AGar

(Removed truly alignment-known players; colored green players I am treating as conftown.)

So both wagons at their peak had a lot of the same names on them, with Oka and Bell on both iterations of the wagon with the main difference being Ythan on the first and Winter Flakes on the second.

There's four possible worlds:
Scum stayed off of both iterations of the wagon (3 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar});
One scum was on both iterations of the wagon, but a different one; one scum bussed both (Ythan, Winterflakes as scum, with the third as one of Oka/Bell);
One scum was on both iterations of the wagon, but a different one; the last scum was off (1 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar});
Scum bussed consistently, with 1-2 scum in {Oka, Bell}.

GIVEN:
Luca Blight had heavy defenders that were going out of their way to defend him,
AND:
The case on Luca was fairly shoddy,
AND:
There was a good chance Luca's wagon would dissipate,
I am disinclined to believe that scum were entirely off of both iterations of the wagon.

It's possible all three scum were on one iteration of the wagon, but incredibly unlikely.
But I also believe there's going to be two non-Luca scum on the wagon elimination. It's going to be at least 1 there, so the options are 1 or 2.
On the initial wagon, there should also be at least 1, but it is less guaranteed to be 2.

So, 1-2 scum in {Winter Flakes, OkaPoka, Bell}; 1-2 scum in {Ythan, OkaPoka, Bell} (with Ythan probably being town); by necessity, 1-2 scum in {Hopkirk, innocentvillager, jjh, Xtoxm, AGar}.

I am still pretty sure this is Xtoxm as town.
I am still reasonably confident that the totality of IV is town.
I still feel Hopkirk is town.

So that'd be 1-2 scum in {Winter Flakes, OkaPoka, Bell} and 1-2 scum in {jjh, AGar}.

If my reads yesterday sans Luca were right it'd be Oka+Bell+AGar, but most of these combos are viable, not just that one.

like this is literally just throwing shade at my play that you have no prior experience of because my reads aren't 100% right? i don't get the motive if it isn't just to hard shade me

Yeah about that.

There's damn good reason Oka's a scumread of mine.

And I really don't get why people aren't realizing that OkaPoka's been on a game-long campaign to put people down, to shade them, without actually doing anything town.

This is what I've said on Oka and why I think he's scum.

Go read his iso yourself to see if you think what I said here has merit.

[mastina]

OK, what about Winter? What do you have against him? Or Oka? Or Bell??

Winter is in the POE because I can't strongly convince myself that he is town, when in this game I can convince myself on all but four players being town. While I think he's by far the towniest of the three and he looks town, I can't CONVINCE myself that he's town to a degree where I can remove him from the poe. IV's case for Winter being town is helpful for keeping him as the most town of the four, but not enough to remove him from the list altogether.

OkaPoka is explicitly my strongest scumread in the game and yes I believe he bussed.

Bell is overall my second-strongest scumread in the game because overall I think this is Bell's scumgame and Bell's stances have been rather pro-scum overall (even the Luca vote in spite of Luca being scum counts as a pro-scum stance) and the worst's apathy was more likely to come from scum and the wagon on him on D1 fell apart for no good reason.

I would vote any of the four, but my preference is Oka > Bell > AGar > Winter Flakes.

My vote is on AGar tho because Oka and Bell have no votes whereas there is a notable and substantial wagon on AGar.

[mastina]

Since its not exactly subtle in the first place I'll acknowledge that I can see mastina is acting like she has something on jjh and I'm doing mental math on how much I care about factoring that in. I think this could easily be her having fuck all and pretending, and I'm not really inclined to trust her after how painfully and aggressively wrong she has been to this point.

Then table it for one bloody day--jjh is off-limits for D4. Revisit the subject circa tomorrow since after the universal backup turned neapolitan claims we're probably in massclaim territory anyway.

dann went down suspecting titus.

Dann also suspected Bell if you'll recall.

she just magically flipped them to the top of her readlist because of ~reasons~

I just spent ~30 minutes doing research trying to prove how Titus's hard-push on Luca was incredibly unlikely to be that of a scumbuddy and that the hercule+Luca/Titus interactions were incredibly unlikely to be scum-scum.

And then in the attempt to prove it, coming up empty on the field and all but disproving my point.

So Titus could be scum again I'll admit.

jjh however stays there at the top tho.

[mastina]

since you're TRing jjh so hard
want to explain why he's voting me?

Well jjh is perfectly capable of answering that question himself and even with my townread on him that doesn't mean I am a magical mindreader capable of seeing into his head but it would be fairly safe to assume the answer is that he thinks you have a reasonably >rand chance of flipping scum.

i think i need to see some meta examples of scum!mastina powerwolfing like this to start seriously considering the mastina wagon
because as I see it, her play here is for sure outside the scumrange of most people on MS

Speaking of which: while I can't go into the details behind it for reasons not too hard to guess, Bell should be WELL aware that my play this game isn't something scumastina can pull off given he's seen what the most recent level of scumastina is.

But if you want examples of me power-wolfing, the first ever example was Good vs Evil, Chaos vs Law. It was, however, simultaneously both a singleball and a multiball game so I'm not sure if it counts as a singleball powerwolf game. (This was the first game however where I actually evolved my scumplay tho.)
Next I can find is this one.
This is one of my all-time favorite effort scumgames.
This is probably the most powerwolf game of all, however, you may note I was in a hydra with Katsukii; of the 500 posts, I probably made like...50 or so of them. It was 90% Katsukii 10% me.
I'm honestly not sure but this might count as a powerwolf game.
This was another powerwolf game.
I'm also not sure but this one might count.
For 75% of the game it definitely wasn't an example but in the last 25%, this game was one where I even said "oh well, I did try". (I didn't initially but did eventually.)
(I'm not sure whether to include Left 4 Dead 2 Mafia--it is only of my most infamous scumgames of all time due to my infamous open D2 scumclaim and I posted a shitload, but while it was a power-manipulation game, powerwolfing implies a level of deepscumming utterly absent.)
Attack on Titan is definitely an example (there were three competing wagons on the three scum D1, I managed to help our team get to 4p mylo after avoiding a D1 scum elimination).
Paranoia is up there with Mindreader and L4D as one of my favorite scumgames of all time. (Notably, I technically fooled AP. Technically.)
This might count, not sure tho.
Probably one of the main games people think of when they think of me powerwolfing would be Inorganic Chemistry; it's one of my finest scumgames of all time.
Star Wars Rogue One was an accidental example--the

plan

was for the Pine/Ginngie hydra to be our deepwolf, with me to be the sacrificial lamb. But they got cop guiltied, and that gave me the needed towncred to deepwolf my team to the win.
Green Day UPick is the game where I was mechanically confscum yet almost still talked my way out of it so that definitely counts as a powerwolf game.
Team Mafia 2018 wasn't deepwolf but might count as powerwolfing, not sure tho.
XP Mafia was one of my finest scumgames where I talked my way out of a mechanical guilty in lylo.
Encore Mafia almost definitely counts.
A Story Revisited probably counts (tho near the end I was struggling).

There's a couple mini normal games I'm struggling to find (one in my mastin2 days, one modded by schadd_), both of which would count, might be missing a few themes here and there as well, too.

However, my last, and

only

, recent powerwolf game was MBOS Sylver.

So this is pretty much every single powerwolf game I've ever had, sans maybe 1-4 that I struggled to find.

[mastina]

since you're TRing jjh so hard
want to explain why he's voting me?

Well jjh is perfectly capable of answering that question himself and even with my townread on him that doesn't mean I am a magical mindreader capable of seeing into his head but it would be fairly safe to assume the answer is that he thinks you have a reasonably >rand chance of flipping scum.

i think i need to see some meta examples of scum!mastina powerwolfing like this to start seriously considering the mastina wagon
because as I see it, her play here is for sure outside the scumrange of most people on MS

Speaking of which: while I can't go into the details behind it for reasons not too hard to guess, Bell should be WELL aware that my play this game isn't something scumastina can pull off given he's seen what the most recent level of scumastina is.

Gonna requote this post with the non-self-meta parts removed tho, for clarity.

[mastina]

@mastina why shouldn’t we Bop wagon you today for being wrong on your strongest scumread and townread (at various points)?

Because while my towngame has gotten notably stronger in the last 3 years, there's a damn good reason I've not been nominated for Paragon of Mafia Hunters in that timeframe. (I've been nominated for the

single-game

good town performance, but the

multi-game

good town performance is something I'll never be good enough for because I am nowhere near consistent enough for it.)

I am very good at obvtowning; I am fairly decently good at identifying town and poe'ing the game. But I am nowhere near perfect,

especially

on my scumreads.

I basically have two modes: the mode where I am accurate and threatening enough to be an earlygame nightkill, and the mode where I am around but the scum don't see me as a threat and eventually I become a pain in their side because they never killed me because they didn't think I was a threat but my lategame got more and more oppressive. (Pooky v FL is actually a fine example of the latter; scum literally conceded because I was not a threat worthy of a nightkill to them due to my stances not being threatening but they got better by the end to the point where scum felt they couldn't win against me.)

The former mode is impressive enough to make people think I am a good town player. The latter is a case where for 80% of the game I was objectively

not

one.

It is unfortunate that this game is the latter rather than the former but the longer I live the more likely it is scum lose since I am a royal BITCH to try and mislynch and while me having a wrong townread on scum is good for them, when I have a right townread on town that scum want to mislynch, they have to fight me much harder than they want to in order to get it. (Also ditto for scumreads; while me having a wrong scumread on town is good for them, me having a right scumread on scum presents an ever-looming threat to them.)

And in this game specifically, even if you posit both of {Winter Flakes, Titus} as scum, the fact is I'm all-but-guaranteed to be right about at least one scumread in {AGar, OkaPoka, Bell} just by virtue of the oppressive POE.
If one of {Winter Flakes, Titus} is town, then I am all-but-guaranteed to be right about two scumreads in {AGar, OkaPoka, Bell} just by virtue of the oppressive POE.
And if both {Winter Flakes, Titus} are town, then I am all-but-guaranteed to be right about all three of my {AGar, OkaPoka, Bell} scumreads. Just by virtue of the oppressive POE from everyone else being town.

Even adding Titus back into the pool (which I admit is pertinent after realizing my reasons for thinking she was locktown from the Luca interaction were as far as I could tell actually nonexistent since while I swore I saw them at the time I literally spent 30 minutes searching for them and could not find them at all), that's five names for three scum.

Unless you wanna posit a name outside of those five which isn't jjh (because jjh is town here guaranteed), chances are I'm on the right general track here.

[mastina]

is jjh a lazy town player or something?

Yes.
(Well, not exactly. That's not quite the case, there's a much more longwinded version, but for the sake of simplicity for all intents and purposes, the answer is yes.)

[mastina]

you're familiar with his town game right? does he usually make zero trajectory scum reads?

I wouldn't call his read on you zero trajectory, but yes, I would say that he usually makes reads similar to the read he has on you.

the question is more so why he doesn't have any reason to be SRing me rather than what reasons he does have, because there don't seem to be any atm other than convenience

I can sort of see where he is coming from on you especially from a poe point of view:
IV is very clearly and obviously town.
I am very clearly and obviously town.
Hopkirk has a Neapolitan result on him and is off the table today.
Xtoxm is very clearly and obviously town.
Cephrir is very clearly and obviously town.
Almost50 is by both role and play pretty damn obviously town.

Ythan isn't on the same tier as the above, but overall looks incredibly unlikely to be scum.

If jjh believes all of the above to be true (admittedly I'm not sure about his stances on Cephrir and Ythan tho the rest I feel he definitely holds), then that'd leave {Titus, AGar, Bell, Winter Flakes, OkaPoka}.

For every read within there that jjh thinks isn't scum, the remainder become more likely scum.

But like I said jjh can do a better job of explaining his stance than I am and clarify reads within.

[mastina]

and my team has stopped reading the game sooooo

Were they ever?

Because the last time I heard from your team reading the game, it was literally in the first iteration of the game.

[mastina]

and my team has stopped reading the game sooooo

Were they ever?

Because the last time I heard from your team reading the game, it was literally in the first iteration of the game.

(Which is to say I have already stated that I felt that while OkaPoka's team was clearly reading at least decently well the last iteration of the game, they haven't appeared at all in this iteration of the game and I posit that's a difference in alignment between the two games.)

[mastina]

and my team has stopped reading the game sooooo

Were they ever? Because the last time I heard from your team reading the game, it was literally in the first iteration of the game.

(Which is to say I have already stated that I felt that while OkaPoka's team was clearly reading at least decently well the last iteration of the game, they haven't appeared at all in this iteration of the game and I posit that's a difference in alignment between the two games.)

I happen to be voting Oka, and so is Xtoxm. Interested?

Well Xtoxm isn't actually, but yes, I am--I will vote whichever of {Oka, AGar, Bell}'s wagons is the largest. I had a brief period where I could've swapped and made it Oka3 AGar2 but with Xtoxm having unvoted if I swapped it'd be Oka2 AGar2.

(I will compromise on Winter Flakes or Titus but as Oka so helpfully has pointed out we're not in compromise-voting territory yet so my votes are going to be on the three slots I scumread until/unless such a time arises where we do need to compromise.)

I'll swap to Oka if someone else votes there happily tho!

i dont feel like mastina's openly pushed me yet this game and im #1 on her scumlist

I literally did a quote wall showing my reasons for scumreading you.

I've been pushing you but you've been widely townread for god only knows what reason people think that you're town here and especially after D1, I lack the credibility to spearhead a wagon.

Do YOU think I can get an elimination, singlehandedly, on my own, with my sheer force of will alone, no other help, after me basically singlehandedly being responsible for a D1 LLD mislynch?

Be serious here and honest--do you think that's something I could actually accomplish, especially with players like Cephrir still alive?

Do you?

I sure don't!

Even with a right read I don't have the necessary pull to push it through on my own given D1.
I especially don't have the necessary pull to push it through on my own given my wrong Luca read.

But just because I can't get the push through on my own without help doesn't mean I'm not going to voice why I think you're scum.

Also side-note, on the subject of pushing Oka:
For a player who has accused me of being political his stance on me sure seems to be by his own definition of political, pretty damn political.

[mastina]

Fair warning: I REALLY don't feel like posting right now (I've been, for a while, rather badly depressed and it affects my motivation to play and the amount of effort that I put in), but given that I'll be V/LA this weekend for the sake of a different community, I kinda feel like I have to post here, so.

you still are taking a back seat and i dont think that's in dispute.

Yes, I do that after being horribly wrong on D1 and eliminating a strong town player through that force of will where I was a spearhead in the wagon. I've explained this before, lemme see if I can track the quote down.

Spoiler: Not this one but having it here anyway because it's relevant to other stuff.

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Mastina I believe to be town but *technically* she could be scum in the event Creature is town and she had a really good D1 -- like I don't think she is scum but I have never seen mastina scum, either, so perhaps she didn't exit her scumrange but it'd have to be quite big.

I can help (well, "help") you there:
At my absolute peak scum performance levels, D1 is not out of scumastina's scum range altogether, albeit requiring a perfect storm of me being at highest-level functioning capabilities across multiple areas rather than in one or two more specific areas. ~2015-2017-era scumastina was genuinely one of the best scum players onsite with a huge, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge flexibility to her scumgame and notably gifted at situational awareness to adapt her scumplay to perfectly fit the needs of the particular game as to maximize her team's chances at winning.

However.

Over the last two years, my scumgame has been utterly atrocious. I've been a total lurksack whose contributions were notably lackluster with the difference between my scumplay and townplay being night and day, with my scumplay being minimal, using every excuse to avoid content, and coasting by with my towngame being more energetic.

However

however, I DID just have a scumgame where I approached near-peak-scumastina-levels. I was still, very visibly, not in my towngame, and there were multiple scum traits of mine present, but I exuded a "town aura" as scum, something which is

very

hard to pull off, yet I have shown the capacity to do as given by that game. Radiating townness as scum is something within my scumrange, which is why I invented the flowchart for how to read me.

The flowchart is, notably, a little dated; it's missing some of my most recent town/scumtells and in the case of being reasonable and rational, this is something that has become almost nai. (I am more reasonable and rational as both alignments and as town can be very convincing with logical deductions and outlining the process behind my conclusions, so just on a skim, you'd think nai, but as scum my arguments still tend to be even more "precise" than their town counterparts, extra-targeted, extra-concise in comparison, extra on-point, whereas my town cases tend to always have weaknesses in them if you look beyond the surface. Which is to say, my scum cases tend to be more "perfect" than my town cases are, in spite of me being logical in both.)

And a key aspect of it is that I'll never show every town trait in a towngame and never show every scum trait in a scumgame and may show some scum traits in a towngame and definitely will show some town traits in a scumgame, but that overall it is incredibly hard, over a sustained period of time, borderlining on nigh-impossible levels, for me to maintain a presence of almost all towntells as scum, whereas they flow more naturally as town.

Basically, while I will suffer burnout as both alignments, it's easier to suffer burnout as scum because being scum at the highest level of effort is more draining than being town at the highest level of effort (even though both are, notably, draining; I am incapable of maintaining the highest level of effort as town indefinitely, which is why I frequently have a mixture of low/high-energy posting days, with low ones being rest time and high ones being active time). The cracks in scumastina form over time with continued observation; the solidification of town-mastina becomes more readily apparent given time.

So that is to say,
tl;dr?
D1's not impossible from scumastina, but is incredibly improbable to be her.

Spoiler: Also not this one, but still also relevant

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

She's remained active but allowed her reads to ebb and flow with the current game state.

Do explain because I've made my stances pretty damn abundantly clear with zero waffling on them aside from my reads in the poe that aren't harder scumreads. (Which, obviously, are reads that, no fucking shit I'm going to have them ebb and flow off of the current gamestate, because explicitly, they are reads that I waver on and am unsure on so literally any development in the game can sway them to one side or the other. Those being, mostly, you and Dunnstral.)

One mislynch on Day 1 that she headlines, and her town reads are becoming scum reads because she can read the room and see what people want.

Most of my townreads are very much still my townreads.

There are a grand total of three reads of mine that were townreads D1 that on D2 are not: you, Dunnstral, and Bell.

This of course being necessary because there's four scum in the game and I had three scumreads--meaning that I was, inherently, by fundamental nature of the setup, definitively wrong on at least one townread, and unless all three of my scumreads were accurate, probably two. And if 2/3 of my scumreads were wrong, then there could in fact be three wrong townreads that I had on D1.

I reevaluated my reads because I had a very damn good reason to do so, and

most

of my townreads remain as townreads, with only three of them being reevaluated as something other than a townread...

...And even then? Even then, one of those reads is Dunnstral, who I still have an overall right now gut-townread on, where while he's in the POE pool of six where 4/6 of them are scum, he's the towniest of the six that I happen to think is least-likely to be scum.

She is actively lurking and letting the Bell/DEB thing happen.

So...which of my posts are 'actively lurking'? Which of my posts are 'letting' the Bell/DEB thing happen? Because I've made my stance there clear enough.

I feel both players are likely to be scum, with the whole detective-detective thing being scum theater.
I feel that, while both claims could theoretically be town in the setup, that at least one of them is going to be scum, and personally feel the most likely scenario is that both are scum (although I have acknowledged that is a tough sell to make).
I have stated that, by play, I feel like both slots are scum.
I have also said that, push come to shove, if I were forced to trust one claim over another, that Bell's far more likely scum than DEB.
But I've also said that I think both are scum.

I've given reasons for believing Bell to be scum.
I've continued giving reasons for Creature to be scum.
I've explained my reasons for my reads on the players I am townreading pretty extensively as well as going into detail on the reads in the poe pool pretty extensively.
Pretty much the only read I haven't explained is the DEB read, which...well, because it's DEB...there's not much to work with there in terms of explaining because it's DEB.

If that's your definition of 'active lurking', I'd love to see what your definition of being a proactive gamesolver is.

Spoiler: Also also ALSO not the post I'm looking for but another relevant post

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Thinking it's Toog and mastina

pichu potential powerwolf

I don't understand the townreads on Dunn?

Seriously--why are people townreading this?

Especially people who have played with Creature before, who have familiarity with him.

Why are you townreading this?

Because this level of emptiness and with these sorts of takes is not Creature's town meta.

Do you want me to actually link you town-Creature games and scum-Creature games for comparison? (Admittedly the most recent ones would be largely secondhand meta where I wouldn't be able to really give indepth laser-point-accuracy takes, but just in general, this is so obviously not Creature as town that I am overwhelmingly confident I've no need to be so laser-point-accurate, that just pointing in the general direction will be enough for the hammer to blow the point in.)

Spoiler: Also also also ALSO not what I'm looking for but STILL relevant

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

you know too many people in this game feel towny now
i think like 2 scum are playing very well probably

This is true enough; there are enough reasons to townread most players in the game, and if townreading all of them, you come up short in names to have for scum. So some scum, no matter what, are playing well enough to be townread.

When it comes to a D3 reassessment with Creature as a total read reversal and MURDERCAT going from possible-mason-that-looks-town to conftown, I do want to theorycraft there for trying to assess things in detail in terms of getting a coherent D3 readslist, buuuuuuut, I'm not sure the masons want me to before my place in the massclaim since that's the spot they want me to have my readslist in (and doing a theorycraft of revisiting/revising things does indeed mean that I'd be more or less making a readslist before my turn in the massclaim).

Mentally, I feel, similar to D1-->D2, that most of my townreads are still valid; I feel like most of those reads should stay the same. Mentally, there's only a small list of the townreads I feel I need to revisit and reevaluate, but again, not sure I'm allowed to outline my mental thoughts inthread yet.

Basically, though, without naming names: I still feel most of the more active town players are town. Maybe not all of them, but I still feel like most of the scum were in the more lurkery slots. But yes, there's at least a fair chance of at least one scum being in the more active slots.

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

is Mastina capable of going sicko mode on BM D1 like that as scum?

Theoretically? Yes, it's possible. I'm pretty sure I've done it before in some past scumgame of mine. I think rather notably I was hyper-aggressive in that game where I was a hydra with Katsuki and eliminated the BROseidon/AngryPidgeon hydra during the day who had perfect reads yet they got mislynched. So it's something that is something I theoretically have the capability to do.

In reality? Probably not, mafia games are hella draining especially going hyper-aggressive. As-is, it's hard to maintain as town (a lot of my townplay actually resolves around trying to get myself nightkilled early, just so that I can chill in the dead thread, because it's less stressful, less effort, once I am dead and every day I'm alive is a drain), but as scum instead of those thoughts being genuine I'd instead have to

fake

them. Which is harder than pouring genuine heart and soul into things.

It

might

be this but I could've sworn it was a response to someone else, my memory says Creature.

Spoiler: I also don't think it's this one

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

@mastina: Can you link that recent scum game where you efforted once more?

Sure, it's this one here.

For the record: it might help you to iso MathBlade that game (and also read the dead thread since he did a good job of explaining that, while that was a

good

scum game of mine, why it was still a scumgame due to aspects of my towngame being absent.

Basically, it was a fairly good scumgame, but there were still gaps in it.

Also, I realize it's not as obvious while doing an iso, that it's something hard to detect even in the postgame, but anecdotally if you were in the game at the time and were able to observe it in real time you'd instantly see:
In that game, there was a larger space between my content compared to this game in quite a lot of spaces. I often didn't post if I didn't have a need to. And if I did post, I often posted, overall, less, except during specific times of engagement where I was able to exude my town aura. Which is to say: I could not, from the getgo, from the onset, continuously and throughout the entirety of the game, maintain the town aura, maintain the energy of my town self. And the few times I did manage to do so, I usually had good justification. (There is a notable pickup in my play when I was able to use mechanics, as mechanics is something I am really damn good at regardless of my alignment and which helps mimic town-mastina even as scumastina; Dunnstral was genuinely such a lurksack to an extent that I've never seen from him before that if not for knowing I was scum I'd have been convinced he was scum, so it was easy to pressure him as such.)

Like I said--something like that is a bit hard to see in the aftermath of the game, but if you were there at the time, you'd be like, "oh yeah, I totally see that", where I lacked the energy to maintain it full time and most of the time I did have the energy, I was given ammunition which made it easy to have done so.

This game, however, my energy has been pretty damn consistent, even during the times where I've felt less useful. I've not had a 100% absolutely identical energy level every single rl day in this game, but the energy still was high, shifted forms from one to another and still was high, and even when I had less to offer, was higher overall. I've had moments of lower energy from rl stuff, rl distractions, etc., but I feel that overall, I've been triumphing over that energy lull from those rl things and managed to still try to give a ton even when at a lowpoint in mental/physical/emotional wellbeing. (For instance, I've been sick since Thanksgiving. I said as much in this gamethread, you may recall. I said, "hey, fair warning, am sick, so may not be able to do as much as normal". I'm still sick, with that same sickness, because it never went away, it's still here a full month later, but in spite of that, I've still been doing a lot.)

So while it is, of course, theoretically possible for me to be scum.
It'd have been an even bigger improvement on my scumgame. If this were a scumgame of mine, it'd literally be the best scumgame I've ever pulled off.

I will say however that there's another big thing that does give me towncred tho; I literally wrote the book on not bussing. You can see it evident in that micro; in the game, were I town, I'd have been scumreading Gypyx from D1 because his content that game was something easy to scumread and hard to townread, but instead I forced a townread because I wanted to use my influence to influence the town into thinking Gypyx was town.

In this game I reassessed Bell on D2, added evidence to the pile for Bell being scum, continued to campaign for Bell's death even after the IC urged us to spare Bell, called Bell-DEB as scum-scum, called DEB scum the entire game, and ultimately was hugely involved in the deaths of both scum.

This doesn't clear me--I pushed DEB but never voted him until D4; pushing Bell over DEB means little when both are scum; I initially had Bell as town and townier than two flipped town even at the beginning of D2; I was late on the initial Bell wagon; regardless of who's scum in Solstice/Ircher/PBE/Spiffeh I've defended all four of them rather heavily so fit as being a scumbuddy for any of them; I can and have bussed before, so me bussing in spite of writing the article on not bussing doesn't inherently clear me, because while I have a strong aversion to bussing in general, I can bus if I feel there is an actual strong reason to which would give us more reward than the risk involved (and you can pretty easily make the case that I thought the bus was worth it, there's enough to weave half a dozen or so narratives where I justify it).

But while it doesn't clear me, I do feel like it at least gives me fairly good ground to stand on in terms of towncred.

Okay I can't find it.

Basically, for context: in that game I had a very very VERY strong push on Battle Mage D1. I was one of the main pushers on him--he flipped town.

On D2 and for the rest of the game, I was instantly more passive. (I can't find the quote where I explain my mindset on this tho. I could've sworn it was in response to a mason but I can't find it.)
OH, found it. Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

I dislike the slot is the very large tonal shift in playstyle from very aggressive Day 1 to more reserved every day afterwards.

Yes that does tend to happen when your largest scumread that you were being hyper-aggressive on and were genuinely convinced was scum ends up flipping town.

You'd have a better case on me if there

wasn't

a shift in my play after I was proven wrong.

But inherent to my play is a shift when I am proven wrong to pull back on the hyper-aggression and be more, so to speak, passively aggressive.

It wasn't a mason and it wasn't a proper wall where I explained it. Because the expansion was in a followthrough post, still not at a mason: Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Mastina has been decently aggressive towards Creature, and now you, wouldn't you say? I am interested in what the big distinction you're noticing between her attitude towards BM and you two is. and I guess why you think that shift is inherently scummy. I would take it down a notch after hard tunneling a townie on the first day -- and i don't really see the big shift you're seeing, I suppose.

Eh while Toogaloo's arguments are by and large made in bad faith and highly disingenuous overall, this is one point of his where he does at least have some merit, but you're also right so your point has merit, too.

There is a difference between my D1 play and my D2+ play. But the shift in it has a very, stupidly obvious, cause; being wrong when I was the primary driver of the mislynch is something that makes me fear being the primary driver of another elimination. But I refuse to not contribute, I refuse to give nothing, I refuse to not give content, to entirely be in the back seat and just blindly sheep, so I still give my opinions, I still give my advice, I still give my reads and reasons on my content, just in a more passive way. Is actually a fully subconscious thing; it's not something I consciously choose to do.

And if you think that it was a one-game thing where I was doing it just that game, it happened in another game, too: if you compare my posting post-April townflip to my posting pre-April townflip there is a rather notably strong difference.

I can explain the difference fairly well, and have done so across multiple games: I am unafraid to push strong players who many people townread on D1. I am unafraid of pushing them as scum even if they are players that are renown for their scumhunting prowess, if I think they happen to be scum. I will push them strongly, with conviction, force, and devote 80+% of my posts towards eliminating them.

And after they flip town, I take a step back. I still push my scumreads, but I am more reserved, more measured, less assertive in them. More passive, but still strongly pushing. The difference being a difference between pushing as a leader (pre-push on the player I thought was scum flipping town) and pushing as a follower (post-push on the player I thought was scum flipping town).

This isn't something unique to one game; I've got like five or so games in recent history where this has happened, this one among them.

I am in the back seat.

That doesn't mean I won't backseat game/backseat drive tho.

lld? you said she was scum but didn't commit to her until a wagon existed a framework was there to work off of.

I think an iso of me will show that this is an unfair representation of my D1 play.

I was committed to pushing LLD before the wagon existed on her; over 50% of my posts were explaining why she was scum before I voted her.

It's true that I didn't switch my vote to her until there were other votes there!

It isn't true that I wasn't committed to pushing her because I very much was pushing her--in fact it was my push on her that helped form the wagon in the first place. DGB, the first vote on the LLD wagon, explicitly quoted my suspicion on LLD when she cast her LLD vote.

but the one person in your scumlist (me) who is talkative and might have some resistance - and you are too self-conscious or whatever to put yourself out there and actually push me.

This part is true enough tho--I don't have the ability to have the mindset to go full-aggro on you. I'm less confident on you being scum than I was on LLD being scum and LLD flipped town.

Which is to say--I can

see

you being town in a way I could not see from LLD. There are flashes of possible town from you, which I didn't see from LLD. You are my strongest scumread, but it even shows in the way I am talking to you: when I am 100% sure a slot is scum, I pretty much stop talking to them and when quoting their posts while I may respond to them I am explicitly talking to the town, not to the player. But you may be noting that this is me talking to you rather than me talking to the town; the proof of my doubt is in that alone.

I have doubts that you're scum--you are still my strongest scumread, but the doubts are there. Especially given that my strongest scumread that pretty much

lacked

that doubt flipped town. But while I have those doubts, the scumread, and being the strongest one, is still there. So I will still push it, I will still give my reasons and point out why I think you are scum, but explicitly more passively than I did LLD, yes. Because I don't have the confidence I did with LLD.

if im scum here and so many people are townreading me to the point where you can't pull a lim on me, why aren't you working harder to get me limmed?

Because while you're my strongest scumread, and it is my most confident scumread, 'most confident' does not mean my confidence is at LLD levels on you.

I think you are scum.
I think the townreads on you are wrong and that you're the deepscum.
But I also have in the back of my mind, "what if the group consensus is right and I am wrong?"; I also have in the back of my mind "what if the people seeing town are right and the potential town indicators are actually town indicators?"; I also have in my mind, "what if I am pushing another incredibly pro-scum elimination on town that wouldn't be eliminated without me?".

So it's easier to work with the town on eliminations while still voicing my thoughts, my opinions, my reads, and my reasons. It's also more pragmatic because there is in the back of my head the thought of, "what if I push a second elimination through on town? What happens to the town if I lead a second town mislynch?". The reality of the situation is, town probably loses--if I am not outright mislynched for the sin, then I get "girl who cried wolf"'d and even if it turns out third time's the charm, that I was wrong twice and right the third, nobody will follow me the third time and given the closer proximity to lylo, town is at a much higher risk of losing.

So pragmatically, I can't afford to be wrong. If I am wrong again, the town probably loses--so I

need

to be right. And a need to be right causes a more hesitant, reserved, passive approach. (That and personal pride is on the line. I have already failed to be better than last game so far, but it's still possible to be loosely on par. But a second wrong-elimination from me seals the deal and means I was legit a burden and my chances of redemption drop to nearly nothing.)

and so what if im political? what's your point.

That projection and hypocrisy are usually scumtells.

[mastina]

Fair warning: I REALLY don't feel like posting right now (I've been, for a while, rather badly depressed and it affects my motivation to play and the amount of effort that I put in), but given that I'll be V/LA this weekend for the sake of a different community, I kinda feel like I have to post here, so.

you still are taking a back seat and i dont think that's in dispute.

Yes, I do that after being horribly wrong on D1 and eliminating a strong town player through that force of will where I was a spearhead in the wagon. I've explained this before, lemme see if I can track the quote down.

Spoiler: Not this one but having it here anyway because it's relevant to other stuff.

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Mastina I believe to be town but *technically* she could be scum in the event Creature is town and she had a really good D1 -- like I don't think she is scum but I have never seen mastina scum, either, so perhaps she didn't exit her scumrange but it'd have to be quite big.

I can help (well, "help") you there:
At my absolute peak scum performance levels, D1 is not out of scumastina's scum range altogether, albeit requiring a perfect storm of me being at highest-level functioning capabilities across multiple areas rather than in one or two more specific areas. ~2015-2017-era scumastina was genuinely one of the best scum players onsite with a huge, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge flexibility to her scumgame and notably gifted at situational awareness to adapt her scumplay to perfectly fit the needs of the particular game as to maximize her team's chances at winning.

However.

Over the last two years, my scumgame has been utterly atrocious. I've been a total lurksack whose contributions were notably lackluster with the difference between my scumplay and townplay being night and day, with my scumplay being minimal, using every excuse to avoid content, and coasting by with my towngame being more energetic.

However

however, I DID just have a scumgame where I approached near-peak-scumastina-levels. I was still, very visibly, not in my towngame, and there were multiple scum traits of mine present, but I exuded a "town aura" as scum, something which is

very

hard to pull off, yet I have shown the capacity to do as given by that game. Radiating townness as scum is something within my scumrange, which is why I invented the flowchart for how to read me.

The flowchart is, notably, a little dated; it's missing some of my most recent town/scumtells and in the case of being reasonable and rational, this is something that has become almost nai. (I am more reasonable and rational as both alignments and as town can be very convincing with logical deductions and outlining the process behind my conclusions, so just on a skim, you'd think nai, but as scum my arguments still tend to be even more "precise" than their town counterparts, extra-targeted, extra-concise in comparison, extra on-point, whereas my town cases tend to always have weaknesses in them if you look beyond the surface. Which is to say, my scum cases tend to be more "perfect" than my town cases are, in spite of me being logical in both.)

And a key aspect of it is that I'll never show every town trait in a towngame and never show every scum trait in a scumgame and may show some scum traits in a towngame and definitely will show some town traits in a scumgame, but that overall it is incredibly hard, over a sustained period of time, borderlining on nigh-impossible levels, for me to maintain a presence of almost all towntells as scum, whereas they flow more naturally as town.

Basically, while I will suffer burnout as both alignments, it's easier to suffer burnout as scum because being scum at the highest level of effort is more draining than being town at the highest level of effort (even though both are, notably, draining; I am incapable of maintaining the highest level of effort as town indefinitely, which is why I frequently have a mixture of low/high-energy posting days, with low ones being rest time and high ones being active time). The cracks in scumastina form over time with continued observation; the solidification of town-mastina becomes more readily apparent given time.

So that is to say,
tl;dr?
D1's not impossible from scumastina, but is incredibly improbable to be her.

Spoiler: Also not this one, but still also relevant

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

She's remained active but allowed her reads to ebb and flow with the current game state.

Do explain because I've made my stances pretty damn abundantly clear with zero waffling on them aside from my reads in the poe that aren't harder scumreads. (Which, obviously, are reads that, no fucking shit I'm going to have them ebb and flow off of the current gamestate, because explicitly, they are reads that I waver on and am unsure on so literally any development in the game can sway them to one side or the other. Those being, mostly, you and Dunnstral.)

One mislynch on Day 1 that she headlines, and her town reads are becoming scum reads because she can read the room and see what people want.

Most of my townreads are very much still my townreads.

There are a grand total of three reads of mine that were townreads D1 that on D2 are not: you, Dunnstral, and Bell.

This of course being necessary because there's four scum in the game and I had three scumreads--meaning that I was, inherently, by fundamental nature of the setup, definitively wrong on at least one townread, and unless all three of my scumreads were accurate, probably two. And if 2/3 of my scumreads were wrong, then there could in fact be three wrong townreads that I had on D1.

I reevaluated my reads because I had a very damn good reason to do so, and

most

of my townreads remain as townreads, with only three of them being reevaluated as something other than a townread...

...And even then? Even then, one of those reads is Dunnstral, who I still have an overall right now gut-townread on, where while he's in the POE pool of six where 4/6 of them are scum, he's the towniest of the six that I happen to think is least-likely to be scum.

She is actively lurking and letting the Bell/DEB thing happen.

So...which of my posts are 'actively lurking'? Which of my posts are 'letting' the Bell/DEB thing happen? Because I've made my stance there clear enough.

I feel both players are likely to be scum, with the whole detective-detective thing being scum theater.
I feel that, while both claims could theoretically be town in the setup, that at least one of them is going to be scum, and personally feel the most likely scenario is that both are scum (although I have acknowledged that is a tough sell to make).
I have stated that, by play, I feel like both slots are scum.
I have also said that, push come to shove, if I were forced to trust one claim over another, that Bell's far more likely scum than DEB.
But I've also said that I think both are scum.

I've given reasons for believing Bell to be scum.
I've continued giving reasons for Creature to be scum.
I've explained my reasons for my reads on the players I am townreading pretty extensively as well as going into detail on the reads in the poe pool pretty extensively.
Pretty much the only read I haven't explained is the DEB read, which...well, because it's DEB...there's not much to work with there in terms of explaining because it's DEB.

If that's your definition of 'active lurking', I'd love to see what your definition of being a proactive gamesolver is.

Spoiler: Also also ALSO not the post I'm looking for but another relevant post

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Thinking it's Toog and mastina

pichu potential powerwolf

I don't understand the townreads on Dunn?

Seriously--why are people townreading this?

Especially people who have played with Creature before, who have familiarity with him.

Why are you townreading this?

Because this level of emptiness and with these sorts of takes is not Creature's town meta.

Do you want me to actually link you town-Creature games and scum-Creature games for comparison? (Admittedly the most recent ones would be largely secondhand meta where I wouldn't be able to really give indepth laser-point-accuracy takes, but just in general, this is so obviously not Creature as town that I am overwhelmingly confident I've no need to be so laser-point-accurate, that just pointing in the general direction will be enough for the hammer to blow the point in.)

Spoiler: Also also also ALSO not what I'm looking for but STILL relevant

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

you know too many people in this game feel towny now
i think like 2 scum are playing very well probably

This is true enough; there are enough reasons to townread most players in the game, and if townreading all of them, you come up short in names to have for scum. So some scum, no matter what, are playing well enough to be townread.

When it comes to a D3 reassessment with Creature as a total read reversal and MURDERCAT going from possible-mason-that-looks-town to conftown, I do want to theorycraft there for trying to assess things in detail in terms of getting a coherent D3 readslist, buuuuuuut, I'm not sure the masons want me to before my place in the massclaim since that's the spot they want me to have my readslist in (and doing a theorycraft of revisiting/revising things does indeed mean that I'd be more or less making a readslist before my turn in the massclaim).

Mentally, I feel, similar to D1-->D2, that most of my townreads are still valid; I feel like most of those reads should stay the same. Mentally, there's only a small list of the townreads I feel I need to revisit and reevaluate, but again, not sure I'm allowed to outline my mental thoughts inthread yet.

Basically, though, without naming names: I still feel most of the more active town players are town. Maybe not all of them, but I still feel like most of the scum were in the more lurkery slots. But yes, there's at least a fair chance of at least one scum being in the more active slots.

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

is Mastina capable of going sicko mode on BM D1 like that as scum?

Theoretically? Yes, it's possible. I'm pretty sure I've done it before in some past scumgame of mine. I think rather notably I was hyper-aggressive in that game where I was a hydra with Katsuki and eliminated the BROseidon/AngryPidgeon hydra during the day who had perfect reads yet they got mislynched. So it's something that is something I theoretically have the capability to do.

In reality? Probably not, mafia games are hella draining especially going hyper-aggressive. As-is, it's hard to maintain as town (a lot of my townplay actually resolves around trying to get myself nightkilled early, just so that I can chill in the dead thread, because it's less stressful, less effort, once I am dead and every day I'm alive is a drain), but as scum instead of those thoughts being genuine I'd instead have to

fake

them. Which is harder than pouring genuine heart and soul into things.

It

might

be this but I could've sworn it was a response to someone else, my memory says Creature.

Spoiler: I also don't think it's this one

Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

@mastina: Can you link that recent scum game where you efforted once more?

Sure, it's this one here.

For the record: it might help you to iso MathBlade that game (and also read the dead thread since he did a good job of explaining that, while that was a

good

scum game of mine, why it was still a scumgame due to aspects of my towngame being absent.

Basically, it was a fairly good scumgame, but there were still gaps in it.

Also, I realize it's not as obvious while doing an iso, that it's something hard to detect even in the postgame, but anecdotally if you were in the game at the time and were able to observe it in real time you'd instantly see:
In that game, there was a larger space between my content compared to this game in quite a lot of spaces. I often didn't post if I didn't have a need to. And if I did post, I often posted, overall, less, except during specific times of engagement where I was able to exude my town aura. Which is to say: I could not, from the getgo, from the onset, continuously and throughout the entirety of the game, maintain the town aura, maintain the energy of my town self. And the few times I did manage to do so, I usually had good justification. (There is a notable pickup in my play when I was able to use mechanics, as mechanics is something I am really damn good at regardless of my alignment and which helps mimic town-mastina even as scumastina; Dunnstral was genuinely such a lurksack to an extent that I've never seen from him before that if not for knowing I was scum I'd have been convinced he was scum, so it was easy to pressure him as such.)

Like I said--something like that is a bit hard to see in the aftermath of the game, but if you were there at the time, you'd be like, "oh yeah, I totally see that", where I lacked the energy to maintain it full time and most of the time I did have the energy, I was given ammunition which made it easy to have done so.

This game, however, my energy has been pretty damn consistent, even during the times where I've felt less useful. I've not had a 100% absolutely identical energy level every single rl day in this game, but the energy still was high, shifted forms from one to another and still was high, and even when I had less to offer, was higher overall. I've had moments of lower energy from rl stuff, rl distractions, etc., but I feel that overall, I've been triumphing over that energy lull from those rl things and managed to still try to give a ton even when at a lowpoint in mental/physical/emotional wellbeing. (For instance, I've been sick since Thanksgiving. I said as much in this gamethread, you may recall. I said, "hey, fair warning, am sick, so may not be able to do as much as normal". I'm still sick, with that same sickness, because it never went away, it's still here a full month later, but in spite of that, I've still been doing a lot.)

So while it is, of course, theoretically possible for me to be scum.
It'd have been an even bigger improvement on my scumgame. If this were a scumgame of mine, it'd literally be the best scumgame I've ever pulled off.

I will say however that there's another big thing that does give me towncred tho; I literally wrote the book on not bussing. You can see it evident in that micro; in the game, were I town, I'd have been scumreading Gypyx from D1 because his content that game was something easy to scumread and hard to townread, but instead I forced a townread because I wanted to use my influence to influence the town into thinking Gypyx was town.

In this game I reassessed Bell on D2, added evidence to the pile for Bell being scum, continued to campaign for Bell's death even after the IC urged us to spare Bell, called Bell-DEB as scum-scum, called DEB scum the entire game, and ultimately was hugely involved in the deaths of both scum.

This doesn't clear me--I pushed DEB but never voted him until D4; pushing Bell over DEB means little when both are scum; I initially had Bell as town and townier than two flipped town even at the beginning of D2; I was late on the initial Bell wagon; regardless of who's scum in Solstice/Ircher/PBE/Spiffeh I've defended all four of them rather heavily so fit as being a scumbuddy for any of them; I can and have bussed before, so me bussing in spite of writing the article on not bussing doesn't inherently clear me, because while I have a strong aversion to bussing in general, I can bus if I feel there is an actual strong reason to which would give us more reward than the risk involved (and you can pretty easily make the case that I thought the bus was worth it, there's enough to weave half a dozen or so narratives where I justify it).

But while it doesn't clear me, I do feel like it at least gives me fairly good ground to stand on in terms of towncred.

Okay I can't find it.

Basically, for context: in that game I had a very very VERY strong push on Battle Mage D1. I was one of the main pushers on him--he flipped town.

On D2 and for the rest of the game, I was instantly more passive. (I can't find the quote where I explain my mindset on this tho. I could've sworn it was in response to a mason but I can't find it.)
OH, found it. Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

I dislike the slot is the very large tonal shift in playstyle from very aggressive Day 1 to more reserved every day afterwards.

Yes that does tend to happen when your largest scumread that you were being hyper-aggressive on and were genuinely convinced was scum ends up flipping town.

You'd have a better case on me if there

wasn't

a shift in my play after I was proven wrong.

But inherent to my play is a shift when I am proven wrong to pull back on the hyper-aggression and be more, so to speak, passively aggressive.

It wasn't a mason and it wasn't a proper wall where I explained it. Because the expansion was in a followthrough post, still not at a mason: Subject: PookyTheMagicalBear v Flavor Leaf (Game Over)

Mastina has been decently aggressive towards Creature, and now you, wouldn't you say? I am interested in what the big distinction you're noticing between her attitude towards BM and you two is. and I guess why you think that shift is inherently scummy. I would take it down a notch after hard tunneling a townie on the first day -- and i don't really see the big shift you're seeing, I suppose.

Eh while Toogaloo's arguments are by and large made in bad faith and highly disingenuous overall, this is one point of his where he does at least have some merit, but you're also right so your point has merit, too.

There is a difference between my D1 play and my D2+ play. But the shift in it has a very, stupidly obvious, cause; being wrong when I was the primary driver of the mislynch is something that makes me fear being the primary driver of another elimination. But I refuse to not contribute, I refuse to give nothing, I refuse to not give content, to entirely be in the back seat and just blindly sheep, so I still give my opinions, I still give my advice, I still give my reads and reasons on my content, just in a more passive way. Is actually a fully subconscious thing; it's not something I consciously choose to do.

And if you think that it was a one-game thing where I was doing it just that game, it happened in another game, too: if you compare my posting post-April townflip to my posting pre-April townflip there is a rather notably strong difference.

I can explain the difference fairly well, and have done so across multiple games: I am unafraid to push strong players who many people townread on D1. I am unafraid of pushing them as scum even if they are players that are renown for their scumhunting prowess, if I think they happen to be scum. I will push them strongly, with conviction, force, and devote 80+% of my posts towards eliminating them.

And after they flip town, I take a step back. I still push my scumreads, but I am more reserved, more measured, less assertive in them. More passive, but still strongly pushing. The difference being a difference between pushing as a leader (pre-push on the player I thought was scum flipping town) and pushing as a follower (post-push on the player I thought was scum flipping town).

This isn't something unique to one game; I've got like five or so games in recent history where this has happened, this one among them.

I am in the back seat.

That doesn't mean I won't backseat game/backseat drive tho.

lld? you said she was scum but didn't commit to her until a wagon existed a framework was there to work off of.

I think an iso of me will show that this is an unfair representation of my D1 play.

I was committed to pushing LLD before the wagon existed on her; over 50% of my posts were explaining why she was scum before I voted her.

It's true that I didn't switch my vote to her until there were other votes there!

It isn't true that I wasn't committed to pushing her because I very much was pushing her--in fact it was my push on her that helped form the wagon in the first place. DGB, the first vote on the LLD wagon, explicitly quoted my suspicion on LLD when she cast her LLD vote.

but the one person in your scumlist (me) who is talkative and might have some resistance - and you are too self-conscious or whatever to put yourself out there and actually push me.

This part is true enough tho--I don't have the ability to have the mindset to go full-aggro on you. I'm less confident on you being scum than I was on LLD being scum and LLD flipped town.

Which is to say--I can

see

you being town in a way I could not see from LLD. There are flashes of possible town from you, which I didn't see from LLD. You are my strongest scumread, but it even shows in the way I am talking to you: when I am 100% sure a slot is scum, I pretty much stop talking to them and when quoting their posts while I may respond to them I am explicitly talking to the town, not to the player. But you may be noting that this is me talking to you rather than me talking to the town; the proof of my doubt is in that alone.

I have doubts that you're scum--you are still my strongest scumread, but the doubts are there. Especially given that my strongest scumread that pretty much

lacked

that doubt flipped town. But while I have those doubts, the scumread, and being the strongest one, is still there. So I will still push it, I will still give my reasons and point out why I think you are scum, but explicitly more passively than I did LLD, yes. Because I don't have the confidence I did with LLD.

if im scum here and so many people are townreading me to the point where you can't pull a lim on me, why aren't you working harder to get me limmed?

Because while you're my strongest scumread, and it is my most confident scumread, 'most confident' does not mean my confidence is at LLD levels on you.

I think you are scum.
I think the townreads on you are wrong and that you're the deepscum.
But I also have in the back of my mind, "what if the group consensus is right and I am wrong?"; I also have in the back of my mind "what if the people seeing town are right and the potential town indicators are actually town indicators?"; I also have in my mind, "what if I am pushing another incredibly pro-scum elimination on town that wouldn't be eliminated without me?".

So it's easier to work with the town on eliminations while still voicing my thoughts, my opinions, my reads, and my reasons. It's also more pragmatic because there is in the back of my head the thought of, "what if I push a second elimination through on town? What happens to the town if I lead a second town mislynch?". The reality of the situation is, town probably loses--if I am not outright mislynched for the sin, then I get "girl who cried wolf"'d and even if it turns out third time's the charm, that I was wrong twice and right the third, nobody will follow me the third time and given the closer proximity to lylo, town is at a much higher risk of losing.

So pragmatically, I can't afford to be wrong. If I am wrong again, the town probably loses--so I

need

to be right. And a need to be right causes a more hesitant, reserved, passive approach. (That and personal pride is on the line. I have already failed to be better than last game so far, but it's still possible to be loosely on par. But a second wrong-elimination from me seals the deal and means I was legit a burden and my chances of redemption drop to nearly nothing.)

and so what if im political? what's your point.

That projection and hypocrisy are usually scumtells.

Let's pagetop this.

[mastina]

hm, i may have to reread this part. if it's true that DGB pushing LLD gave mastina more confidence to aggressively push LLD, then it could be scum!agenda motivated? or it could just be town trying to vote where she thinks she has the most support?

It's actually both voting where I think has the most support, AND me gaining confidence:

I have three metrics by which I read players:
Generic general tells: a generic read metric, where actions are more likely to be town or scum, generic things that I think are more likely to indicate a player is town or a player is scum.

Meta tells, to refine and change the above: something that is a generic towntell for a specific player can be an even stronger, locktown, level of towntell for that specific player even if it is normally a generically weak towntell. Something that is a generic towntell for a specific player can actually be a huge scumtell for that specific player. Something that is a generic scumtell for a specific player can be an even stronger, lockscum, level of scumtell for that specific player. And most commonly of all, things that are generic scumtells tend to, for a specific player, actually be towntells for that specific player.

And general groupthink thread consensus: when players who I trust to be town give their reads, me trusting them to be town, I am inclined to trust that their viewpoint has merit to it.

When DGB saw that LLD was scum, it was an example of the general groupthink thread consensus: her having the same scumread as me made my confidence in that read's accuracy skyrocket. Being on the same wavelength as her made me think that we were right.

But I also vote where I think has the most support.
I initially voted LLD, but moved off, onto Dannflor, because I thought Dannflor had more support than LLD did. But then DGB came along and showed that LLD did have more support.

The two are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they augment each other. If the groupthink thread consensus empowers my confidence in more than one scumread (say, if DGB and I agreed on two scumreads rather than just on LLD), then I would vote whichever of the two I thought had more support.

[mastina]

it kind of just depends on how we interpret her pushes between this game and last game

Last game I was a replacement.

This game I was not.

That is explanation enough--I do not play the same as a replacement as a player from the beginning. If you think that's bullshit tho I'd be more than happy to give you a contrast between my recent games as a replacement (both of them are similar to each other) and my recent games as a player from the beginning (most of which are also pretty similar).

But I don't think I should need to, because I don't think it is in any way controversial to say that play as a replacement is inherently fundamentally different from play as an initial player.

I posit an alternative.
Given Mastina's current reads and positions now is probably a good time to eliminate her.
She's never getting night killed and she's going to end up in elo. As either alignment she is going to vote incorrectly and lose us the game.

this is kinda yuck

Yup.

I'd be down for a flashwagon on Bell if anyone else is interested.

[mastina]

Fair warning: still V/LA, still depressed badly, still don't feel like posting, but still gonna since I have an opening.

So why did Luca flip when there was plenty of support for town eliminations?

That's why.

[mastina]

my team are having a lot of discussion about tft. Flopz is the kind of guy who forces dragonsoul/elderwood mage every game. ugh. cult/keepers is where it's at

Elderwood/Dragonsoul/Mages are insane because of how much synergy and flexibility and ability to pivot is within.

Mage 7 elderwood 6 is doable; mage 7 dragonsoul 6 is doable; elderwood 6 dragonsoul 6 is doable; etc. Those are the most extreme, but more realistic is something like mage 5 dragonsoul 3 elderwood 3 or so. They just have incredible overlap. 4/6 mages are in those two classes, and they pair well. Brand's got good cc when you double it up (imo Nami was better but he's still okay), ASol is a literal nuke even with zero items and his carry items aren't too hard, the classic blue buff gunblade veigar is strong, lulu is a lifesaver to buff the front line, etc.
Elderwoods have a built in Keeper 2 with Xayah-Rakan. Xayah can also give an in to Executioner, but optionally so.
Ornn is strong enough to be picked even outside of his comp, but he's an elderwood too and also a vanguard which pairs well with Braum.
Shyvana Maokai and Nunu are brawlers and brawler 4 slots into the comp quite well.
Oh and IE+Statikk on Tristana is disgustingly strong if you've got a sharpshooter and good dragonsouls to boost it. (Can work well with Samira+Olaf. Sharpshooter + 2/3 of a Slayer comp.)

That said I run just about everything except Spirit. Fuck spirit. I liked Diana more as Moonlight, Yuumi's basically Spirit without the synergy and gives heals and mystics, Kindred you run for Executioner, Teemo you run for sharpshooters. It just doesn't have a carry unit and I don't like it as a secondary support synergy, either.

I'm not too fond of vanguards because they frustrate me--I know that vanguard comps can work, I've been eliminated and devastated by them, but when *I* run them, they never do.

I'm also less fond of full-brawlers. I liked them before, but now they're just not as appealing as Shyvana REALLY wants dragonsoul and you don't have healing and you don't have burst damage until Sett and you don't have healing reduction and your damage over time is slow, too slow if you're up against an anywhere even remotely tanky enemy comp.

But I do have a soft spot for Keeper comps. Granted, they require the right items on the right keepers to deal the needed damage (you NEED healing cut; you NEED tankiness to still be there after the shield wears down; you NEED damage to wipe off half the board before the shield fades), but they're one of my favorite comps to run when I don't have to force a comp for a quest.

That said, again: I basically just take my first non-spirit Chosen and build the comp around it, usually. Unless I roll in the first minion rounds a 3-cost unit that's carry-worthy e.g. a first-orb-Veigar.

Mine are largely silent.

Ditto.

i think jjh is scum.

You think wrong and will be proven so tomorrow. I guarantee you that jjh is town this game.

Lilith wants to know why Mastina is scum reading Agar. She can't seem to find a reason why he's even her 3rd strongest scum read.

Well, combination of AGar's aggression this game feeling like it is a caricature of his play last game exaggerating his rage and anger in a way indicative of him being scum mimicking his last towngame, not liking any of his content, and POE, basically.

thnx 4 feedback
more bell votes

Sure, why not?
VOTE: Bell

[mastina]

Ngl I'm mostly posting now because, 1: I logged in due to getting an email about a review PM, and 2: after logging in I posted in the speakeasy so felt I was obligated to post in gamethreads especially given the nature of the post I made.

Once more a reminder I'm currently both V/LA and depressed.

You think wrong and will be proven so tomorrow. I guarantee you that jjh is town this game.

you understand we will policy you short of a literal innocent child claim tomorrow if this is wrong? you sure that's cool with you mastina?

As a matter of fact, it is indeed fine with me, because I know jjh is town here and tomorrow will explain exactly why.

do any of the people voting someone other than (Bell/Agar) or mastina want to talk more about that because the Bell wagon is the same people as the agar wagon and it feels like nothing's moved in ages

I realize I'm the exact group you said not to talk.

But I want to talk about it anyway.

At this stage, I just really want it to be D4 so that I can explain my jjh read and my stances in the game more clearly.

So yes I do kinda just want the day to be over with an elimination on literally anyone who isn't {jjh, mastina}.
Well, within reason, obv.
You're off the table until massclaim due to the Universal Backup turned 3x Neapolitan having a result on you.
IV is so very clearly town here that I'd rather a no-elimination than an elimination on him.
Almost50 is basically conftown here, too, with his claim and role.
Xtoxm is so very clearly town here that I'd rather a no-elimination than an elimination on him.

So not those names.

But when I mean I want the day to be over with an elimination on literally anyone not in the above.
I mean it.

I realize this list of leftovers includes {Cephrir, Ythan}, both slots that I am townreading rather strongly, yes, I know. Those townreads are still there, but not in the same strength of caring as the above. I'd be incredibly unhappy with their elimination but I wouldn't so strongly fight against it that I'd rather no elimination than them. (Sorry, I just can't muster the...uhh, whatever the antonym of apathy is...to do so. Shouldn't matter tho since Ceph/Ythan probably aren't getting wagoned anyway since I'm pretty sure both slots are pretty universally town anyway tho.)

But pragmatically, given that Ceph/Ythan are universal townreads anyway (and thus won't be wagoned), the list of players I'd vote is literally:
{Titus, AGar, Bell, Winter Flakes, OkaPoka}.

I still see signs Titus could be town but I also see exactly how and why she would be scum here.
I can see Winter Flakes as town but I can also see Winter Flakes as scum.
I actively think that the scumteam is at least 2 if not all 3 of {AGar, Bell, OkaPoka}, but while I think all three of them are scum weakest to strongest in that order of strength, I can see them flipping town. I think a scum flip is more likely, but a townflip is fully possible.

And I legit just think. ANY flip on ANY of those five, for today, is the best move, just to get us to D4.

[mastina]

Quick, answer me this, who is scum on the Bell wagon?

To be fair:

objectively

, it could be you. I happen to think you're town so I happen to think the wagon is all-town, which subjectively you know to be true, but objectively there

could

be scum there, I just think there isn't.

VOTE: bell

Also there's your scum on the wagon regardless of Bell's alignment.

[mastina]

I'm starting to get paranoia on my reads because today the lack of opposition to the bell & agar wagons from anyone except bell/agar/Oka doesn't make sense unless it's literally just (bell/agar/oka) but it seems so weird they're all hard pushing Mastina as the dueling/counter wagon to both Bell/Agar and that hasn't changed the entire day despite nobody else joining it and them pushing it in response to both the Agar wagon and the Bell wagon

I mean.

If the scumteam IS exactly Bell/AGar/Oka, the team I've pushed since D2.

Then they're not able to get allies.

They tried to wagon Hopkirk--Hopkirk is off-limits for today due to having a Neapolitan investigation on them, the result of a (inherently town due to Normal rules) Universal Backup inheriting Dannflor's power role.
They tried to wagon jjh--jjh is off-limits today because I promise you that he is conftown here and I will show exactly why on D4.
They tried to wagon me--in part to try and force me to out why I know jjh is town (I'm not going to tho), but also in part because their efforts on the previous two failed due to mechanical results.

The only wagons that they have available to them outside of those three are {Winter Flakes, Titus}. Because Cephrir is their greatest ally right now on top of being obvtown, IV is a potential ally on top of being obvtown, Xtoxm is obviously town (albeit not an ally), Ythan is considered universally townread and is a wildcard, and Almost50 is mechanically town.

And of those two, Winter Flakes is by and large, mostly being their ally.

And Titus? Titus actually HAS been wagoned.

(Not to mention the fact that if any of the three in that group aren't scum, that one of the two in the above is the third scumbuddy anyway so if the group of three isn't all scum, then wagoning one of the two is potentially bussing.)

[mastina]

(For the record: I fully expect the scumteam to be very salty. They bussed Luca and thought they'd be discrediting town that'd make those town players easy mislynches and that they'd get huge amounts of towncred and be thought of as town for it. But the simple fact of the matter is, they bussed rather than pushing for an elimination on town, and thanks to the town's remaining roles, their preferred elimination targets that they bussed Luca to make look bad are off the table, putting them in a bad spot. But that's their fault for bussing so I've zero sympathy for them. )

[mastina]

Because Cephrir is their greatest ally right now on top of being obvtown

For the record--this is why I think the Titus wagon isn't taking off.

If the scum wagon Titus and she flips town, and then tomorrow comes and I drop the bombshell, what do you think it does to Ceph? He'll know he was wrong on Titus and jjh.

Scum can't stop the latter (tho they can try to force it out a day early because they desperately need the info that I am withholding), but they CAN stop the former.

Granted, it's fully possible the reason the Titus wagon isn't taking off is because she's scum and scum don't want to bus a second time, I'll give you that.

But I happen to think she's town, albeit only very weakly so.

Regardless tho, I think that those two work as an explanation for why the Titus wagon isn't taking off:
If Titus is scum, the wagon isn't taking off because scum don't want to bus her.
If Titus is town, the wagon isn't taking off because if Titus flipped town, Cephrir one of their main allies would realize he's on the wrong track entirely and be forced to reevaluate. As long as Titus is alive and uncleared, Cephrir will still think he's right in his suspicion there.

[mastina]

jjh please tell me you have a Vanilla Townie result on Titus so that we can confirm yesterday's wagons weren't SvS, thus, conftowning Titus and Ythan and for that matter making it highly likely the entirety of the Bell wagon is town.

[mastina]

jjh please tell me you have a Vanilla Townie result on Titus so that we can confirm yesterday's wagons weren't SvS, thus, conftowning Titus and Ythan and for that matter making it highly likely the entirety of the Bell wagon is town.

May as well pagetop this I guess.

[mastina]

No I have a second 'guilty' on okapoka

Oof.

That being said I do have thoughts on massclaim when Oka decides to fakeclaim some role and Hopkirk realclaims his role.

[mastina]

Feels pretty statistically unlikely tbh since I really don't think there are that many PRs left

Trust me. I did the work last night. I'm pretty damn certain that Hopkirk's role is real here and that Oka when he needs to fakeclaim will have a role that's fake, but I shouldn't explain why until after they do chime in here.

[mastina]

Btw for how I figured it out:

i was targeted by an announcing role that i think is more likely to be scum aligned (especially assuming town!A50 +provides weak Bayesian evidence for town!A50 on a couple of levels)

i was targeted by an announcing role that i think is more likely to be scum aligned (especially assuming town!A50 +provides weak Bayesian evidence for town!A50 on a couple of levels)

Do you think it's scum aligned because it's another announcing role or do you think it's scum aligned because of the role itself

so i discussed this with Hectic (and arguably Flopz) and they agreed it's worth outing it
i was targetted by a Neapolitan. we're leaning towards it being a scum backup neapolitan (or backup of first announcing to die if A50 is town as well also makes sense?)

Universal backup is a thing

What's the likelihood of the first role to die being the thing that there is a specific backup for VS a backup just being universal

I have conflicted feelings about Hopkirk

Life would definitely be a lot easier if the neapolitan had an innocent on him

I put 2+2 together with 4716; that was the moment it clicked, and then I iso'd jjh to find 4594 to confirm it.

And yes: this means jjh is conftown.
Per Normal Guidelines, a Universal Backup can only inherit a role of the same alignment.
Per Dannflor being a Town 3x Announcing Neapolitan, jjh inheriting the role means that he MUST, inherently, be town.

I knew jjh was conftown yesterday and wanted him to get his second investigation off.

I also chose my wording on Hopkirk carefully--I wanted to table the discussion until today, because Hopkirk knowing an announcing neapolitan had targeted him would, regardless of his alignment, know it was not an innocent, and thus, regardless of his alignment, know that today after the neapolitan outed that he'd need to roleclaim not-Vanilla.

I am pretty damn sure that we can have exactly one more unknown PR.
I am pretty damn sure that we cannot have two more PRs.
And I am pretty damn sure that in {Hopkirk, OkaPoka}, between the two, Oka is the scum and Hopkirk is the town PR.

But again, should wait to explain this after they claim.

[mastina]

Speaking of which:
VOTE: OkaPoka.

Another reason for Oka over Hopkirk: one of them was on the Titus counterwagon to the scum elimination (Oka); one of them was voting the scum elimination (Hopkirk).

Pretty damn sure both remaining scum were on the Titus wagon here anyway.

[mastina]

i am joat commuter/hider see all star

Yup, this is a scumclaim.

As a NRG reviewer, I am 100% convinced that Oka is scum.

We live in one of two worlds:
A world where the scumteam is {OkaPoka, Hopkirk}, or a world where OkaPoka is scum and Hopkirk is a town PR with the last scum being...well let's be honest, pretty much just one of {Winter Flakes, AGar}.

And of the two AGar's end of day looks by far worse.

[mastina]

By the way, Mastina, if I'd have tried to get you to claim my role/results, would you have done it?

IF there was a way for us to get away with it, I might've considered it, but it wasn't possible: I was defending you in a way suggesting a PR result, so there wasn't a realistic way for me to claim the Hopkirk result.

Still thought that, given my positive result on hopkirk, that there probably aren't any more PRs and I can functionally be a cop

Fair enough and not wrong.

Granted today with an innocent I'd be voting one of {AGar, Oka} anyway tho.

ok so if we believe jjh (probably) hopkirk is not a VT and OkaPoka is not a VT?

Correct. And OkaPoka's reaction is a scumclaim in of itself, aside from the roleclaim itself being a scumclaim. Not to mention Oka's been scum by play the entire game and was part of the hard-force onto the Bell counterwagon of Titus.

im willing to kill Oka today here i guess but why are you guys so confident

1: In years upon years of setup review, I know for a fact that OkaPoka's claim is fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it 100% definitely not a real town role. There's multiple, fundimental, issues with the claim.

2: Setup speculation beyond the above--I am pretty sure that we can have one additional town power role beyond jjh and Almost50. We shouldn't have TWO extras. With Hopkirk as the additional PR, OkaPoka would be scum.

3: Oka's reaction today screams defeated, caught, scum: he knows that failing to save Bell yesterday when pushing that hard, failing to kill the Neapolitan investigative (Xtoxm was a decent kill regardless, but it's pretty damn obvious the scum were blindsided by it being jjh and that they didn't know it was him and thought it had to be someone else and guessed wrong about it being Xtoxm), having many of the needed mislynches become conftown either via their role or via their play, all add up to an inevitable result: the town has an autowin here now.

4: OkaPoka was a major pusher of the counterwagon to Bell the flipped scum, both on the mastina counterwagon and the Titus counterwagon. He tried to force a claim out of me, repeatedly, because he needed the information I was holding back. Without knowing what I knew, he couldn't make the right call, so he tried to force that information out, and when he couldn't, he compromised into pushing a wagon that the townbeards were willing to back the scumteam on.

5: OkaPoka has been scum the entire game and I've literally written cases demonstrating all of the reasons for why he was scum. Having what amounts to a cop guilty on him is just the cherry on top of the already existing mountain of evidence.

[mastina]

im starting to wonder how this setup is balanced

I can explain to you how if you'd like.

But basically, there's three ways we can handle it.

1: We place some trust in the obvious of Oka being scum and don't massclaim or reveal setup speculation/balance information. (Basically, trust that Hopkirk is town.)
2: I reveal the setup speculation along with how the game would be balanced, but don't massclaim or if we do, do so after I've revealed this. (Basically, trust that Hopkirk is town.)
3: We massclaim without me first revealing setup spec and how the game is balanced, and after finishing a massclaim, I reveal how the game is balanced via setup speculation. (Basically, don't trust that Hopkirk is town, at least until after he claims.)

Any of the three is fine at this point. But as I trust Hopkirk to be town, my default would be 1 or 2.

[mastina]

Can we remind me of the claims?

Dannflor: 3-shot Announcing Neapolitan. (Presumably burned a shot N1, but nobody claimed to have been targeted N1, so presumably investigated scum.)
DrippingGoofBall: Tracker.
Dunnstral: Odd-night Vigilante.
jjh: Universal Backup, turned 3-shot Announcing Neapolitan upon the death of Dannflor. (In setups where two town PRs can die the same night, the mod always is required to have a way to resolve which role goes to the universal backup. The most common way is to have the scum kill be the role inherited and is what I believe implosion recommends so I imagine that's the resolution method he used.) Targeted Hopkirk N2 burning one shot (since Dannflor burned a shot N1 presumably, presumably 2/3 burned), got Not a Vanilla Townie. Targeted OkaPoka N3 burning second (presumably last) shot, got Not a Vanilla Townie. Hopkirk confirmed that an Announcing Neapolitan targeted him N2.
Almost50: Announcing Babysitter.
Hopkirk: Unspecified, but apparently breadcrumbed, power role of some sort.

---
OkaPoka: JOAT with the powers of {Hider, Commuter}.

[mastina]

I mean yes my point was that even assuming oka scum I'm not certain all these PRs can be real. But it's not really important right now.

Well there's two scum left alive and Oka is one of them, so inherently, in the PR pool of {jjh, Almost50, Hopkirk}, there is a MAXIMUM of one scum left.

jjh is conftown.
Almost50 and Hopkirk are both town by play.
And I can explain the setup for why Hopkirk+A50 would be town by role fairly confidently, too.

Which is why the last scum is in the unclaimed, and highly likely to have been on the Titus wagon yesterday.

A pool that's literally,
{Cephrir, innocentvillager, AGar, Winter Flakes}.

Given that I think you're town (tho I admit it'd be hilarious if the exact two scum I nailed lastgame were the exact two scum I misread as town this game and kept my 50/50 on catching scum/town, but as hilarious as that'd be I'm pretty damn sure you're not scum here), and given that I think innocentvillager is town here (I realize people aren't going to like IV's posts today but I believe IV is just showing caution--unnecessary caution that's not needed, but caution that I don't think is scum), that means the pool for last scum is literally:
{AGar, Winter Flakes}.

While it could be either, I favor AGar > Winter Flakes from overall play across the game.

But that said, today is 100% a flip-Oka day.

We can spend as much time as we like discussing things, but the game is pretty much won at this point. Scum basically lost the moment they decided to bus Luca, and then lost the coinflip yesterday when they banked on Ythan, and then lost further last night by missing the Neapolitan that they were aiming for. And they know it, too.

[mastina]

you think it's totally impossible jjh could be a scum backup neapolitan?

100% completely and totally impossible, yes.

That is not a mechanic any Normal mod would ever use, yet alone a Normal listmod. Even were they to try it, I guarantee you that mechanic and interaction would be hard-veto'd by the reviewer. It might technically be a 'normal' mechanic allowed by the rules technically. But that sort of interaction isn't Normal and would be borderline bastard.

[mastina]

Guess we're yeeting Oka today. K.

This is scum who has given up and in spite of not conceding, knows the game is over and that the scum have lost.

[mastina]

why hasn't hop claimed yet btw?

Because there isn't a clear consensus on whether he should.

I am confident enough in him being town that I am okay with him not claiming today because I feel that he is town enough without claiming.

However, I am not the entirety of the town; there's other opinions to be had, so it's not clear if he should to alleviate the doubt or if he shouldn't because of trust in him.

[mastina]

jjh is there no doubt in your mind oka is scum?

There's none in mine.

Oka voting, and trying to push, jjh, is clearly a combination of desperation (can't win the game if town doesn't buy into the paranoid occam's razor violation) and a deliberate attempt to avoid spewing further information after he flips scum.

Because picking roles for a setup isnt about picking the least amount of modifiers?

Sure, but in terms of setup design I am a NRG reviewer and I can attest to how any setup where jjh is a scum announcing neapolitan of any kind, backup, modifiers, full, when the town has a 3x announcing neapolitan, is incredibly unlikely, borderline-bastard, requires a bunch of contrived convoluted circumstances to justify existing and runs contrary to years upon years of setup design.

Whereas a town universal backup inhering the role of Dannflor's 3x announcing Neapolitan after he was the N1 scum nightkill is a much, much simpler explanation that fits into the setup's balance (I have a fairly good approximation of this game's TPRs), mitigates the swing involved in the game, and fits, personality-wise, with what I know of jjh's play as a power role of this kind.

[mastina]

So we should spend the rest of the game eliming the entire titus wagon even though titus is unflipped?

I mean--since 'the rest of the game' is likely to be, precisely, 2-3 days (because between Oka+AGar+Winter Flakes, and highly likely to be Oka+AGar, we're gonna find the last two scum), pretty much, yes.

If the game went past that because somehow that trio didn't contain both the remaining scum: Sure, we can reassess and reevaluate.

But until such a time as that happens (when it is almost assuredly not going to), it is a safe assumption Titus is town.

The scum were already down a member--losing one member, their Goon, is fine, but losing a second member when the scumteam know there's a UB turned 3x Neapolitan out there who could generate results that threaten to crush them, along with the interactions generated from the flip of said scum and those that have pushed that player as scum, is not. By losing two scum, the scum are trapped by the combined POE of {power roles, flipped scum's interactions with town, town who pushed for the flip of the flipped scum, scum's interactions with the flipped scum}.

They couldn't afford to lose Bell.

So they doubled down on trying to save him.

You can see it in how hard OkaPoka was pushing Titus there and you can see it in how AGar had one of the scummiest possible hop-ons of all time. They knew that if the Bell wagon went through, they were doomed. So the scum tried to hard-force a Titus wagon.

Not something likely to happen if Titus is scum herself.

Plus, there can only be so many scum.

You pretty much have a guarantee of 1 scum in {Oka, A50, Hopkirk} (and it aint A50 or Hopkirk).
That means a maximum of 1 scum outside the group.

Also Titus had been scumreading the Bell slot the entirety of the game pretty much, dating back to D1 when the slot was occupied by the worst. Of all the Bell pushers, across the game she was one of the hardest. She pushed Luca and she pushed Bell; for her to be scum, she'd have needed to double-bus: not impossible, but incredibly improbable imo.

[mastina]

doing what mastina wants fills me with a powerful foreboding.

If it makes you feel better you can think of it as doing what some other town player wants.

ok oka is scumclaiming lol

Pretty much yeah.

[mastina]

Huh.

IV being a PR is a little bit surprising, but I still think it works with Hopkirk as town anyway; I can explain why if people would like.

On that note, do y'all wanna do this the cautious meticulous drawn-out way where we take our time and are methodical, or the yolo-let's-speedrun-end-the game route?

VOTE: AGar
My vote's on the latter of the two options.

[mastina]

god i can already hear her typing "a vanilla cop enabler specifically? no. but did i strongly suspect there was something like that? yes."

A vanilla cop enabler specifically? No. But did I strongly suspect there was something like that? Yes.












But for real tho, in actuality, my setup spec was based on a realization: last game had 14 town players and of them, 7 were town PRs, with the scum having compensation in 3/4 of them being reasonably strong scum PRs. To wit,
Town Lazy Jailkeeper
Town Personal Watcher
Town Checker Fruit Vendor
Town Vanilla Cop
Town Combined Motion Detector Mailman
Town Follower
Town Even Night Vigilante

Mafia Tracker
Mafia Multitasking Role Watcher
Mafia Night 1-3 Compulsive Visitor
Mafia Goon

This was last game's setup. Our odd-night vigilante is loosely equivalent to the even-night vigilante. Our tracker is loosely equivalent to the follower. Our announcing babysitter is loosely equivalent to the lazy jailkeeper. We have a vanilla cop just like last game. Which leaves 3 PRs left. Our 3x Neapolitan adds some extra investigative power, like the personal watcher/checker/motion detector did; our Universal Backup adds to the stability of the town's roles being fairly swing-heavy; one final PR can fit, in this case being a negative utility role.

Overall, the strength of the PRs is loosely equivalent. 3x Announcing Neapolitan is stronger than any of the investigatives last game, but gated in shots and in the Announcing modifier providing the scum extra help. Announcing Babysitter is a weaker protective overall, tho, and a universal backup is a good way to help mitigate this. The vanilla cop enabler serves as an extra town PR, to limit the neapolitan's pool of possible innocent results further while not actually boosting the town's strength.

Ironically I thought Hopkirk WAS the vanilla cop because that was exactly the sort of role he'd need to be to not be too strong of a TPR, but being an enabler for it works just as well. His presence as a TPR doesn't overpower the town.

I would expect three scum PRs here, of similar strength. The informed activated bulletproof is a counter to both the vig and the babysitter. The multitasking rolecop/roleblocker gives the scum incredible investigative strength (stronger than what they had last game) AND a further counter to most town roles: the Neapolitan, Vanilla Cop, Tracker, and Babysitter can all be countered by it.

So in those two scum roles in of itself, the scum are at least as strong as last game if not stronger--fitting, for the town roles being loosely as strong, but in some ways stronger.

I thought the game could have as few as 5 TPRs, but in this case with this specific combination I can see it being 7.

But this is largely moot given that I'm pretty sure an AGar elimination (and if necessary, Winter Flakes to follow, but AGar > Winter Flakes imo) just ends the game by flipping the last scum and revealing their role and then we can see the full setup from that and the mods' thought process in designing the game.

[mastina]

i think it's just winterflakes, honestly

Just before daystart I actually did some isos, and they are part of the reason I so strongly prefer AGar.

hercule are you trying to shade me by saying im not obvtowning rn or something? my early game was rigid af last game so I dont get the comparison

Hercule seems a bit showy this game in terms of I guess id say trying to townpost and the approach to me seemed like an attempt to shade even tho my playstyle last early game was also definitely not obvtowny so that was a weird to me

haven't really determined if the "showy" thing is town or scum indicative since I think it can come from either quite easily so ye. id probably say that's a slight early SL of mine overall

the worst (not the alt of "the best") is playing how i expect town him to so he's a prob town guy but I also don't know if id be capable of scumreading him early game anyway given his style so eh?

can you expand on this? I'm curious how you got this from what little he's actually done
I liked his progression on me but I think he knows me well enough that it wasn't super alignment indicative

the thing is i actually haven't seen him play scum game, but i've seen him play quite a few town games, so im kinda predisposed to townreading him

but i will say upon rereading that i might actually disagree with my original take (not sure how much to value this given there isn't a whole heap of content from him yet) based on how he's being a little snipey and the whole "i feel like this interaction was not a valuable use of my time" which seems a little uhh... lowkey LAMISTy I guess? more so than what i'd expect from him? like on reevaluation of his ISO after you asked this i'm actually stuck between reading his tone (which is relatively good imo) and his questioning (which seems a bit P E R F O R M A T I V E and not like they're really going anywhere)

yknow what
imma do it
imma hit him with it for the first time i think ever? i think i SR the duck
VOTE: The Worst

@Dann
what dont you like about my TW vote?

Hey TW how do you feel that I'm voting you

@Oka
I've kept up with the game pretty well for the most part
Lack of engagement is mostly down to the fact that I do most of my reading after midnight because ya boy been having some pretty busy days
also the whole lld/herc thing has been t/t to me and i still haven't really figured out how i feel about dgb yet
i like mastina's PoE for the most part

i will say about TW is i would've expected him to take the initiative on interacting with me given i was voting him and i feel like town!him would've had his interest piqued by me having a vote on him
i legitimately think it's >rand scum that he didn't acknowledge it

not that in particular
more the fact that he didn't bring it up at all given our history
like not even making a joke about it
it could also just be being busy yeah but i was expecting *something*
especially considering the votes have been on him for like... 4+ days now and haven't been moved

Hey Dann
You said my vote on TW was bad ages ago
Not much has changed outside of the fact he's back from VLA now and you're voting him
what's up with that

VOTE: luca
the spirit of dann flows through me

(I feel some context there is necessary: at the time of this Luca vote, the only other vote there was Bell. It's certainly

possible

that two scum decided to bus Luca early but not likely imo.)

This, aside from what felt like incredibly good, albeit ultimately wrong, of a progression on hercule on D1 and the progression into the tw scumread.

It's not impossible to be scum; I'm not quoting the aspects that were the most-possibly-scumbuddy-signally; I'm explicitly quoting the aspects that are least-possibly-scumbuddy-signally in that overwhelmingly I feel that Winter Flakes is a poorer fit.

(I should also quote the dead scum's isos to show it even better but this'll have to do for now.)

[mastina]

Eat at Arby's.

Also AGar has pretty much given up and has plainly done so since the Bell elimination in a way that looks particularly like scum. It was there yesterday with his play then and is stronger today.

[mastina]

Have Said Or Done Something Towny

innocentvillager
Agar
Dunnstral

Have Not Said Or Done Something Towny

Winter Flakes

AGar -

also GTH town. hasn't added a lot of content but I remember thinking 292 felt like genuine frustration that bubbled up after game 2 started feeling similar to game 1 for them. obvi need to see more

Winter Flakes -

town pretty sure. love their approach to my slot to be honest. looks careful and considered. also his read on the worst. i'm a sucker for reads developing over time with the logic for it expressed in the thread. maybe this is the obvtowning i was told about

Towny

Winter Flakes

Feel Like They're Town

innocentvillager
Agar
Jjh

(For the record, Rule of Three would implicate AGar here.)

Right now I believe the following players are Town:
IV
Mastina
Ceph
Poka
A50
AGar

Town:

Mastina, IV, Agar, A50, Poka, Dunnstral, Xtoxm, Ceph

PoE:

Bell, Titus, Ythan, Hopkirk, Winter Flakes, jjh

@Poka:

you leaned town on Agar earlier, but now you're willing to bet the game on him being Town. Explain this progression, please.

So you think scum never move from one town wagon to another unless absolutely necessary? That seems really weak to me. also:

im willing to bet the game on
me, dunn, agar, ceph, iv, xtoxm,

maybe ythan

all being town here. that's 7. we have 15 people alive, i think if i find like 1 or 2 more townies then i dont really care about who we eliminate as long as we just cull from the bottom

You had already townbinned Agar here, when you weren't yet sure on Ythan. Your progression doesn't quite add up, unless I'm missing something?

(These two are to save time on an Oka iso given how beefy Oka's iso is to show how he townbinned AGar in a way he did not for Winter Flakes.)

[mastina]

I think Winterflakes belongs in the blackhole tier.

S_S says that Winter/Oka and Winter/A50 aren't partners.

Agar has been good at setting up expectations in relation to his play and his limited schedule. I don't agree with his hopkirk read. I do think his takes are his own, that he's not following the zeitgeist, that his play is in line with his behavior from last time I played with him (a town whip so to speak) and that the discrepancies I noticed, he explained away to my satisfaction. I think he's been good about interacting with everyone whilst narrative building over only a few. Null to light town. Wish I had more, I don't.

I feel like if I had a starmap I could look from my previous game with him to this one and say, yeah, that's Agar. Also, his contempt doesn't look fake to me.

VOTE: Agar
Wagon totally pure. Not locktowning Agar.

Q. Why this wording for voting Agar?

Lilith wants to know why Mastina is scum reading Agar. She can't seem to find a reason why he's even her 3rd strongest scum read.

2. Sorry, he said he couldn't find a position on Agar so I helpfully provided him a position on Agar. A position that hasn't changed much. I note that your own argument notes his originality which I posted before you.

@Hopkirk, after work. I find Agar's case on you more convincing than the other way around.

All of 5281.

To nip this in the bud.
There's a difference between what people think scum do and what they actually do. I'm stating that Agar's expectations are not out of line with a town mindset. That goes back to him acting kinda like a town whip. You could easily copy these expectations and slap them on a town player as scum for failing to be 'townie enough' or misapply it. But from observation I don't think Hopkirk has been terribly step from what Agar is accusing him of.

All of 5310.

[mastina]

don't think flakes is necessarily town but he's being a lot bolder this game which is... something?

pedit: i mean i guessssss but performative for flakes (uncrowned) idk if thats actually a scummy thing

maybe uncrowned is fishing

agar is null for me

lean town:

iv, agar, luca, titus

scum remnants:

bell, ythan, jjh, flakes, a50

im willing to bet the game on
me, dunn, agar, ceph, iv, xtoxm, maybe ythan all being town here. that's 7. we have 15 people alive, i think if i find like 1 or 2 more townies then i dont really care about who we eliminate as long as we just cull from the bottom

can we all be friends and rate my towncore
me, dunn, agar, ceph, iv, xtoxm, ythan
add a couple more names collectively and then i really dont care who we kill as long as we just start chaining down the list

flakes u need to do better catching up sorry, i am underwhelmed

well now that ythan is a lot more clearly town, agar's vote on a50 in retrospect is incredibly townie esp considering that agar was voting ythan beforehand
even if its moving from town to town, that's just unnecessary stuff from him so i feel comfortable enough

So you think scum never move from one town wagon to another unless absolutely necessary? That seems really weak to me. also:

im willing to bet the game on
me, dunn, agar, ceph, iv, xtoxm,

maybe ythan

all being town here. that's 7. we have 15 people alive, i think if i find like 1 or 2 more townies then i dont really care about who we eliminate as long as we just cull from the bottom

You had already townbinned Agar here, when you weren't yet sure on Ythan. Your progression doesn't quite add up, unless I'm missing something?

i already townleaned agar so as my ythan opinion rose, so did my agar opinion
was more comfortable townbinning agar at that moment

so if you truly believe that, agar is town and you have to unvote him

im convinced
VOTE: agar[\vote]

(This was a deliberately broken vote.)

im convinced
VOTE: agar[\vote]

is that a real vote
idk on AGar anymore either, he's back in my PoE, even though he's playing quite differently from his one recent scumgame and sort of being his town!tunnelly self i guess that just doesn't mean much

votes are a societal construct
that being said agar is in my townpool

jjh is at 2 votes and iv just expressed apprehension about keeping his vote there - are you really claiming this agar vote has anything to do with jjh's wagon?

Fair warning: will be fairly V/LA due to lifeguard training stuff. Can post right now tho, so...

No one ever fucking considered that scum might *gasp*

lie

.

To be fair. I presented doubt towards Titus for that exact reason. However. This is a roleclaim that will literally be confirmed by another player. It's not something scum will lie about, especially not in the way Hopkirk did. The evolution of the claimed result was incredibly genuine.
VOTE: AGar
I'd actually prefer OkaPoka > Bell > AGar > WinterFlakes so AGar's not my first choice, but he's infinitesimally a better elimination than jjh and has a high chance of flipping scum, soooooooo.

are we going to ignore how bad this post is

Look at the gamestate when mastina voted AGar. AGar was at 4 votes and jjh was at 2, except AGar was also a building wagon and jjh had you expressing uncertainty.

So what mastina is basically saying is she wants to vote her third scumread rather than pushing me or bell because she is scared of jjh being eliminated? Mind you we had 10 days left on the deadline as well so this isn't a deadline thing. And we know mastina doesn't like playing politics, she explicitly said so d1 if you remember. So why is she putting AGar @ e2, scumread n3 with so much time left on the deadline? Well, I think it's because she's just trying to pull a fast one tbh, disguising it as 'protecting' jjh is extremely wolfy imo because its a lie. JJH doesn't need protection, she's not playing politics, she's openwolfing it.

(I could quote more of Oka's Chainsaw Defense of AGar here if you'd like but I think you get the idea.)

VOTE: jjh
i think this is worse than winter flakes and thus bottom

Pretty much speaks for itself imo for why AGar's a higher-probability scumbuddy than Winter Flakes.

[mastina]

Vote Count 1.4

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

Not Voting

(2): Titus, AGar

Vote Count 1.12

the worst

(2): jjh927, Winter Flakes

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Vote Count 1.14

the worst

(6): jjh927, Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir, OkaPoka, Dannflor

Hopkirk

(2): Almost50, AGar

Vote Count 1.17

the worst

(3): Winter Flakes, Titus, Cephrir

Hopkirk

(1): AGar

Vote Count 1.19

Ythan

(8): OkaPoka, Luca Blight, Dannflor, Cephrir, Lady Lambdadelta, Titus, AGar, innocentvillager

Bell

(1): Winter Flakes

Vote Count 2.5

Almost50

(3): Xtoxm, Ythan, AGar

Luca Blight

(2): Bell, Winter Flakes

Vote Count 2.10 (FINAL)

Luca Blight

(8): Winter Flakes, Dunnstral, OkaPoka, Titus, Almost50, Bell, Cephrir, Luca Blight

Almost50

(2): AGar, Ythan

Overall Winter Flakes has a much better vote history.

Vote Count 3.6

AGar

(4): Hopkirk, Almost50, Titus, mastina

mastina

(3): OkaPoka, AGar, Bell

jjh927

(1): Winter Flakes

While here, both are voting town, note that AGar's company is literally two flipped scum and that I was explicitly a counterwagon to AGar (whose wagon peaked at 5 votes).

[mastina]

Awwww I wanted to be right on 3 scum.

Ah, well.

VOTE: Winter Flakes

[mastina]

@mastina, can we take today a little slower and make sure we get it right? I feel that we have to get it today as tomorrow you will be dead and I will probably be eliminated.

That's fair, though that being said.

Ythan is conftown here--if I'm alive in the 4p mylo it's because he's not.

And within the three remaining, not gonna lie, I'd rather it be Ythan alive to sort than me because I'd be at a bloody loss.
I think that Hopkirk has been pretty town and his claim is fairly town, but it is at least

plausible

he could be scum.
I think that Titus has been pretty town overall; she was the counterwagon to scum and has, consistently, voted scum and pressured scum and been pressured by scum, but these interactions are less frequent than my memory states so it is at least

plausible

she could be scum even if I don't think so now. (Heck I did literally write a case for why she was scum and spent 1.5 day phases convinced of it.)
I think that you've been pretty town by play, tho without a full game review I do admit that objectively speaking, you do have a very notable weak point compared to Titus and Hopkirk, but I'm not naive enough to assume that means you must be scum as it's definitely plausible that you were town with that stance.

So ngl I'm really, really, REALLY hoping it's just Winter Flakes here and in the event that it's not, that scum choose to kill me over Ythan.

[mastina]

mastina, is this actually what happened in the aforementioned game?

I don't remember the game in question; Hopkirk would need to link it to me for me to remember it.

[mastina]

I wonder what xtoxm was pushing at time of death too. I dont see bell/oka as very analytical scum players and their partner is either someone who's been checked out or you, so I feel like shooting obvtown or correct players are their most likely moves

Honestly my theory on the Xtoxm kill is that it was scum aiming for the UB-turned-Neapolitan and that they missed due to it, an explicitly PR-based kill that they guessed wrong on because they misread the writing on the wall.

Sadly, that doesn't narrow down the scum pool.

Winter Flakes isn't the type to have seen the truth and clearly didn't know jjh was the Neapolitan.
You and Oka both fielded thoughts of me either being or faking a PR with some sort of reason to believe jjh was town from it, and didn't identify jjh as the Neapolitan.
Titus is the type of player to misidentify the situation and think she has the answer while actually being off the mark.

The player most likely to have noticed as scum is Hopkirk, but even there I can see Hopkirk having made the error in judgement or not pushing the stance strongly enough. (Tho admittedly I should probably recheck this to be sure.)

[mastina]

@Mastina - is Ythan mech!conf-town in a way i'm forgetting about or did you mean a strong townread?

He hammered scum when the wagons were dead even between Titus and Bell.

If Titus is scum, then by virtue of there being one scum left, Ythan cannot be scum.

If Titus isn't scum, then by virtue of hammering scum rather than town, Ythan will not be scum.

In either case, Ythan is basically conftown. Not by a mechanical result but by a play result.

[mastina]

i feel like scum!ythan hammer on town!titus would still have resulted in bell/oka flips but scum!ythan would have been in a worse spot afterwards?

Would it have, tho? A Titus townflip there could easily lead to a "so this was a repeat of D1 then". Where people assumed Titus v Bell was the same as LLD v DGB.

Plus, as Ceph mentioned, there was also Ythan's reaction to Almost50.

I don't think Ythan's ever scum here; effort is better spent elsewhere.

[mastina]

For the record: I echo sentiments on being largely okay on Hopkirk.

For me it's Winter Flakes > Cephrir > Titus > Hopkirk, but with the caveat that I do need to review both Titus and Hopkirk in particular to affirm if they're town.

[mastina]

Fine, then. We lose if it's not winter flakes, I guess. You guys are ridiculous.

I'm sorry but I'm being asked to judge which of these slots that I overall feel are incredibly town and have been for the vast majority of the game, is the least-town of them; I'm being asked to judge which of these slots that have almost nothing scum about them, is the most likely to be scum.

I admit that it does deserve further deep delving into crucial areas of the game but on that metric your objective towncred and objective scum measurements are in fact lower/higher (respectively) than most others, at least without a deep delve into their nuances.

But subjectively I do see the town in you and the lack of scum.
I just also see the town in Titus and Hopkirk and the lack of scum in them.

[mastina]

It's kind of insulting to be rated lower than titus' empty iso because loludidntvoteforbell.

Fair, which is why if it's not Winter Flakes and if I live to see tomorrow I would need to reassess because the last scum is probably a PR meaning that there IS the chance that Bell v Titus as SGoon v SPR, but I stick to preferring to cross that bridge IF we come to it.

[mastina]

MOD: due to the site downtime and the fact that tomorrow is a holiday (Easter), can we get a deadline extension to compensate for the lost weekend and leniency in prod timers?

Seems prudent, because I know I at the very least can't play until Monday--I was planning on playing today but the site downtime fucked that over, soooooo.

[mastina]

it would appear the only feeling i have left for this game is irritation.

Valid.

oh hey now that w13 is over I can point out that titus was town in that game at the same time she's allegedly been town in this one and her posts there have about 100 times as much life and effort.

Actually as a player in both I side with Titus here--from my point of view, her activity was similar in both games. It was similarly low for long bouts of time, with key periods of being higher than normal.

But I do admit that, if the game doesn't end with a Winter Flakes elimination and I lived to see D7, I would do a full review to check it out.

[mastina]

(For the record in the postgame survey I gave myself the lowest of scores for any player. Literally everyone else I rated higher than me, because my rating of myself was 5. Objectively, I did catch two scum, Oka and Bell. But objectively, this was still a massive failure because of where the other two scum were, with me hard-defending them. I wanted to do better this game than last game but ended up doing exactly the same if not worse overall. I had four wrong scumreads in a game where the maximum acceptable amount was 2-3. I knew that Luca was not very town but was convinced wrongly so that the difference in hercule's gameplay was strong enough that the slot couldn't be scum. I knew Hopkirk wasn't cleared by jjh but was defending Hopkirk strongly and thought the claim was plausible and within the 3 last candidates while I did think Cephrir was overall the least likely to be scum I was very very very glad that I was killed because I very very very much did not want to be the lylo decider without a clue who it could be. I did

okay

, but in a playerlist that was this good overall, 'okay' doesn't cut it, I needed to do great and I didn't.)

[mastina]

(Also incidentally in my scores there's an actually very embarrassing herpderp moment. I had a mental brain fart moment when writing my scores postgame. )