Open 812 Guardians of the Fortress - Game Over

[unwnd]

Just general pressure/poor personal habits and degraded sleep that puts me on edge

[Something_Smart]

To be fair I am still scumreading unwnd; I realize now that my comment was ambiguous. Dunn-scum is more likely than it was before, not more likely than unwnd-scum.

[Lukewarm]

@Absinthe, I had some thoughts before the Briar flip about the Wall and Gate solves, in a "If x is scum at the wall, then y is scum at the gate" and vice versa, but all of that thinking was built around Infinity being scum. I am now quite unsure about the gate.

Please, for the love of God, let us resolve the Wall before the Gate. Because I do not want to have to cast my vote after you have left the thread, so you can tell me if I end up tunneling again.

[unwnd]

Let me catch up on needed rest and stop getting myself into a fuss about things

Lukewarm I want you to know I sincerely apologize and have been unhappy with my play

That goes outside of the game, I need to take better care of my health

[absinthe]

@Absinthe, I had some thoughts before the Briar flip about the Wall and Gate solves, in a "If x is scum at the wall, then y is scum at the gate" and vice versa, but all of that thinking was built around Infinity being scum. I am now quite unsure about the gate.

Please, for the love of God, let us resolve the Wall before the Gate. Because I do not want to have to cast my vote after you have left the thread, so you can tell me if I end up tunneling again.

Going last suits my indecisive, paralytic ass quite well.

[unwnd]

Also I agree with going first and would vastly prefer that

I would either want to give us a lease on life or falter gracefully on being wrong

[Lukewarm]

Absinthe, I am thinking that something_smart and unwnd are the same alignment and that Dunn and Catboi are the same alignment.

I am less sure which is the scum pair and which is the town pair tho.

[absinthe]

Can you explain why you think the two pairs are the same alignment?

[Lukewarm]

Can you explain why you think the two pairs are the same alignment?

If I do, unwnd will be mad at me

Spoiler:

I am going to type it up anyways, give me a min

[Lukewarm]

Basically, the scum team wanted to win the Keep. Like that is the hardest mini game to win, but the moment Ana locked herself in to the keep and declared she would vote for Briar, they suddenly had a chance to win the keep :shakes fists at Ana: But only if they managed to get a 1:1:1 split. So, from that point on, I believe that the top scum strategy would be to make that happen, win the keep, and up their chance at winning by a lot. Now they only have to win 1 game out of the Wall/Gate instead of needed to win both.

So I looked back at the end of day 1, now knowing the alignments of You, Me, Briar, Ana, and Infinity, to see how they could be trying to make that happen.

And these two moves made by S_S and Dunn caught my eye:

So are we trying to avoid doubling scum up at the Gate? Because that gives them a lot of choices for who the IC is?

If so, then I think I'd like Infinity at the Wall.

VOTE: Wall

So the arrangement is currently at:
Keep: Briar, Ana, Absinthe
Wall: Unwnd, Luke, [Open]
Gate: Catboi, [Open], [Open]

Something_Smart suggested that Infinity take the Wall, and Dunn responds by locking himself into the wall.

These are the possible scum team combinations given the information that we have.

[Dunn, S_S] / [Dunn, Catboi] / [unwnd/ S_S] / [unwnd / catboi]

[Dunn, S_S]

If Dunn is S_S's partner, then S_S suggesting Infinity take the Wall is a pretty bad play.
If Infinity sees that message, agrees and votes herself into the wall, then the scum team is now looking at a 1(keep):2(gate):0(wall). They must move someone from the gate to the wall, and the keep stays Briar;Ana;Absinthe and they throw their keep auto-win away. So [dunn, S_S] seems unlikely

[unwnd, S_S]

If Unwnd is S_S partner on the other hand, then this is good.
All he cares about is not ended up at the wall himself. He gets a 1:1:1 split if Infinity puts herself there OR if Dunn puts himself there to stop his suggestion. So this makes sense if the scum teams goal at that time was a 1:1:1 split.

[Dunn, catboi]

Dunn has to make sure he ends up at the wall, because catboi is already locked in to the keep. If he does not end up at the wall. So if he sees that the Wall is down to only 1 slot left, and S_S has suggested Infinity takes it, then he has to quick lock into the wall if the scum team has a shot at the 1:1:1 arrangement

[unwnd / catboi]

I am glad you asked me to type this up, because I guess I cant rule this one out...
For some reason I thought catboi locked himself in earlier, but he locked himself in after Ana did. So that could have been when he was assuring they got the 1:1:1 split. This would mean that all 3 scum locked in super early tho, which is pretty ballsy imo


So I take back my earlier confidence. I have actually just ruled out [Dunn, S_S] as a scum team, but not as a pair of townies

[Something_Smart]

Just FYI I don't think my first response to the Briar flip as scum is to rub it in Ana's face.

Not sure how much that's worth, but maybe it's worth something.

[absinthe]

Wall:

Unwnd (1), Luke (5), Dunn (7)

Keep:

Briar (2), Ana (3), absinthe (6)

Gate:

catboi (4), Something_Special (8), infinity

I guess my question is why scum-Dunn would wait until almost too late to lock into the Wall.

Thinking a bit, in a perfect world I think my groups right now would look like this:

Gate: Absinthe/Anastasia/Catboi
Wall: Unwnd/Dunnstral/Something_Smart
Keep: Briar/Lukewarm/Infinity

I think Unwnd/Infinity are interchangeable for the last two, but the Gate group would resolve a few of my reads? Like, confirming whether or not absinthe/Ana is T/T or T/S (because if it's S/S What The Fuck) would be important to me, and also it'd be nice if that was the case because I haven't gotten anything really Good from catboi yet and seeing whether or not he was confirmed would be cool. (This is also the assumption that the mafia would make the conversation between the former keep on going to the death? I think? Like there's already some uh, doubts between absinthe/Ana that they've vocalized so duh mafia preys on that.) This is the group with maximum WIFOM fuckery though so I worry that I'd get snowed pretty fast were mafia to divert from this but I'm gonna assume they'd play it sort of straightforward despite me talking about all this stuff out loud.

For the wall group, that's honestly the group where I'm like... could be any alignment, and I wouldn't be too surprised? I lean town on unwnd, actually, I townread unwnd now that I think about it a little bit just from how he's been playing even if I was questioning the 'why' he was trying to be so... diplomatic? I guess? It doesn't feel slimy like he's trying to placate people so much as just... figure shit out, so far. Which is nice. The latter two I have less experience with and in general don't find easy reads, so resolving that is a bit out of my paygrade. I am curious still about S_S's guess on me and why it bothered him, because he didn't say anything about it more and while I appreciate him not outting it for fear it's correct, it's a little... IDK. I guess my expectation was that he'd engage me even if my reply to him was very silly, because if it's something he was worrying about a bit he'd attempt to resolve it somehow.

And the last group, I Am Town, Luke has felt good so far and I do think that like, while he's not new to the site, the format itself is something he's still adjusting to and trying to keep up as mafia while in a group playing the Townie Pageant Game would probably be hell for him. If he's town he feels like he's the safest vote for us to pick and if he's scum he'll probably slip or something and we just vote either myself or Infinity if she's in here with us, and it's easy from there on.

As for order of who we let stay first, I think that (in the little world I am creating here) I'd let Wall > Keep > Gate do their votes? Actually, uh, probably Keep first now that I am thinking about it because if we're all voting for townreads and this is somehow the group that gets messed up and votes mafia, it'd be important to reset assuming we'd placed at that point a decent amount of trust into their reads. The IC should stick around as long as needed to dictate everything obviously, but now that I'm working through it I am very much into the Keep going first unless we all collectively agree one person is /disgustingly/ townie (sidenote: hey I'm the disgustingly townie one lol) and wanna see their reads or something pending a Wall-flip.

My brain is not functioning after typing this. Please enjoy.

This is a lot of wrong.

What we do isn't locked in, it depends on everyone's location and who gets swapped. We should probably solve one of the swapped groups first. Probably the IC group or the keep group if applicable, because those are the easier groups for town.

Wall group should go last, it is the hardest for town.

I don't think that wall grouping is a good idea but that's just my opinion

The

Gate

is where we should have/should put the towniest members, for obvious reasons, except for 1 person we are voting at the keep

I don't want to tell the scumteam how to play but it's pretty obvious they're going to send briar into the gate and then ic her

The three posts above, I feel like Dunn doesn't post this if he's scum with Briar.

If Briar and Anastasia are both town, Why doesn't anybody care/want to be in the keep? Shouldn't mafia want to put a member in there so they can swap more effectively?

Prescient.

[absinthe]

absinthe I still don't understand why you think I pick you as the IC over Briar.

I feel like this post wouldn't have occurred to scum-SS to make.

[Lukewarm]

I guess my question is why scum-Dunn would wait until almost too late to lock into the Wall.

I mean, he voted into the wall immediately after I voted into the wall. He made no other posts between my vote and his.

So he waited and chatted when there were 2 slots in each. Once there was only 1 slot left, his next post was an empty vote.

But I do get your point that he probably could have gone to the wall sooner

[absinthe]

If you had voted yourself in to the Keep, I would most likely would have immediately voted the Gate.

I am idly wondering how that would have played out. We might have wound up both in the Gate, with you the likely IC.

A scenario like that was why I thought I would be a decent player to go to the Gate. In fact, the recollection of a newbie game where I replaced into a town slot at 5P ELO with 2 confirmed town was why the Gate was my second choice. The way I chose to play that situation worked pretty well as the unconfirmed town in ELO.

Neither Catboi nor S_S began day 2 here the way I approached that game, which is curious, but <idiosyncratic player>.

[absinthe]

I guess my question is why scum-Dunn would wait until almost too late to lock into the Wall.

I mean, he voted into the wall immediately after I voted into the wall. He made no other posts between my vote and his.

So he waited and chatted when there were 2 slots in each. Once there was only 1 slot left, his next post was an empty vote.

But I do get your point that he probably could have gone to the wall sooner

Dunn's first or 2nd post indicated he wanted to go to the Wall. He didn't telegraph the bejesus out of his intentions the way I did, but he did make his intentions clear, I guess.

S_S went ahead and voted because he wanted to end the day and stop the conversations. There are town reasons to want to do that.

Scum probably had more than enough info to decide how they wanted to set up Day 2, though, so it wouldn't be giving up much in exchange for doing the townie thing there.

[absinthe]

I feel like there has to be some good data in the post-swap pre-keep-flip section of the thread and that's where I'm focusing right now.

I'm going to reread catboi/S_S, because I had it the other way around versus Ana yesterday and with the switch happening as it did I feel even more confident in like... trying to collaborate and listen.

Can you explain why? You kept saying you thought I might be scum yesterday but it never really went beyond "not towny enough" and "reacted to me moving funny"

Mmm. I really just didn't like the way you responded to how I was behaving, honestly? It doesn't make sense to me for you to have that sort of reaction -- like, I dunno, you can just... challenge me yourself if you're town? Like, it felt emotionally out of place more than anything, disconnected from what you could have done. And in general I'm gonna be real, I can't remember much else you did beyond that but that's generally a sign to me that scum is like, either failing to keep up or is making content up that's passable.

But, knowing that you are a good scum player, I think I should give you some benefit that you could do more than passable; in the moment, my read is also somewhat anchored on the fact that you're fighting S_S who I thought was town yesterday which makes me wanna hunker down and just throw you out right now.

I don't understand whaat you mean. By "challenge you" do you mean go to the keep myself? Because I didn't think you were automatically scum for it, I just didn't understand wat you were doing and was...a little frustrated I guess because I'd had a plan for how I wanted to do things and you disrupted it before I had a chance to post. So everything in my reaction after was trying to understand why you did it because I wasn'tgoing to assume you wer town, I wanted to question you to figure out if what you were doing made sense. And ultimately I concluded that I didn't see scum motivation in your play. But it feels like you're hung up on the severity of that initial reaction and, uh, maybe a little upset by it and looking at things objectively? Because I have no idea how you'd categorize me as "less memorable" than something_smart, really.

And, uh, thank for the compliment but I don't think I'm

that

good considering my recent games. (also this narrows your identity down to a few people but none of them seem to quite fit >_>)

Okay, so, for me I scumread that frustration; my assumption was that it was more the sort of frustration that comes from scum who's pissed off frankly that town has jumped the gun and has suddenly limited the options for scum to weasel in. This also compounded with the fact that I believe you were later to get into things, even just by a little bit, and lost an important moment that comes with the very beginning of games.

I wasn't upset by it and I don't think I'm hung up; frankly it was the scummiest thing that I could recall from D1. I was townreading Ana/absinthe hard, Luke/Unwnd/S_S to varying degrees, leaving you/Dunn/Infinity as the three and with you having the singular Thing that was like, the worst to me. Maybe I was being too harsh on that when it was happening because it was easy to latch onto, but I dunno. I want to believe that maybe somehow I am a good player and can get things right with my reads sometimes.

S_S was rather active mechanically, and I remembered that. Like, it made an impact on me. Maybe it was being recent that sort of... blurred my memory of you, but right now I'm trying to figure out between you two and I'm willing to take a step away from my read from yesterday.

What do you think about the Wall right now? Who would you vote out?

(And hehe.)

Does this feel partnery? I don't think it does.

But, I am extremely wary that they both are really good at partner interactions.

the way you two solve for the wall is pretty important for figuring out the right one between the two of you to flip

remember the scum on the Gate can't really bus the scum on the Wall if the Keep is already townsided.

And of course, while it sounded great at the time, bussing is very much an option here.

Okay, Ana, hear me out...

I think that S_S might be town for how Infinity was pushing him versus catboi.

(I'm treating Infinity like she's flipped scum currently which, maybe is not the best method but it's the likely outcome here.)

Stuff like this from Briar...meaningless. And she knew we'd know it's meaningless, looking back. But I HATE to ignore the biggest iso in the game.

How's this for a towntell

If I'm scum then we had six options and this seems like the literal worst one. Not only would we have chosen me over Infinity to try to carry the Gate, but we would have picked the IC to be someone who has demolished scum-me before and whose towngame I respect immensely. I don't know who Briar and Ana are but I highly doubt that I would be more scared of them as scum than I would be of ffery.

I want to trust this sentiment but I just...can't.

I'm very much in the depths of self-doubt, though.

Hahaha, okay.

I miss you absinthe, and I am so sorry Infinity.

Can I still have a glass of wine?

NOT THE KIND OF WINE I WANTED

Okay, so, for me I scumread that frustration; my assumption was that it was more the sort of frustration that comes from scum who's pissed off frankly that town has jumped the gun and has suddenly limited the options for scum to weasel in. This also compounded with the fact that I believe you were later to get into things, even just by a little bit, and lost an important moment that comes with the very beginning of games.

I wasn't upset by it and I don't think I'm hung up; frankly it was the scummiest thing that I could recall from D1. I was townreading Ana/absinthe hard, Luke/Unwnd/S_S to varying degrees, leaving you/Dunn/Infinity as the three and with you having the singular Thing that was like, the worst to me. Maybe I was being too harsh on that when it was happening because it was easy to latch onto, but I dunno. I want to believe that maybe somehow I am a good player and can get things right with my reads sometimes.

S_S was rather active mechanically, and I remembered that. Like, it made an impact on me. Maybe it was being recent that sort of... blurred my memory of you, but right now I'm trying to figure out between you two and I'm willing to take a step away from my read from yesterday.

What do you think about the Wall right now? Who would you vote out?

(And hehe.)

I mean the thing is I'm way more likely to have a restrained reaction in that situation as scum, I don't let my real feelings leak out into the game because that gets me judged. Flipping out at a townie establishing themselves as town only ends up reflecting poorly on me. Like if I were scum I'd probably come in, question you coolly, and then just gradually turn up the heat and start undermining you. But my goal isn't to do that, it's to solve whether you are town and I feel like that was reflected in my approach, I wasn't coming at you with a predetermined conclusion. In general I have a harder time keeping my emotions in check as town, it's not good thing but it just tends to happen with me.

From everything I understand of something_smart, him being active mechanically is completely and utterly NAI. Why would you treat it as a towntell?

Right now as a GTH answer I'd say unwnd at the wall based on my gut feelings from day 1 but that's not a super confident read.

Okay, well, I wouldn't say you flipped out or anything for sure, but to me it did feel like your emotions seeped out a little bit despite you trying to keep them in check since you were frustrated. I don't know how I feel about you saying that you have a harder time keeping yourself in line as town though if that's the case... OTL Ugh. Okay. WHat do you think about what I said WRT Infinity/S_S not being paired? Since the implication is that you fill up the slot and, yeah.

Do you think that whenever S_S posts about mechanics, his alignment stops existing? I remembered it, which (and this is a shortcoming of mine as a player) meant I was prone more to townreading him, and it was not just for the fact he was active but I liked how he sounded while he was talking about those mechanics. I'm not treating him posting about mechanics alone as a towntell and I'm unsure if something was lost in translation there.

Okay, has anything today been influential on you yet?

AAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHH

How's this for a towntell

If I'm scum then we had six options and this seems like the literal worst one. Not only would we have chosen me over Infinity to try to carry the Gate, but we would have picked the IC to be someone who has demolished scum-me before and whose towngame I respect immensely. I don't know who Briar and Ana are but I highly doubt that I would be more scared of them as scum than I would be of ffery.

I mean, I can think of some good reasons:

Although I'm not seeing the stuff I noticed about his scum game when I meta'd him a few months ago, I'm also not seeing some of the stuff I associate with his towngame.

Maybe my glasses need adjustment.

Compare with:

only if my reads are wrong

I think it's pretty silly to have a value judgement on play that is only determined after the game is over. We want to know now what's good and what isn't; so I think that it is bad play to commit yourself to a read like that, even if the read turns out to be right in the end.

I think you are stuck in a weird place where you can't decide whether you want to shade me as bold genius scum gambitter or bad town tunnel reader and it makes you sound funny

since I think you are scummy it makes me feel I'm on the right track with this briar/absinthe plan

I think you're probably approaching reading s_s not great, though he's still leaning scum for me atm. Like, he loves to talk about things in a vacuum and not come to firm conclusions,

though the way he's doing it here I feel is +scum for him.

Re the bolded what makes the way he's doing it +scum? How does it vary from his townplay?

Also, you've repeatedly said that you're not motivated enough to obvtown this game.

What's dampening your motivation?

Honestly I feel pretty good about my TRs on briar and ana, which means I think I like putting someone I also TR strongly at the keep. Absinthe would not be that player for me, but I do feel better about her than I did before.

The chances of any specific group of 3 being town is about 18% if I did my math right, which seems like something that's reasonable to try and go for. I also feel like it's reasonable to try and go for putting 2 scum in the same group (probably the wall) if we can. Then the gate could contain some null reads. Thoughts?

I'm having difficulty engaging readswise and my reads feel pretty stagnant though I feel like some are wrong. (To summarize, that's unwnd, absinthe, ana, luke and briar as town, dunn as null, and s_s and catboi as scumleans).

So let me try to work through the mechanics at least. If we try to put a third townread at the keep, we have a decent chance of putting 3 town in there. Say it's ana, briar, and absinthe. If we succeed, the best swap scum can do is probably putting one of those 3 into the gate. Ideally we'd put 2 scum in the wall if that's the case, which lets us have an extra townie in the wall and some WIFOM info about who we think scum would swap. I think I've talked myself into wanting a scummy player in the keep though, because if we have 3 town in the keep and 2 scum at the gate it's not great for us anyway. Especially since I TR unwnd and they're already at the wall.

Infinity, your read of me changes. Your strategy for how to stack the keep changes, and all of the changes seem to come down to the same answer for you.

This whole argument was going up in smoke with the Keep flip. Why make this argument as scum?

absinthe, would you say you're the kind of person who would make your own decision or would you pick what others are saying?

Or at least, how do you think you would be perceived prior to being swapped into the Gate and turned IC. I think Ana would have went with their own reads

This is interesting because it's positing a decision between me vs Anastasia as the IC as opposed to Briar. TMI?

Okay, so my strategy is basically I think we should just like, let the three of us at the Keep throw around our reads a bit and then hammer in there; I am almost positive Infinity is scum, but on the off chance Ana is being a rapscallion playing in her silly ways I don't want to freeze out Infinity entirely; that and she has to try and to like, do /something/ unless she's just not going to post at all and concede the point to town to avoid associatives.

Infinity is confirmed scum because absinthe is confirmed town at the keep

Look, you don't know Ana. She's a real trickster. An imp. Prone to the most chaotic of moves you've ever seen. She'll do something you'll never expect as scum just because she can. Because she wants to. For the thrill of a good gambit. There's nothing that could tame that wild spirit within her that just wants to see the world burn down and I am the only person here armed with a fire hose ready to extinguish it if she's on a path of destruction.

I agree with this assessment of Ana's scum game. but I kinda doubt she's scum. But it doesn't matter. I'm townreading Briar. And this is not the worst of all possible worlds!

It was. It was the worst of all possible worlds.

So Catboi and S_S both think Unwnd at the wall... why?

I did not like 755 as it felt like playing up outrage instead of actually engaging with your (valid) point
I did not at all like unwnd's townread of me. I thought catboi's point that unwnd was trying to tie themself to me was reasonable. I don't think it's any less reasonable now that I know catboi is scum.
Their opening post today is also really weird and feels hollow considering making absinthe IC makes a lot of sense from a lot of perspectives and 1/2/0 in Wall/Gate/Keep was kinda what everyone thought anyway
I thought Lukewarm had several genuine posts that would be surprising to come from new-ish scum
I would also be surprised to see scum-you talk about how you would scumclaim by instant jumping into the 2-town Keep followed by jumping into the 2-town Wall (which your team would REALLY need to win).

Does this read like a bus? I'm just going to say it. I feel like S_S is less likely to bus a strong partner than catboi is. The way thoughts were going earlier, I expected the Gate to go after the Keep. Was I that offbase?

Would a scum Briar/unwnd/catboi team see the wall as a mini that must be won? I'm still shocked how easily Briar won scum the Keep.

I guess what I'm saying is I was trying to reaction test you/infinity to see if either of you would actually be willing to go to the wall just to prove me wrong but neither of you volunteered to do that so now I feel more convinced I am actually right.

Everything about this line of reasoning is moot.

I'm just not sure how the potential order of flips would factor into scum thoughts. :/

[Something_Smart]

I want to trust this sentiment but I just...can't.

Well it's obviously not accurate anymore, because if I have to choose between you and Ana deciding my fate then yeah I'm picking you. But it's replaced with the much simpler argument that I don't 1v1 catboi when Infinity is right there.

[Something_Smart]

Infinity was already calling me scum, too. It would be so easy to paint that as a setup.

[Something_Smart]

Speaking of setups, this setup is dope, if I may toot my own horn a little bit. Good call from Isis on pulling this out of the depths of obscurity.

[absinthe]

I want to trust this sentiment but I just...can't.

Well it's obviously not accurate anymore, because if I have to choose between you and Ana deciding my fate then yeah I'm picking you. But it's replaced with the much simpler argument that I don't 1v1 catboi when Infinity is right there.

how would scum-you have set up the swap?

[Lukewarm]

Spoiler:

Okay, everyone cool with it? Cool.

VOTE: Keep

Let's get this.

WHY

Okay, everyone cool with it? Cool.

VOTE: Keep

Let's get this.

WHY

I'm town!

Do you assume you're going to be townread enough to be voted there? I don't understand the mindset.

Absinthe, do you think that scum! catboi would call out Briar for locking herself into the Keep? Like if Briar's goal was lock into town, then get town read hard enough to win it anyways, would her partner make it seem suspicious that she locked in early?

[Something_Smart]

how would scum-you have set up the swap?

Catboi and you, probably? I mean like I said I wouldn't want Ana picking, but I imagine I probably would have rather gone against Infinity than against catboi.

[unwnd]

I took a well needed nap

My comment about solving the wall first still applies absin

[absinthe]

how would scum-you have set up the swap?

Catboi and you, probably? I mean like I said I wouldn't want Ana picking, but I imagine I probably would have rather gone against Infinity than against catboi.

But you'd actually be trying to set up two wins, not just the Gate.

I think a town-Catboi at the Keep would have made that mini harder for scum to win.