Open 812 Guardians of the Fortress - Game Over

[catboi]

Hello!

Wall > Gate > Keep is my preference

Keep > Gate > Wall for me

You're confident you can towntell? Or that you don't want to be in a 3-way with me

Either one is cool

I'm pretty confident in my ability to townread town and to be transparent as town.

What are your strengths and weaknesses that drive your preferences?

Whoops!

You hate to see someone slip on an old alt like that, fufufu~ (¬‿¬)

[catboi]

Oh jesus, this blew up while I was eating dinner, I thought I only had 3 pages to catch up on and now I see it's seven

[catboi]

I read the setup briefly and it seems if we get all of the bad people to sign up for the same location we shall win immediately.

Seeing as they are probably not so stupid as to do that, perhaps we should try quickly putting all the good people into two locations and then the bad people will be stuck going to the last location?

Well, that would be nice in theory, but in practice it's incredibly unlikely, and trying for a day 1 win in this way feels like a fool's errand.

In practical terms, I think the best strategy is this: we should aim to put our strongest townreads at the keep. That game is the easiest to win, and we're more likely to be able to identify correct townreads in this phase of the game than identifying all the mafia. If we give ourselves the best chances of winning that game, we give ourselves a 1 point lead, and the rest of the games become easier.

[catboi]

Okay, everyone cool with it? Cool.

VOTE: Keep

Let's get this.

WHY

[catboi]

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.

[catboi]

Okay, thoughts readswise:

I like unwnd's early energy

I townread Infinity's 52 - something about that mindset fees like it's coming from town

I think Lukewarm's posts have been solidly town and he'd be my first pick for someone to send to the wall right now

No particular scum pings yet

[catboi]

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.

Yes LMAO.

What do you make of that?

Why do you think that? Why would you not wait to see if other people are okay with it?

[catboi]

Okay, thoughts readswise:

I like unwnd's early energy

I townread Infinity's 52 - something about that mindset fees like it's coming from town

I think Lukewarm's posts have been solidly town and he'd be my first pick for someone to send to the wall right now

No particular scum pings yet

EBWOP: I meant keep, not wall. I completely mixed up in my mind which location is which.

[catboi]

Why do you think that? Why would you not wait to see if other people are okay with it?

Why should I care about what other people think in the moment? Like, if people don't think that I'm towny enough there are two other slots that they can assign to other people and vote them instead, and I'll vote whoever I think is town of those two if no one wants me. I'm just hamstringing myself if I'm scum by putting the pressure on myself to compete with them but that isn't the case this game, so /shrug. It's a bit shitty of me to not care if other people agree

now

but they will in time.

Hmm, okay. I don't really understand this mindset at all but it'd be an unusually gutsy play for scum.

[catboi]

Trying to read the argument between unwnd and Anastasia is giving me a headache

[catboi]

Infinity what's on your mind!!

I think I've given most of my relevant thoughts so far, although they've been out of sync with the game because I've been posting in between board game turns. I do get some townvibes from lukewarm and some non-townvibes from catboi ig

What's your read on absinthe?

Oh? What for? (´～ヾ)

[catboi]

Okay, thoughts readswise:

I like unwnd's early energy

I townread Infinity's 52 - something about that mindset fees like it's coming from town

I think Lukewarm's posts have been solidly town and he'd be my first pick for someone to send to the wall right now

No particular scum pings yet

Why do you think that? Why would you not wait to see if other people are okay with it?

Why should I care about what other people think in the moment? Like, if people don't think that I'm towny enough there are two other slots that they can assign to other people and vote them instead, and I'll vote whoever I think is town of those two if no one wants me. I'm just hamstringing myself if I'm scum by putting the pressure on myself to compete with them but that isn't the case this game, so /shrug. It's a bit shitty of me to not care if other people agree

now

but they will in time.

Hmm, okay. I don't really understand this mindset at all but it'd be an unusually gutsy play for scum.

These posts felt a bit careful? Trying to look town? The opposite of whismical? Idk, it's pretty weak anyway.

Eh, I'm too lazy to be whimsical tonight. Not gonna lie, I felt a bit of pressure to immediately get into the thick of it because of how fast things were moving.

[catboi]

I liked her early impressions, wasn't specifically a statement. Hence I said 'mentality'

I wish to just let be things how they are for right now

It is rare for a scum to have the ability to be the most townread person in a game - most good scum excel at hiding or pushing through a mis-elim etc.

Absinthe is one of the few scum who are good at being townread while scum.

She is absolutely the most dangerous person to put in the Keep.

I think you know this, so that's why your reaction to her statement just doesn't make sense for me.

Okay, this post helps clear things up for me and puts it in simple terms, I actually like the logic here

[catboi]

Okay, thoughts readswise:

I like unwnd's early energy

I townread Infinity's 52 - something about that mindset fees like it's coming from town

I think Lukewarm's posts have been solidly town and he'd be my first pick for someone to send to the wall right now

No particular scum pings yet

Not sure how to feel about this, because last game you scum read every post I made all the way up to MeLo.

Wait let me double check my notes here

Spoiler:

VOTE: catboi

No this is not a RVS vote.
Yes, I do already hard scum read him.
Yes, I will tunnel on this all game

Yeah, I do already know how to respond to this.

I mean, I think given prior exxperience I'm less likely to make the same mistakes. But I think your whole process of self-examination and trying to figure which location would be the most helpful for town to be at felt very pure. The way it evolved in-thread felt like it was coming from genuine thinking. I don't know how you'd play as scum given IRL experience, but most newbie scum players tend to just hang in the background and hope to not get noticed, and your play so far has been more forward than that.

really I just don't want to be in the same location as you, no hard feelings I swear~ (jkjk)

[catboi]

Absinthe at the moment wouldn't be anywhere close to my choices for the keep.

[catboi]

absinthe - in 54 you said you were cautiously optimistic about unwnd's alignment, but in 120 you suggested Dunn saying he "feels" town is "a little premature". What's the difference there, exactly?

[catboi]

Don't forget that mafia can perform a swap

I like this

...why?

[catboi]

absinthe - in 54 you said you were cautiously optimistic about unwnd's alignment, but in 120 you suggested Dunn saying he "feels" town is "a little premature". What's the difference there, exactly?

I answered this directly to Dunn.

Unwnd feels town to me

Sure this isn't a little premature?

Why would it be?

That was a gentle jibe about your objections to me being townread quickly in WH13. And a note-to-self that you've put out an early townread on a skilled player.

Dunn and I went back and forth for much of the Warehouse 13 Day 1 about which early-early townreads on me he was calling weird and why, among other things. He thought the townreads on my hydra with Nacho were incautious and unwarranted.

It's basically a meme that I give out easy townreads during the first few pages of a game. It's very rare for me to get a scumread that quickly. So rare that I'm not even sure what my accuracy rate is. I have no idea who anastasia is, but she's obviously familiar enough with me to string together some exaggerations that don't look too off base to players who don't have a lot of with me.

Mostly I was heckling him, but I do wonder about the ease of that read.

I see, so your comment was more about potential discomfort with the ease of him giving the read, based on his personality, rather than the actual substance of the read?

[catboi]

I liked her early impressions, wasn't specifically a statement. Hence I said 'mentality'

I wish to just let be things how they are for right now

It is rare for a scum to have the ability to be the most townread person in a game - most good scum excel at hiding or pushing through a mis-elim etc.

Absinthe is one of the few scum who are good at being townread while scum.

She is absolutely the most dangerous person to put in the Keep.

I think you know this, so that's why your reaction to her statement just doesn't make sense for me.

Okay, this post helps clear things up for me and puts it in simple terms, I actually like the logic here

You think this is accurate?

I think...the mindset here is a town solving mindset.

[catboi]

How would one say that with said undertones?

I think it would have more meaningless mech attached if he wanted to make it look wordy for towncred.

I don't think he's a very wordy player regardless of alignment. A post like that is just filler to me.

[catboi]

What are your thoughts about how to use the 3 minigames?

I got into that in 167, put your townreads in the keep, do whatever for the others. I think trying to game the IC at the gate is a bit of a waste of time, mafia are going to choose who they want as IC no matter what so it's not like they can be forced into making a bad choice. I'm mostly indifferent to how people arrange themselves in the other two.

I was actually going to type a bit more but I want to save those thoughts until after the assignments are finalized.

[catboi]

I don't think this PList is one that is full of numbskulls. I am enjoying the nuance of the conversations but don't want to just make this about winning arguments. Catboi came in and felt very polarized by the thread, and I imagine that behavior will be similar to any potential scum who are just idly sitting by. Infinity also proclaimed that catboi had an awkwardness to him and if I'm not wrong she kept it to herself because it seemed like it was just being swallowed in the greater battle going on.

I don't understand what "polarized" is supposed to mean

[catboi]

What are your thoughts about how to use the 3 minigames?

I got into that in 167, put your townreads in the keep, do whatever for the others. I think trying to game the IC at the gate is a bit of a waste of time, mafia are going to choose who they want as IC no matter what so it's not like they can be forced into making a bad choice. I'm mostly indifferent to how people arrange themselves in the other two.

I was actually going to type a bit more but I want to save those thoughts until after the assignments are finalized.

As Briar and unwnd have demonstrated, for the most part there's no "putting" townreads or scumreads anywhere, unless they buy in.

Well, I think people should cooperate and collaborate and would have said so if I'd been here at the start. Is there some point you're trying to make?

[catboi]

I don't think this PList is one that is full of numbskulls. I am enjoying the nuance of the conversations but don't want to just make this about winning arguments. Catboi came in and felt very polarized by the thread, and I imagine that behavior will be similar to any potential scum who are just idly sitting by. Infinity also proclaimed that catboi had an awkwardness to him and if I'm not wrong she kept it to herself because it seemed like it was just being swallowed in the greater battle going on.

I don't understand what "polarized" is supposed to mean

Your comments to me implied you weren't going to involve yourself with what was going on prior and instead talk around it, as suggested by you feeling it was a headache lol

I wasn't trying to stay out of it, it was merely that I had a hard time grasping what the substance of the argument was actually about in my initial reading. The words seemed to quickly lose meaning. Anastasia's post about your response to absinthe brought some clarity in that regard, and I felt like it was notable your response to absinthe early was fairly casual - not to suggest that you should be inherently distrustful of her, but there seemed to be something of a lack of inquisitiveness into what she was saying.

[catboi]

I don't think this PList is one that is full of numbskulls. I am enjoying the nuance of the conversations but don't want to just make this about winning arguments. Catboi came in and felt very polarized by the thread, and I imagine that behavior will be similar to any potential scum who are just idly sitting by. Infinity also proclaimed that catboi had an awkwardness to him and if I'm not wrong she kept it to herself because it seemed like it was just being swallowed in the greater battle going on.

I don't understand what "polarized" is supposed to mean

Your comments to me implied you weren't going to involve yourself with what was going on prior and instead talk around it, as suggested by you feeling it was a headache lol

I wasn't trying to stay out of it, it was merely that I had a hard time grasping what the substance of the argument was actually about in my initial reading. The words seemed to quickly lose meaning. Anastasia's post about your response to absinthe brought some clarity in that regard, and I felt like it was notable your response to absinthe early was fairly casual - not to suggest that you should be inherently distrustful of her, but there seemed to be something of a lack of inquisitiveness into what she was saying.

As strange as it sounds I actually had a pretty hard time grasping it myself. I feel my behavior is becoming a bit exhaustive. I wouldn't lie that it's not making me a bit self-conscious but I'm powering through that feeling because I do still have a lot of energy. Breaks and not just exasperating yourself with constant mafia games can do that, I guess. It's aside the point. I noted that you were TRing Infinity despite her own disapproval of your posts. Do you still hold to that despite her lack of presence?

I had mostly felt the attitude in the post I highlighted was a towny one. Granted, the one game I played with her she was scum and my reading of her posts was "fine" for the most part and I only really caught her in connection with her partners, so I plan to be judicious with that read rather than taking it for granted, but for early in the game it's a start.

Why would you expect me to retract a read just because she disliked some of my posts? I don't townread people based on reciprocity.

You also seem to have sidestepped the point from Anastasia I was reiterating. Why did you take absinthe's confidence in "being transparent" at face value? It felt a bit too trusting.

[catboi]

What are your thoughts about how to use the 3 minigames?

I got into that in 167, put your townreads in the keep, do whatever for the others. I think trying to game the IC at the gate is a bit of a waste of time, mafia are going to choose who they want as IC no matter what so it's not like they can be forced into making a bad choice. I'm mostly indifferent to how people arrange themselves in the other two.

I was actually going to type a bit more but I want to save those thoughts until after the assignments are finalized.

I don't know that I agree that it only matters where we put out top town reads. I was thinking about how we can organize the groups, and if we put our collective top scum reads in the same area, we can analyze the mafia switch.

I don't know how it is best to distribute the scum reads, like should we pick out our top 3, or just put our top 2 in the same area, and I'm still thinking about which area would be best to do this experiment. Would love for us to talk about this lol

But basically, I don't like the idea

I got into that in 167, put your townreads in the keep, do whatever for the others.

I suppose you can try, but I'm not sure how useful it's likely to be. But I'm a little bit fatalistic about the idea of trying to corral scumreads in this phase. I suppose it can't hurt to try?

[catboi]

੧| ⊗ ▾ ⊗ |୨

[catboi]

For me her behavior feels more telling the more it goes on. Her posts were very tangible but I don't know if there was much to process. Now is this an effect because of the..other stuff going on? I don't know. Point is you're here and responding and infinity has proclaimed even from the first post that's she's a bit burnt out. I'm not going to prod at her in the same way I would you.

For me (outside of yourself) I think scum commonly in-thread don't really want to engage an argument if they don't have to. They want to slip a 'oh well I'm not a bad guy' and be all silver tongued. The action of just going 'well meh you're still town' just felt off to me.

As for why I ignored your comment on Absin-- It's because I talked enough about it. You have 50 something posts to go through if you want.

This seems almost totally disconnected from what I was actually saying and I'm not sure how to respond to it. I wasn't asking about you not prodding at infinity so I'm not sure why you volunteered that information. You seem to be vaguely suggesting some disagreement with my gutread but not in a particularly coherent way.

I asked Infinity why she had scumpings on me, I explained myself, I moved on. I don't have any interset in drawing out that interaction because she said the read wasn't strong and I don't feel like arguing endlessly with someone that I am town (some people in this game clearly feel different). Why would you expect me to continue to dig in there? Why would you expect it to affect my read? This doesn't make sense.

This is very strange to me - I came in, said your interactions with Anastasia were a headache, and you seemed to shade me on this, and then when I questioned you about this and actually asked something about it, you run away and say you don't want to talk about it. What's up with that? You can't give me flak for ignoring something then say you don't want to talk about it.

[catboi]

If I were scum and Briar/Ana were both town, I'd already be in the Keep

I'd treat this as a scumclaim

Go on

It's not town-motivated at all to lock in a vote without discussing here, especially since it encourages scum to do the same.

And if I do scum claim, what are you going to do about it?

What the hell is this bravado man

It's not bravado, this is a continuation of me saying what I'd do if I were scum here, and why I sort of doubt briar + ana as town

Personally if I were scum I'd be trying to throw doubt onto the two townreads already at the keep

[catboi]

I've half a mind to just jump to the gate right now - I actually didn't mind lukewarm's suggestion earlier that I be the third at the keep, because I don't see scum motivation in Anastasia's play and although briar's play didn't make a ton of sense to me I feel as though she's threadspewed from the townreads on her, but, selfishly, I want to stay in the game longer and I think the keep should be resolved first. I feel like I'm able to play better after flips are on the table.

[catboi]

I'd really like to see something about how you'd like to see the minigames set up today.

In terms of generalised strategy or particular people?

If you guys still think I'm throwing doubt at the players already in the keep you don't fundamentally understand what I'm arguing

That seemed to be exactly the argument you were making. You expressed doubt that both were town, yes? My issue is that your reasoning was a fallacious gamestate read that presumes scum are going to act in a specific manner when doing so isn't terribly beneficial to them.

For me her behavior feels more telling the more it goes on. Her posts were very tangible but I don't know if there was much to process. Now is this an effect because of the..other stuff going on? I don't know. Point is you're here and responding and infinity has proclaimed even from the first post that's she's a bit burnt out. I'm not going to prod at her in the same way I would you.

For me (outside of yourself) I think scum commonly in-thread don't really want to engage an argument if they don't have to. They want to slip a 'oh well I'm not a bad guy' and be all silver tongued. The action of just going 'well meh you're still town' just felt off to me.

As for why I ignored your comment on Absin-- It's because I talked enough about it. You have 50 something posts to go through if you want.

This seems almost totally disconnected from what I was actually saying and I'm not sure how to respond to it. I wasn't asking about you not prodding at infinity so I'm not sure why you volunteered that information. You seem to be vaguely suggesting some disagreement with my gutread but not in a particularly coherent way.

I asked Infinity why she had scumpings on me, I explained myself, I moved on. I don't have any interset in drawing out that interaction because she said the read wasn't strong and I don't feel like arguing endlessly with someone that I am town (some people in this game clearly feel different). Why would you expect me to continue to dig in there? Why would you expect it to affect my read? This doesn't make sense.

This is very strange to me - I came in, said your interactions with Anastasia were a headache, and you seemed to shade me on this, and then when I questioned you about this and actually asked something about it, you run away and say you don't want to talk about it. What's up with that? You can't give me flak for ignoring something then say you don't want to talk about it.

Re: Infinity, It became what I disliked about you and I turned the conversation on it's head. You seem to be against that however. My point was that I don't the way you resolved it by just going 'yeah you're town' bothered me. I think this about 2(?) games we've played together by now and I'd expect to have more curiosity instead of just calling it right there. You had Infinity's attention and you just..dropped it. Why? From my own end I shut down the talk about Ana because it's been talked about enough. I assume you have a decent amount of catchup to go through so I'll try not to stifle you before I combat you further

Her response didn't give me anything to work with. I'm not sure why you would have this expectation of me after a couple of games when as best as I can recall there is no reason you should have that impression, when if anything my play with you when I was town was decidedly lazy and as scum I was a bit tryhard - it doesn't make sense to me.

You feel like you're being evasive in response to questioning and trying to cut discussion off. I don't like it.

[catboi]

In terms of generalised strategy or particular people?

either.

both.

any.

talk to me.

Hmm, my feeling was that I was content to slot townreads in the keep and then to let the chips fall where they may - I felt like there wasn't a lot of point in trying to micromanage everyone and I felt like letting peopl decide on their own might be more revealing. It's easy for scum to simply defer their decision to others and thereby abdicate responsibility for their actions, whereas here they'd have to justify it. Having read a lot of the arguments about straegy on the previous pages, I would agree that putting multiple scumreads in one location seems preferable - although trying to force a 3/3 is impossible, any potential swap is valuable in terms of the information it provides. As thngs stand now though, unwnd is feeling a bit...cornered in his responses. I don't mind ana's suggested groupings although I'd probably swap in dunn at the wall in place of something_smart. I'm fine with either you or Luke being at the keep.

[catboi]

catboi.

I'm sorry! I went to watch something rather than typing a response right away. o(_ _;o)

[catboi]

My read on infinity degraded a bit when catching up. unwnd's read on something_smart almost feels like he's trying to tie them together, almost, in the way it's being presented. Beyond that I'm not sure anything in the pages since I left off changed my views all that significantly.

[catboi]

I'm fine with the gate. I'd do the keep but like I said I selfishly want to play longer and think we always resolve the keep first. Do you have an objection to this?

[catboi]

In fact, I feel like I should live my own words - after spending several hours reading and catching up, I felt a significant part of the discussion had devolved into strategic minutiae and awkward jockeying for position and I feel the productiveness of such discussion is limited. It's very easy to get lost in the weeds of such arguments and they cease to be particularly illuminating. I think actions speak louder and I want less idle shuffling of the feet.


VOTE: Gate

[catboi]

_(ˇωˇ」∠)_

I had a long day today. How is everyone doing?

[catboi]

In fact, I feel like I should live my own words - after spending several hours reading and catching up, I felt a significant part of the discussion had devolved into strategic minutiae and awkward jockeying for position and I feel the productiveness of such discussion is limited. It's very easy to get lost in the weeds of such arguments and they cease to be particularly illuminating. I think actions speak louder and I want less idle shuffling of the feet.


VOTE: Gate

I'm a little annoyed by this post, because it seems like I'm not being heard despite being dangerously close to the one of the top posters

Why would I care what you have to say?

[catboi]

When I speak about outcomes it's definitely more on the side of the argumentative process? I put a lot of thought into what I want to say and even so far as Briar described it earlier as 'Diplomatic.' I don't think you're the only one who isn't understanding me so my own admitting of defeat is just

Resetting and see what comes of it. When it comes to the other aspect of 'responding to things naturally' that's just me saying I exaggerate sometimes. I wasn't being entirely genuine when it came to Ana for example because I thought maybe I could illcit a response out of her that would give me a better read. My initial dislike was absolutely true, but I should've just backed away and let the thread progress

I wanted to clarify this because I think the basis of catboi's read on me (from what I can determine) is this action and previous ones, so we're just not understanding each other, I'd like to fix that. The same goes with you

That was the start of it but I think the way you've responded to me and your input into the thread has given me no reason to think you're town; I think you were twisting yourself into logical pretzels trying to justify yourself to anastasia and while you were seemingly hinting at not townreading me your response to my making move last night didn't look like that.

[catboi]

VOTE: Wall

hm

[catboi]

Oh wow I was wrong

[catboi]

I agree that it was probably a forced scum swap, but I thought you thought scum was at the keep?

[catboi]

Oh wow I was wrong

About what?

I thought something_smart was town

[catboi]

but I thought you thought scum was at the keep?

We've went over this. I'm now at the phase where I'm ready to push everyone who keeps bringing this up as I believe it's a scum tell to tunnel in on that aspect

I tried looking back at your iso and couldn't find an explanation

[catboi]

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"

[catboi]

Dunn's jump to the wall was weird but I don't see why he'd choose to put himself in a place with two people who already suspected him as scum

[catboi]

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 >_>)

[catboi]

@Mod

Does the thread lock if a minigame is hammered? Or do we just keep going

I'll lock the thread very briefly to resolve the hammer, then discussion can continue.

Alright so popcorn

I want to hear people which group should be flipped first

keep > gate > wall, descending order of best odds.

Although if we wanna get fancy we do keep > IC calls for a crossvote at the wall > then we can choose either gate or wall

[catboi]

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.

[catboi]

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.

[catboi]

You're wrong about me and a lot of things between us feel unresolved in general

That feels like your fault tbh

[catboi]

I'm gonna do that ISO thing rather than keep begging senpai (Briar) to notice (townread) me

[catboi]

Okay this was way less useful than I was hoping it'd be

My point is that your townread on Dunnstral is nonsense and he would say the same thing regardless of alignment, but that's not why I was pressing you... I wanted to understand your thought process to see if I thought it was genuine.

If I were scum and Briar/Ana were both town, I'd already be in the Keep

You would scumclaim and force the optimal move onto town?

Did you forget about the swap mechanic?

No but if we have two consensus town in the Keep then we don't care at all about the third slot. And if someone did scumclaim into it then there'd be no point in swapping one of them out since it's a guaranteed town win anyway.

I feel like this is coming from a scum!SS who has already considered the move that Dunnstral is proposing and decided it's not a good play to make.

In all honesty though this is silly and you should know it. I considered the merits of that play because Dunn brought it up. It's not like my response was instantaneous.

Dunn can you explain why you went Wall without consulting anyone?

This is basically nothing. If I wanted to stretch I could see the first quote as partnery but I feel like that's straining credulity to get there and in this case it's better to just admit I have no conclusion rather than forcing a read.

You think so?

To an extent. Scum will have either 6 or 15 options for who to swap; either way, which swap is optimal will depend almost entirely on how people are being read. The less they know about that, the more likely they are to make a suboptimal swap-- and the swap matters a huge deal.

How do you feel about what Ana did just now?

Probably moderately +scum because giving up control is pretty much always +town here, but not very much so. (Incidentally: this means Lukewarm's reaction is towny.)

Are people comfortable with Briar as the main vote, and Ana as the back up?

We definitely should not be saying which of the two we'd rather elect.

So I pushed him to explain, and he backed down with "people just are not understanding my point" and even though I came back with "my entire goal right now is understanding your point, please explain" he never did. If a town player really thought we were potentially setting the keep up for an auto-lose situation, then I have to believe they would have pressed more to get the thread to understand the point he was making.

I thought he explained his point pretty well?

I think Lukewarm's posts have been solidly town and he'd be my first pick for someone to send to the wall right now

Hm

This is basically nothing. On sheer

lack

of interaction it's suspect but Lukewarm was the only person of the three he really committed to any read on and most scum are reluctant to outright townread their parter.

After some careful thought I think using Gate is the best null/trashpile, mostly because if we're wrong on a base assumption we can clear a wrong read or confirm an unknown

Sending hard-to-read people to the Gate is probably a good idea, yeah.

Don't you think that giving scum a blueprint of our plans is a bit unwise?

Well the alternative is not having a plan, so no.

The only concrete plans we've been talking about are ones involving the Keep; these may have been mistakes to bring up, but it's too late to do anything about it at this point.

why was it so important to you to continue to argue with her despite claiming a townread?

well if she's an influential player and likely town, then it matters more that she not be wrong, no?

I'd like to take a shot on infinity-ss-unwnd as the scum team because I am a naive dreamer.

or, get this: you don't, and then the scum probably rule it out via swaps. and if they don't, then we've seriously narrowed the amount of possible swaps available to them.

Yes I'm horribly confbiased - but that's kind of why I want the ss-infy-unwnd team to snap me out of it if I'm wrong <3

I feel like this is coming from scum!Anastasia who knows that the solve is wrong and wants to set up an unwinnable Wall

Look I can make stupid theories too

Infinity, remind me why you have unwnd as town?

I felt like his play around ana has been quite towny, it feels like a genuine attempt to try to sort her through what seems like a layer of fog to him.

I just looked back through unwnd's ISO and I really don't see that much that seems to be sorting Ana at all, let along in a genuine way. Can you point to some posts that made you feel this way?

I actually think 663 is a mildly non-partnery interaction but the way he bristles at anastasia suggesting the team is pinging me hard - it's like when my team in FL vs Hectic got called out on like the first page and I got put on the defensive hard. It's not a lot but it does feel notable that this is one of the only moments that evoked a passionate response from him.

[catboi]

I'm gonna do that ISO thing rather than keep begging senpai (Briar) to notice (townread) me

You won't charm me, fiend.

Even if I said I am nya~t mafia? :<

[catboi]

I'm ok with going to the Keep.

Putting 3 towny players in the Keep seems like a massive waste

I think I agree. We only need two in there, 1 as the main vote choice, and 1 as the back-up in case the main vote is swapped out.

Are people comfortable with Briar as the main vote, and Ana as the back up? if so, we could leave the third slot for the "left over" player.

So I guess the question is really, does anyone scum read Briar or Ana?

so my question to you is what is optimal then?

I kind of answered that here:

I think the bottom line is that we want the Gate to have all the scummiest players after the swap (I THINK? I may try to math this out honestly because it's a costly thing to get wrong), and we want the Keep to have exactly one towny player after the swap. It's not totally clear what the best way to achieve that is, or even if there is a good way.

I'm not vehemently opposed to Infinity's idea, but I feel like I would prefer this: 2 townreads + 1 nullread at the Keep, any remaining strong townreads at the Wall, then fill out the Wall with the scummiest players and put the rest at the Gate.

The reasoning being: you need exactly 2 known townies to guarantee victory at the Keep. The third is superfluous, and we might as well put a hard-to-read player there instead. Putting a known townie at the Gate meanwhile makes it trivial for the scum to give us no information with the IC reveal. (At least make them work, if they want to do that.) So, we put other townreads at the Wall. Then, we don't want to stuff the Gate with scummy people because that gives scum more control over who gets IC'd, so we put the other scummy people at the Wall (which we would be happy to turn into a 50/50 since it's the hardest minigame) and the rest at the Gate.

I think that this thought process is the one I most vibe with on a cursory read through.

Second quote would be fairly bold for a new scum player to say in response to a partner.

[catboi]

Meh there's basically nothing interactionwise going from dunn > S_S

[catboi]

It's just my gut when it comes to the situation. We could be playing a game where something like S_S/Infinity/Dunn could simply be overwhelmed by townies but I don't see the evidence in that world. I think the most likely answer is that scum is fully committed in you 3. Do you disagree?

I've held my tongue a bit when it comes to coordination around who chooses what. I briefly touched upon my own ideals and why I chose my decision, but there a few things that ping me when it comes to everyone's assumptions.

For one, S_S earlier said something along the lines of 'giving reads are bad/help scum' and I never got the chance to understand why he felt that way. I think mechanical talk turns more into an obligation instead of something we can potentially use, so I'm not really getting a good read on the people who are focusing their attention on it (S_S/Lukewarm)

I like your heady analysis in trying to make the setup more approachable for town, but I do have questions myself. Don't you think that giving scum a blueprint of our plans is a bit unwise? I think you agree with that in some regard, just differently. You think giving them information in terms of reads will make it so they can manipulate the mini-games more favorly, and see it as 1's and 0's.

the more unpredictable the townies can be going into D2, the more likely it is that scum will miss a potentially winning swap and execute a losing one instead.

This is where our ideals are parallel but not touching.

Well actually, I guess it depends what you meant. If you meant like saying exactly who we would be voting out in different scenarios, then yeah that's unwise. But if you're just talking about general things like "we want 2 townreads at the Keep" and "we don't want any obvtown at the Gate" I think they're definitely an overall plus.

Yeah I think quoted opinions are very universal, but to get there we would probably have to discuss who is obvtown and who isn't

why was it so important to you to continue to argue with her despite claiming a townread?

well if she's an influential player and likely town, then it matters more that she not be wrong, no?

I get this and tried to be a bit subtle about it earlier. I don't wanna dicuss anything further until a later point in time if that's alright with you

I would even go so far to say I like S_S's input

I'm not paying attention too hard to Infinity on the flipside

Spoiler:

Right now I'm sort of locked into the wall and the more shade you throw at me, the less likely you see any sort of movement

Well let's start with the basics

Would you agree that ana/absin/briar is likely an all town keep group?

My head says no but my heart could possibly say yes

If you think SS is town why don't you want him to join you at the Wall?

Because it probably doesn't happen? Scum can't be in the same minigame and if they are they have to switch them around....

I'm talking about my push to have SS/Infinity join you at the wall, you seem to be opposed to it.

I'm asking you why you would be opposed to SS joining you at the wall if you think he's town?

OK I'm starting to get what you want to do but it falls completely apart knowing that I'm town lol

Like if that's what you want to happen? I'm not entirely opposed to it

Fucked that up somehow

I don't like thinking about making that decision, because I truly want to believe it won't happen. I want to think that if my townread on S_S is correct right now that Infinity (even as scum) wouldn't just take that lying down or accept being in a 3-way of that caliber

I think he has my best interest, or at least is very good at faking he does. GTH I would put him below Briar/S_S who are my main townreads.

If I had to summarize myself up until this point however it'd be something like

1) Impulse voting is bad, Briar following my lead struck me but her posting has been townie
2) Ana trying to build a case on me based on expectation annoyed me, and I got obsessed with trying to explain why it was wrong
3) S_S's more grounded approach to using the setup to our benefit left me with good impressions, and his need to explain why Ana just for lack of a better term yolo'ing it is a bad idea even more so

439 is

really

interesting.

The sequence ending in 811 (sorry for the quotewall) is what set me off in the first place, I didn't think scum would be so awkward around a partner but ultimately I see him struggling to articulate a townread on a player while simultaneously flailing to

not

have that player join the same location as him, and it doesn't really make sense at all to me

[catboi]

You and catboi both think I'm scum

Well that's only a single bus

You're both scum then even if the setup literally doesn't allow that

I'm just a bit frustrated with the one of you that is town

What are the reasons I should be seeing you as town?

[catboi]

Is infinity fairly inexperienced as scum?

In limited experience she ran out of steam after an ok start

[catboi]

Is us both scumreading you going to make reading us harder somehow? IDGI

[catboi]

Is us both scumreading you going to make reading us harder somehow? IDGI

Yes because you're both going to be cagey with me given that you believe I'm scum

I don't get it

[catboi]

Scum doesn't need to work with people, they just need to pretend their arguments and convictions are town-motivated. You both don't really gain anything from being considerate of my slot, therefore I'm going to give less valuable information compared to someone you had to at least fake townread

Therefore I'm going to get* less valuable information

But town should have a genuine interest in sorting you, right? Can you not try to distinguish that? You're confusing me here

[catboi]

(๑-﹏-๑)

Oh my gosh I'm so tired, had a long today, going to catch up now

[catboi]

Did you ever get into these thoughts?

At the time, I was about to post the order I thought the locations should be resolved in, but thought better of it because doing so would allow scum to better plan their placement/swaps. Of course I'd basically already given away that I wanted to do the keep first, so that seems really silly on my part in hindsight. At the time I was actually thinking keep > wall > gate for the order, preserving the IC as long as possible, but that's somewhat contingent on getting the keep right as otherwise doing the wall seems a bit of an unnecessary risk, and ultimately I began to think it may be preferable to simply play the numbers.

I need you to wrap some more words around your stance on joining/not joining the Keep.

My feeling was that, assuming the two townreads already at the keep were correct, me going there would ensure it was all town and force the mafia to swap with one of us. Being that I was not as townread as the other two, I'd likely be left there and I could just vote my townread and win a point. However it seemed almost superfluous to me - they were likely to get voted without my help regardless, and I'd end up removing myself from the game before being able to do much. Like I said in the post you quoted, I feel like I'm able to contribute a lot more effectively once there's been some flips and I can analyze based on interactions. Granted this way I have to convince people I'm town myself, which is not always easy for me, but I still feel as though I'm more valuable this way.

When did your thoughts about me being at the keep change? And why?

I don't think they did? At the very least, I was never

against

you being at the keep that I can recall. I didn't townread you as much as the other two, but I think I kept myself from expressing any reservation I had in-thread.

Why do you think he'd choose that as town?

I think his explanation in 1056 of wanting to force his scumreads to the gate is believable enough.

re your 1146, my 704 was an attempt to give a hypothetical town-infinity a chance to talk about why she wasn't feeling motivated, and to do a reset if the response felt town.

Spoiler:

But, at any rate, it certainly wasn't a sign that I was townreading Something_Smart to a significantly greater degree than infinity at that point.'t. :/But, at any rate, it certainly wasn't a sign that I was townreading Something_Smart to a significantly greater degree than infinity at that point.

It doesn't really matter what the strength of

your

read

actually

was, the scum are going to swap based on their perceived chances of success, and I think from your posting they'd likely infer something_smart had a better chance than infinity.

[catboi]

In reality, if mafia played it correctly, after I locked in at the gate, either Infinity would have locked into the gate in preparation for the exact play they made anyway (while s_s as town waits for infinity to pick the wall). Or, in a scenario where s_s is also scum, that would be pretty bad for them, but I feel like the scum team is less likely to find themselves in this situation. I think catboi is a bit more likely to be mafia off of how this played out.

I dont understand what you're trying to say here. You hammered the wall, it forced the moves of the other two. How does that make me more likely to be scum?

[catboi]

Please stop talking about the stupid fucking mechanics

Both of your arguments are just hearsay and me needing to believe what you would do in accordance to how the night played out

Not what you've organically gained from it

I just want to state that my initial TR of S_S is exclusive to what I think of him as a person. I townread his efforts thinking he was tinkering in his head to try and make a favorable outcome for town. I changed my mind on this however because I'm just going to assume the same thing I always do about mechanics: They're really fucking easy to talk about and require zero commitment. Dunn, you yourself admitted this and made the basis of your argument against Lukewarm based on (Mechanics). Okay? So why are you two going rounds about postulating theories and how the mechanics should work in your town!favor instead of the opposite. I'm not going to pay attention to it much further and I hope to god that is not what becomes the majority of conversation you will absolutely lose me if it is.

Let me state that I don't think all mechanic talk is bad. It's protown to consider how to use the setup to your advantage and line up potential good moves in accordance to it. However? I think that's passed.

:/

[catboi]

I don't think they did? At the very least, I was never against you being at the keep that I can recall. I didn't townread you as much as the other two, but I think I kept myself from expressing any reservation I had in-thread.

Absinthe at the moment wouldn't be anywhere close to my choices for the keep.

Hmm, then my thoughts changed somewhere between page 10 and page 34

[catboi]

I don't think they did? At the very least, I was never against you being at the keep that I can recall. I didn't townread you as much as the other two, but I think I kept myself from expressing any reservation I had in-thread.

Absinthe at the moment wouldn't be anywhere close to my choices for the keep.

Hmm, then my thoughts changed somewhere between page 10 and page 34

I wish I had a serious answer for that, but I don't take notes and don't really remember my own thought progression on such things. At the time I had some unease with your question to Dunn in 120, your responses and your posts seemed a bit...monochromatic. I wish I could point to a single post where I changed my mind, but I really don't have one. It just became a body of work read where you looked continually solvey. I also figured you probably would have kept discrediting Anastasia as scum.

[catboi]

I also have a really dumb tinfoil regarding catboi finding out my identity and trying to nya at me or whatever to get social points. Yes this is a real thought my brain conjured up.

Wait, what? I'm still catching on the pages between 50 and now that I missed

[catboi]

does unwnd AtE this hard if he's scum about to be boxed in? :s

I legit don't remember how he responded to pressure as town in FL vs Hectic

[catboi]

I was too busy being cute in FL vs Hectic to recall anything from it.

oh

[catboi]

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

Scum can swap town with town if there's 1 scum in each group.

I don't know if I have much agency here, I think briar is probably the scum because ana promised to vote for the other in this group but yeah.

I mean once people realize I'm town, it might be useful to have my thoughts in the thread.

If I was more confident on the town in my group I would quickvote here but idk. I hope ana and briar don't rush this.

This feels flat.

[catboi]

I was too busy being cute in FL vs Hectic to recall anything from it.

oh

Hi.

Well I'm flattered you think well of my scumplay from that game, but the fact is I still got faded on day 3 of that game. I think us being on the same team in that game has probably skewed your perspective of scumplay? Because honestly, I just pulled up my own ISO from that game and it's making me cringe. I was posting complete nonsense half the time just to make it seem like I was active.

I started a 10 page derail about anime just to fill the thread with fluff

. I really feel like I'm night and day different from that game, honestly.

[catboi]

that removes any last sliver of paranoia I had about Briar, though

[catboi]

In general I think you're a good player, honestly. And everyone was playing better mafia that game than I was; the game I played was something wholly different.

I want to be a good player but I feel like I often fall short. I enjoy the challenge of playing scum but I feel like I struggle to maintain an authentic tone most of the time. Like I said if you actually go back and look at me there I don't think I'm anything like this game.

[catboi]

With regard to Infinity making gestures about voting: I'll believe it when I see it. As of right now to me it's like a dance game: scum can claim they're considering leaving all they like, but as doing so loses the game for them, they can't actually pull the trigger. It's similar with voting here: Scum will never do it because it's anti-wincon, but if they're in this position and not being townread their only option is feint at doing so and hope that maaybe someone starts having doubts.

[catboi]

I thought there were some random players in this player list and they turned out to be alts.

This is a *good* game. better than I anticipated.

You always have to watch out for the secret weeaboo alts ♡ฅ(ᐤˊ꒳ฅˋᐤ♪)

[catboi]

I thought there were some random players in this player list and they turned out to be alts.

This is a *good* game. better than I anticipated.

You always have to watch out for the secret weeaboo alts ♡ฅ(ᐤˊ꒳ฅˋᐤ♪)

I think I just need more data from you. You've posted less than any other player and a lot of your posts are in catch-up mode.

I...wow. I didn't realize I was lagging that hard. I mean, I know I'm behind but I didn't think there was such a volume gap. I can't really help it though, I only have time to post during the evenings right now. Maybe I can do a deep dive on the weekend.

[catboi]

Just saying please reconsider regardless of Infinity's flip my innocence

I do my taxes on time and feed the hungry on weekends. I also once saved a bunch of children from a burning orphanage

How could you not townread me

I see so you hate children and poor people

This is so tonally at odds with his posts before and after this

[catboi]

Honestly I hope ana's just right about unwnd and I don't have to spend a bunch of time proving myself though

[catboi]

Speaking of votes: when is the best time for us to flip? Assuming Keep first is still the preferred move — the other groups will be harder to resolve but I don’t know when it’s best to give up our presence vs. confirmed flips.

I want your and anastasia's thoughts about the Gate (catboi vs S_S as town) for my own sake, and of course ALL the thoughts about the Wall in case I screw up the Gate.

I have more of a handle on S_S's towngame. I played twice(?) with catboi in 2013-2014. I haven't gone back to look at those games, but iirc in one he was town and in the other he was scum (and ironically I replaced into an IC slot). I feel like meta that stale is probably not all that useful. I've spectated a couple games that town-catboi played and I feel like there's a lot of alignment ambiguity in his town game.

Oh god, I have no memory of those games at all, but I'm sure they're incredibly cringe and should never be looked at

[catboi]

Gate last still feels like common sense to me. If we win the Gate, we likely win the game, and I have very little faith in us winning Wall.

Wait, weren't you saying you think unwnd is scum? And now both Lukewarm and Dunn FOS him? Why would you say you have little faith in us winning there?

Is this a perspective slip?

[catboi]

Like seriously, someone back me up here: How does that post make any sense from a town POV who is scumreading unwnd?

[catboi]

Speaking of votes: when is the best time for us to flip? Assuming Keep first is still the preferred move — the other groups will be harder to resolve but I don’t know when it’s best to give up our presence vs. confirmed flips.

I want your and anastasia's thoughts about the Gate (catboi vs S_S as town) for my own sake, and of course ALL the thoughts about the Wall in case I screw up the Gate.

I have more of a handle on S_S's towngame. I played twice(?) with catboi in 2013-2014. I haven't gone back to look at those games, but iirc in one he was town and in the other he was scum (and ironically I replaced into an IC slot). I feel like meta that stale is probably not all that useful. I've spectated a couple games that town-catboi played and I feel like there's a lot of alignment ambiguity in his town game.

Oh god, I have no memory of those games at all, but I'm sure they're incredibly cringe and should never be looked at

And I read all 22 pages of the Majiffy micro that had the bell curve probability of night actions working earlier. :/

(I loved Beli/my hydra's name.

Still haven't read the GiF game where you were scum, though~

I just looked it up and I wasn't scum in that game. I wound up in a stupid tunnel on bertkerberos and selfvoted in mylo and scum hammered me.

Like I said, cringe.

[catboi]

Like seriously, someone back me up here: How does that post make any sense from a town POV who is scumreading unwnd?

hmm.

What do you think it says about unwnd's alignment?

It might mean he's town because otherwise I don't see why s_s puts so much emphasis on why he needs to win the gate but honestly my head is spinning trying to figure it out. I would expect him to not be so overtly fatalistic with a partner on the chopping block.

On individual merits it's very hard for me to see unwnd as town though.

[catboi]

bertkerberos was a strange hydra to try to read.

I don't want to go back to read the whole thing but I think I was hung up on them because their posting seemed to be almost entirely filler to me but they made a big deal about how much they were "contributing" even though it was mostly spam. It was bad. Although I don't think I was great either.

[catboi]

Luke doesn't seem to be townreading me/scumreading unwnd as hard as people keep implying

Huh, you're right - I had interpreted 1465 as implying a townread on you but 1359 seems to directly contradict that - maybe the implication is he expects lukewarm to misvote on you? which goes back to unwnd-scum


...which wouldn't really be a slip. I thought I'd found something.

[catboi]

bertkerberos was a strange hydra to try to read.

I don't want to go back to read the whole thing but I think I was hung up on them because their posting seemed to be almost entirely filler to me but they made a big deal about how much they were "contributing" even though it was mostly spam. It was bad. Although I don't think I was great either.

That was the bert part of the hydra. He was not easy to read, but his scum game was a sort of hyper-exaggerated caricature of his towngame. I used to describe it as a burlesque impression of town-bert. If nacho posted enough, I'd just read that head for the most part.

I think I had been expecting more from Nacho. IDK. My analysis was pretty bad. I had a terrible record in lylo as town, that newbie game I just finished was probably the first time I feel like I've really played well in one.

[catboi]

...YDRASSE.

[catboi]

I feel dirty

[catboi]

I had a flash of paranoia about Lukewarm last night when I went back to read his iso that I was hoping to investigate today. But I logged in at lunch just to try to keep up with the thread so I won't fall behind again and I'm feeling shook right now. I need a moment to process things.

[catboi]

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 post. I'm trying to figure out what her intentions were when she made this. They clearly weren't thinking of swapping town into the keep at the time. She just wanted to be with 2 people she could beat, I think. This is evidence in favor of Lukewarm as town, I think. But then why have me at the gate with 2 townies? Swap one out, IC the other and have me as the ML? IC me and hope that I get paranoid of the townread? Maybe they were just hoping to win the wall and would have preferred Something_Smart being there instead of at the gate.

[catboi]

Ooh how about this. If I were scum with Briar I would have told her not to self hammer immediately, and instead try to influence the other games more... especially mine, since she'd been my most vocal supporter.

None of us were going to vote before she flipped, and she could have just as easily ignored you. Big stretch.

[catboi]

Who can expound upon how Ydrasse treats/behaves around scum partners in the game thread?

Catboi probably has actual experience with her due to FL v Hectic

From now I'm just going to assume she's different alignment from me because we have never been town together lol

She spent most of that game fluffposting and flirting with FL, and Hectic basically went "yep yep good go ahead" in response. I barely remember her posting actual serious mafia content in the game and most of her posts in the PT were either moping about being bad at scum or flirting with Hectic. It's why when she revealed I thought she was well out of her range.

At one point when things were looking grim for us we decided to just troll and post anime cat gifs and nya at each other because we were probably going down so might as well mess around and have fun. Our other teammates were permalurkers and I don't think she interacted much with either of them because there wasn't much to interact

with

.

[catboi]

Well this makes Gate super super easy now! Because why would I ever 1v1 catboi when I can 1v1 Infinity instead?

I would have voted Anastasia in a heartbeat and had clearly broadcast my intentions to do so.

[catboi]

My gut check take is that knowing both confirmed mafia from my POV were pushing on unwnd means that they were likely bussing him. From experience that tends to be how these things go. But that's just my instinct.

[catboi]

SS is majorly failing the vibe check right now - the emotional tenor of his posts is completely off. It's what Gamma Emerald got caught on in Binding of Isaac - something unusual happens but he doesn't know how to react like he would as town and his posts come out sounding flat.

[catboi]

I don't see scum motivation in Anastasia's play and although briar's play didn't make a ton of sense to me I feel as though she's threadspewed from the townreads on her

Like, somebody tell me how this clearly broadcasts an intention to vote Ana over Briar.

I had been defending Ana earlier when several people were against her while my read on briar developed much more slowly, this isn't hard to see at all

[catboi]

Also why do I spend so much time arguing that I would have swapped Briar instead of absinthe when I know that argument's about to be useless

...for that very reason, Lmao. Are you kidding me?

[catboi]

SS is majorly failing the vibe check right now - the emotional tenor of his posts is completely off. It's what Gamma Emerald got caught on in Binding of Isaac - something unusual happens but he doesn't know how to react like he would as town and his posts come out sounding flat.

Why would he be taken by surprise by Briar's self-hammer?

The flip wasn't what people were expecting but he's not reacting to it like it was a surprise.

[catboi]

SS is majorly failing the vibe check right now - the emotional tenor of his posts is completely off.

The emotional tenor of my posts is EXACTLY where it ought to be as town right now, what are you even talking about?? I'm pissed that absinthe continues to not see this and now it's probably going to cost us the game and I have to keep flinging stuff at you because every separate argument I've made (which is a lot more than YOU have made) has come to nothing.

This is so forced

[catboi]

My gut check take is that knowing both confirmed mafia from my POV were pushing on unwnd means that they were likely bussing him. From experience that tends to be how these things go. But that's just my instinct.

In what world am I being bussed by her, she spent all of D1 pretty much flirting with me. Her read change on me was a bit of bad faith but I think she just that because it was becoming common?

That should go back to your FL experience

Why wouldn't she change to scumreading you when it became common if you're teamed? This makes no sense.

[catboi]

I had been defending Ana earlier when several people were against her while my read on briar developed much more slowly, this isn't hard to see at all

It doesn't at all mean that one is stronger than the other. Also you made like one post defending Ana, this is not a slam dunk, not remotely, and I think you would see that if you weren't trying to be manipulative. (I mean maybe not, I don't know you. Maybe you just see what you want to see anyway, but hopefully someone who knows you can shed light on that.)

I thought I'd made it obvious. Looking back, I guess I hadn't, except for me agreeing with Anastasia in her suspicion of unwnd. That's on me. But just because I don't have perfect recall of my own posting history doesn't mean I'm trying to be manipulative and to argue so is incredibly disingenuous

This is so forced

How so?

I'm not gonna explain it to

you

[catboi]

Anyway my lunch break is ending so I won't have time to post anymore until the evening

[catboi]

SS is majorly failing the vibe check right now - the emotional tenor of his posts is completely off. It's what Gamma Emerald got caught on in Binding of Isaac - something unusual happens but he doesn't know how to react like he would as town and his posts come out sounding flat.

Why would he be taken by surprise by Briar's self-hammer?

The flip wasn't what people were expecting but he's not reacting to it like it was a surprise.

If I weren't confirmed town, I would have been pretty matter-of-fact about the flip: "welp." and moved on to recalibrating.

Wellnot everyone reacts the same way to things but I still think the way he started the phase was clearly

off

although of course I'm biased

...for that very reason, Lmao. Are you kidding me?

I don't understand this, I did something that I knew would be useless, because it would be useless?

You made an argument about how you would have swapped someone who is going to flip scum because

of course

you would - you're not going to betray knowledge she's flipping mafia so you act uninformed and point back to it when she flips - it's a very basic play. Are you seriously trying to argue that kind of move is beneath your capability?

[catboi]

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.

I could see someone arguing those posts by Dunn wwere TMI, but I agree with you, I don't think he risks undermining Briar by making those posts

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>.

I mean, the thing is, it's strictly _not_ like an ELO where I know who is confirmed scum to me and my only option is to argue to vote them and not me - there are other locations and I feel like the best way to make myself readable as town is hunting in those - going after s_s there at the start of the day would have just been me flinging mud and not producing anything useful where the least I could do was

try

to sort the players at the wall

[catboi]

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?

In this situation? I don't see why not. If in his judgment unwnd is less likely to win he doesn't have a choice. They only need to win one place and scum almost always try to bifurcate the game at ELO - split the game into two halves, make them seem unaligned, guarantee that if one flips the other is likely to succeed. It's practically the expected play.

[catboi]

Sorry for dipping last night, I got busy with other things before I fully caught up, reading up now~

[catboi]

There was a whole drawn out follow-on exchange which would veer into masterclass level distancing IMO.

Is this the interaction that ends at 205 or does it go longer?

I don't see the masterclass, sorry. All I see is catboi awkwardly breaking it off after not knowing where to go with it.

I mean, yes, I didn't know where to go with the questioning based on her answers to me so I just stopped. I fully admit that. That doesn't make me scum. I just was annoyed with her making the immediate play but ended up concluding she was impatient/antsy town. I wish I'd kept pressing it but even now I'm not sure what I should have seen that I missed. You can't fault me for not catching something no one else did.

[catboi]

I still think that catboi latching on to me talking about ana-briar on day 1 is a scum tell

And then one of either Luke or Unwnd, who were also latched onto that, is the other

catboi is close to null but leans scum because he was focused way more on talking about how I was shading ana/briar than what I was actually talking about.

That was legitimately what I thought you were talking about, I didn't understand it as having any other meaning. look at your posts on the subject:

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?

you guys both think that Ana is town or no?

Within context, Is there any way I should take this other than you expressing a scumread on someone at the keep? At the time it felt like a scum motivated play. So I misinterpreted it, okay. But the mistake on my end wasn't disingenuous. And I would have known fosing you over that opinion just makes me look worse when Briar flips.

[catboi]

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.

Here is what I was working with when I asked about Ana being swapped

S_S was saying they wouldn't have picked Absinthe to be swapped

Looking at this again the argument only really works under the assumption of Briar as town, after the flip it becomes somewhat obvious why they would never choose to send Anastasia to the gate given how things shook out. I'd have taken that swap in a heartbeat.

[catboi]

I mean if it's WIFOM either way then what makes it masterclass distancing but just regular scum play if it's S -> T

I really don't understand that. Like yes it was good scum play by her and yes it was probably excessive, but why was it more excessive/more risky if catboi is scum? If anything it seems like it makes MORE sense S/S because they're trying to make interactions that look genuine... but ultimately yes it is WIFOM.

Assuming you're town, then you're looking at that interaction knowing that catboi is scum.

I can't do that. I have to look at it from both perspectives. It didn't ring false when I read it originally -- it read like real thoughts she was having about his play. Looking at it from the now-perspective, I know it's false from her side, but it still doesn't spew catboi as either alignment to me.

Thanks for your case. I've read it and I'm cogitating.

Catboi wanted the keep flipped first.

He did. and?

So you're putting too much faith in briar-catboi interactions not looking scum aligned when he could have been banking on that

If I'd actually wanted to look unaligned with her I don't start declaring heer locktown when she outs her main to me, I just keep my positioning away from her and say Ana is my strongest townread still. That change just makes me look way worse. Like, you can't say I was banking on the flip making us look unaligned when I would have massively, massively faceplanted that in the 11th hour for no good reason.

[catboi]

You made an argument about how you would have swapped someone who is going to flip scum because of course you would - you're not going to betray knowledge she's flipping mafia so you act uninformed and point back to it when she flips - it's a very basic play. Are you seriously trying to argue that kind of move is beneath your capability?

Yeah probably? I mean I would have been really leery to play into the "Briar is obvtown" narrative as scum, since I don't think I would necessarily be confident in navigating that in a way that looks genuine. So I think I probably would have avoided talking about her, or at least it would have been more hesitant.

You...didn't play into it. In fact you barely said anything about her. Lmao. This is a much stronger argument for ME being town than it is you

[catboi]

And let me just say that you're really not understand what I have to deal with.

Both Catboi/S_S have pretty much shut me down in most attempts, and S_S especially has said 'I don't care what your read is on me'. Tell me Luke: What's the best way to read someone? Is it sitting on your own laurels and assuming you can get in someone's head and figuring out what they're thinking? Or is it approaching them, asking questions, and trying to understand. I simply cannot be a mind reader and I did not feel like I was helping Absin by sitting there and taking the same approach S_S was. I don't know what about that is so hard to understand, or how approaching them is..working against wanting to win?

You could have just...analyzed our posts?

[catboi]

Okay, I caught up, I haven't read s_s's case on me yet because I didn't want to throw all my time into tearing it up before I'd read everything else. Will get to that now, still waking up (๑ᵕ⌓ᵕ̤)

[catboi]

I've half a mind to just jump to the gate right now - I actually didn't mind lukewarm's suggestion earlier that I be the third at the keep, because I don't see scum motivation in Anastasia's play and although briar's play didn't make a ton of sense to me I feel as though she's threadspewed from the townreads on her, but, selfishly, I want to stay in the game longer and I think the keep should be resolved first. I feel like I'm able to play better after flips are on the table.

So this logic is... bad. It's just flat-out not playing to wincon if true. "It might make sense to put me at the Keep... but I think Gate is more fun, so I'm just gonna pick it." And they did pick it. Because they want to be in the game longer.

I can't help but notice that at this point, Briar (flipped scum) and unwnd (top pick for third scum) had already locked into the other two locations. Surely that's just a wacky coincidence though, and not catboi inventing a flimsy excuse to guarantee a very early 1-1-1 split?

The idea that it's "playing against wincon" is just flat out untrue - I had felt the keep was more or less a lock, and that me jumping there wouldn't affect the outcome of things too strongly. I felt as though I'd be able to make a more effective contribution to the game elsewhere and in that sense me not going to the keep was +EV.

If I'm scum with unwnd, why do I

need

to make the immediate jump to the wall and put the spotlight on myself? Do you think every scum is going to blatantly jump to the location they want to ensure an optimal swap? No, the play would be to wait it and delegate responsibility to other people, and then in the later phases you can point back and say "look it's not me I didn't care where I went". Like, there is NO WAY IN HELL I ever make such a blatant play as scum, because it makes me look like crap afterwards.

Well, let's see if there's any way we can figure out whether this is catboi's real opinion or just an excuse. How about 1101, where they indicate the resolution order should be Keep > Gate > Wall. Why not Keep > Wall > Gate? What happened to selfishly wanting to stay alive as long as possible?

Oh, come ON. This is reaching so hard I'm surprised you didn't pull a muscle doing it. I want to be able to contribute more but my

literal first priority is not staying alive above all else

. That's ridiculous and there's no way a town player ever tries to argue something like this. I felt that game order was the best way of simply "playing the probabilities", so to speak, hence my logic for the resolution order. The only way someone could interpret this as contradictory is from willfully trying to misrepresent me. Anyone who actually had to read my words in an honest fashion wouldn't see the problem here.

You know, this might be just me, but I'm not seeing any other references to that.

Oh hey, they talked about their motivation for going to the Gate:

My feeling was that, assuming the two townreads already at the keep were correct, me going there would ensure it was all town and force the mafia to swap with one of us. Being that I was not as townread as the other two, I'd likely be left there and I could just vote my townread and win a point. However it seemed almost superfluous to me - they were likely to get voted without my help regardless, and I'd end up removing myself from the game before being able to do much. Like I said in the post you quoted, I feel like I'm able to contribute a lot more effectively once there's been some flips and I can analyze based on interactions. Granted this way I have to convince people I'm town myself, which is not always easy for me, but I still feel as though I'm more valuable this way.

And this just seems like a lie. Like, this isn't the justification they gave when they locked it in! They said that the Keep would be fine, but they wanted to stay alive longer.

This is entirely consistent with what I said. You're straining to make attacks. It's literally just me elaborating on what I said in the earlier post.

And there's also 1710, which I touched on before. It's clearly wrong (omg catboi made 2 posts supporting ana and only 1 supporting briar, obviously they would automatically trust ana over briar and surely the scum were able to deduce that !) and while the motivation for it doesn't

have

to be malicious, it seems to just be the judicious townie thing to do to actually, like check this before posting it? especially since catboi is clearly trying to project this deliberative vibe (even though as I think I've previously said, it really isn't even pro-town to be that way).

I'm sorry, am I supposed to check my own ISO? I misremembered the strength of the signals I was putting out. This is again completely ludicrous. Yes, I thought I had expressed my townread of Anastasia in stronger terms than I had. That's simply owing to me forgetting, but ultimately I felt like I had given that impression when I made that post. By the same argument, if I were scum, wouldn't I bother to check how much I had said? The argument doesn't work. Again this is a typical scum argument: latching on to a townie making a mistake (me forgetting how strongly I'd expressed my townread of Ana) and and trying to spin it as being scummy somehow when it transparently should be NAI at worst.

And 1719 is like... arguably a perspective slip. They're trying to frame my flailing and freaking out as a scum response to an unusual thing happening, even though if I were scum I would have known the Briar scumflip was coming a mile away and indeed my reaction was only so disorganized because I am town and WAS caught off balance. (Absinthe was I believe the one to first point this out. It was a good point.)

Nah, it' not - because scum have to emulate a townie mindset, there ends up being a bit of mental lag time in their responses to anything - they have to get into that mindset of "how would I be reacting here as town" but it's imperfect, doing so takes thinking where for townies it's instinctual. It's akin to late game in a regular mafia game - as the game approaches ELO the town players start to get paranoid and stressed, and oftentimes scum just forget to act that way because their mind is set on pushing an agenda rather than emulating the responses they'd have as town.

[catboi]

Yes LMAO.

What do you make of that?

oh no now I have an alt guess for you that I'm not happy about

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 was probably a rude thing to say regardless of whether it was right. Sorry.

I'm thinking it wasn't right though because if it was then you'd probably know why I said it.

Though, I do want to ask to clarify @S_S: was it a game thing or a more personal/player thing that you were thinking?

Not sure exactly what you mean by this, but the last time I played with the player I thought you were we had a pretty unpleasant conflict.

If you would like "textbook distancing", how about this: pretending to be mistaken about the identity of an alt.

I would've liked more of a follow-up from S_S regarding if he thought you were genuine or not

Bear in mind that it is extremely to our advantage to hide our reads as much as possible.

You think so?

To an extent. Scum will have either 6 or 15 options for who to swap; either way, which swap is optimal will depend almost entirely on how people are being read. The less they know about that, the more likely they are to make a suboptimal swap-- and the swap matters a huge deal.

How do you feel about what Ana did just now?

Probably moderately +scum because giving up control is pretty much always +town here, but not very much so. (Incidentally: this means Lukewarm's reaction is towny.)

Ugh, I don't want to think about the swap. >_> I've been handwaving it as an Event to deal with later and I don't wanna think about the consequences /now./

I mean yes, and in a sense you're right that we shouldn't be talking about it much because we don't want to give scum ideas. But... it is an important part of the setup, so you can't just ignore it.

Are you saying the gambit is that Ana says all this and gets swapped out, rather than the gambit being her presence and theoretical vote when we're actually voting?

The latter, or she says all this and then acts hesitant when D2 actually comes. There would be no point in voting as a gambit, since at the Keep anyone who gets voted will just self-hammer. (or not self-hammer and enjoy their conftown status)

I guess my issue with it being the latter is that... isn't it just a scumclaim if she's hesitant? I don't understand the like... worry regarding Ana since we can hold her to her word knowing how many times she's said it.

The weird thing here is that I am simultaneously trying to argue that (a) Ana as town OUGHT to be hesitant and (b) Ana as scum would be hesitant.

I think the upshot is that she's probably town, for how much she has pushed back on (a).

I do trust Ana's faith in her absinthe read, for what that's worth.

Do you know Ana's main?

I figured it out, yes.

Mm.

I'll take your word for it. I also townread absinthe for the same reason Ana does.

There's just a small part of me that doesn't trust her despite everything because as a player I feel this is the sort of thing she would do as scum so holding her accountable to her willingness to vote someone who's not herself makes me more comfortable with her.

Sure. But in that case, she would be the nullread at the Keep, so we'd need another townread there.

What is your actual read on Ana?

Town

And I did say this before.

I think it makes sense, send people with more WIM to other places to fight.

I'm not exactly Mr. WIM as scum though. My scumgame usually flags eventually as I find it harder and harder to make an effort; maybe I'd be better this game because it's only two days. Not sure. I think I'd also be demoralized by the way the day ended, unless it was planned with Dunnstral.

Why's that?

Because you don't scumread me and aren't ffery

Now, look at all these interactions. There is basically not a single one of these where something_smart looks like he is remotely trying to solve briar. It's classic scum talking to each other: completely neutral, asking each other things so they're acnowledging each other's existence, but never trying to hard to apply pressure to one another or appear like they're supporting each other too much.

And this plays into what he said: something_smart

didn't

really support the "Briar is obvtown" narrative. In fact, he hardly expressed a read on her at all. Think about how the game was proceeding: Briar from very early on was essentially brute-forcing herself as a townread in an attempt to win the Keep. With that known, what are her teammates going to be doing? They don't want to be seen supporting her too loudly. Then they look bad after she flips. But they also don't want to be questioning the townreads on her and sowing doubt, because that could lead to them losing the wall. And so that forces them into an awkward middle ground, where they have to avoid saying too much about Briar. And that's exactly what happened with something_smart. He barely said anything about Briar at all. You can go back and check his ISO yourself.

[catboi]

there's no incentive for scum!Ana to go to keep and promise to vote through Briar/Absinthe because that's a point for the town.

Only if you actually follow through with it...

I've already committed to voting for whichever of Briar/Absinthe remain in the group.

I have no reason to change on this.

What if you change your mind?

But until that actually happens - he has no ground to say I am scum-gambitting.

And I'm not. I'm just saying it's possible.

To be clear-- I was not aware that you'd committed to definitely voting whoever of Briar/absinthe remains at the Keep. If you clearly stated it somewhere, it was too far back and I didn't recall it? My +scum comment was about you jumping on the Keep, only.

I don't think a gambit is incredibly likely, but I also think that you're playing badly if town by committing yourself to not changing those reads.

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.

Also, very, very subtle, but I feel like here he's trying to push Anastasia toward committing to voting Briar at first, only to tie himself in a knot by saying scum would hesitate, but town shouldn't commit to their reads either - I think given how he saw ana was doubting him, he just shifted his argument knowing she'd do the opposite of what he said. There's a bit of a halt where he says "you're playing badly if town by committing to your reads" but there was never the followthrough to the next logical step - that scum would leave her with whichever of her reads was wrong.

[catboi]

I think if either one of you try to escape to the Gate it would be a scum claim

Well yes, but we would also have to do it.

If Infinity and I both went to the Wall right now, by definition the game would not be over.

With hindsight, this really looks like a cheeky scum line

[catboi]

Anyway, that's all for me for now. I'm going to do a meta dive on Ydrasse's recent scumgames later, see if I can find anything in terms of partner interactions - She really completely blindsided me here based on our past experience but I want to see if there's been a recent evolution in her play that I can track.

o(=´∇｀=)o

[catboi]

Okay, I took a look at

Dark Waltz III

for research, I don't know how to best present my findings but I think rather than going into detail I'm going to summarize Ydrasse's interactions with her partners in that game because I think there's some clear tendencies shown.

Early on koba distances with her, koba attacks her and she plays up the hurt/emotional angle in response. From there she calls koba scum occasionally but never really cases it or pushes it too strongly. She just rides with the occasional suspicion on the slot. She continues to argue with Koba and Firebringer (when he replaces koba) but they always initiate it, it doesn't get started from her end. Again very heavy in playing up the AtE and frustration.

Her other partner, Harley, she barely interacts with at all, to an almost shocking degree. They only spoke to each other a handful of times and when they did it was soft questioning. she floated a scumread on harley but wound up reversing course later when the game environment became favorable for it. There was also a PT but I haven't read that and it's a different environment so I assume it's not relevant.

In general she seems to have a tendency to rarely speak with her partners directly, which is about what I'd expect from a player relatively new to forum mafia.

[catboi]

Going to reread ISOs later with that in mind. I've no doubt in my mind all of the stances she took were deliberate posturing that was designed to confuse, but I think the tendency in interactions is something she'd not be looking out for and is more likely produce useful tells.

[catboi]

And let me just say that you're really not understand what I have to deal with.

Both Catboi/S_S have pretty much shut me down in most attempts, and S_S especially has said 'I don't care what your read is on me'. Tell me Luke: What's the best way to read someone? Is it sitting on your own laurels and assuming you can get in someone's head and figuring out what they're thinking? Or is it approaching them, asking questions, and trying to understand. I simply cannot be a mind reader and I did not feel like I was helping Absin by sitting there and taking the same approach S_S was. I don't know what about that is so hard to understand, or how approaching them is..working against wanting to win?

You could have just...analyzed our posts?

In hindsight yes I could've, but you both play very similarly even if you don't realize it. You're two people who as absin put, will play to their idiosyncrasies. S_S is especially attached to them, but I just get a feeling as scum you wouldn't waiver. As for why I keep pushing the envelope? I can't honestly tell you. I know it seems like a stretch to say this but it really was the fact I was manically obsessed with the game due to not monitoring my health. Do you remember a lot of times you were sleep deprived and making good decisions? Probably not many

I don't think we're remotely similar. That seems like a bit of a cop-out but I don't know if you were just being cautious of me after FL vs Hectic (I also don't remember how you were reading me in that game)

I don't know if my impression is accurate or fair, but I feel like catboi has more range(?) as a player and probably has a stronger scum game than S_S does.

I once self-described myself as a "cocky bastard" as scum but that was a long time ago. I fooled a decent number of people in my only real scum game in years, but not the ones that mattered (nothing I said could shake FL. Pooky caught me almost instantaneously). I still honestly feel like I'm well beyond the range of how I played in that game. That was part of why I was begging Ydrasse to explain her read on me. Then she flipped scum.

[catboi]

Catboi, I don't know if you mentioned it but I looked back on the way votes went D1.

Which was

Me (The Wall) -> Briar (The Keep) -> Ana (The Keep) and then You (The Gate).

What was your reason to go into the gate if you were townreading Briar? Which I'm pretty sure you stated you were.

I already explained this: I townread both people at the keep and figured me going there was unnecessary, people said they were okay with me going to the gate, I wanted to put pressure on other people to take action because I felt like we'd be able to read into people's spontaneous decisionmaking more.

Would the other townies please post?

Sorry, I've been around but felt like there wasn't anything for me to respond to directly and I didn't have the time and energy to reread Briar interactions today, that's my big project for tomorrow

[catboi]

Catboi, I don't know if you mentioned it but I looked back on the way votes went D1.

Which was

Me (The Wall) -> Briar (The Keep) -> Ana (The Keep) and then You (The Gate).

What was your reason to go into the gate if you were townreading Briar? Which I'm pretty sure you stated you were.

I already explained this: I townread both people at the keep and figured me going there was unnecessary, people said they were okay with me going to the gate, I wanted to put pressure on other people to take action because I felt like we'd be able to read into people's spontaneous decisionmaking more.

Would the other townies please post?

Sorry, I've been around but felt like there wasn't anything for me to respond to directly and I didn't have the time and energy to reread Briar interactions today, that's my big project for tomorrow

Did you get anything from the spontaneous decision-making?

I think Dunn's hammering of the Wall was the most significant move, and at the start of this phase I felt it was a town move and his reasoning for it was sound. I still think it feels more like a town-motivated one but I'm struggling with the read right now for other reasons I'll be getting to in a moment.

[catboi]

So, on a reread of Briar for interactions:

I feel very confident her and Lukewarm aren't teamed. I was feeling that way anyway (brief flash of paranoia earlier in the day aside), but this more or less solidified the read to the point I'd be fine with having the hammer passed to him right now. Although the questioning/back and forth in 138/153/164/197 isn't strictly non-partnery in content, it feels like a free-flowing back and forth rather than something staged and Lukewarm's responses look natural. Considering Ydrasse's tendency to not pay as much attention to her teammates I wouldn't expect her to go out of her way to talk to a teammate like this in the early game. The exchange between the two in 330/332 is where I decided they were just absolutely never teamed, though. The way Lukewarm expresses apprehension and she tries to placate him would be an impressive move coming from an inexperienced scum player. 353's "I pressed on it again because I didn't want it to get lost in the fray" also shows her following up on an interaction, which she wasn't particularly consistent about doing in dark waltz. Could she, theoretically, have patched this hole in her game? I suppose but I wouldn't expect her to be aware of this blind spot and people generally don't shift their playstyle until they get burned by it. Again her confidently asserting Lukewarm in 370 seems more likely to be a read on a townie. 437 is another interaction that doesn't feel partnery at all, lukewarm making comments about not wanting to let briar brute force her plan, her going "Oh Luke don't do this to me" in response, it would be a wholly unnecessary level of theatrical paranoia toward each other but the way she speaks to him feels more thorough than her talking to teammates in Dark Waltz III, where it all felt very terse. In 493 she suggests the possibility of Luke being in the group at the keep. While theoretically I could see this as an attempt to engineer a master plan where she puts Lukewarm at the wall and then swaps him out, lukewarm doesn't hop on it and she defers to letting Anastasia pick the 3rd. There's also Lukewarm's response in 511 catching my eye - "But I am still incredibly frustrated by her locking herself in without letting the thread talk about it". I simply don't see a new player talking this way about their partner. The one time Briar expresses doubt of him is in 894, but only fleetingly, in 1544 she's back to calling him town and in 1568 she's calling for dunn and unwnd to cross. That feels like one of those moments where scum say something truthful, give the clear to a townie because they don't have to lie that way. I just don't expect scum to assert their partner should get hammer in a situation like this, they'd feel a little more doubt.

Looking over her interactions with Dunn is where concerns started to creep up. While I realize Dunnstral isn't the most verbose player, it seems as though she barely acknowledged his existence for all of the first phase - she mentions him in her reads and her theoretical wall assignments, and then not again until 999's "I don't know what I'm supposed to make of Dunnstral picking the Wall if anything." This is followed by 1009 where she's again very fencesitty on his actions. She talks to Dunn about in 1045/1061, but there's not a lot to the exchange. Compliments him on his short ISO in 1071, asks him a very simple question in 1077. There's weak shade on him in 1087, pitching the hypothetical "But is the simple answer that Dunn hopped in that group to avoid auto-lose and we should just not waste our time here?". But then after that she makes a small response to him suspecting lukewarm, saying "I'll read over [Lukewarm], then, regarding the associatives." but it goes nowhere considering she self-hammers not long after.

I wouldn't say anything between them is necessarily a glaring red fag but taken as a whole the body of interactions between them

looks

like it fits the bill of how she's interacted with partners before this. There's some cursory questioning but not much else and she mostly just talks

about

him, rather than

to

him, while slotting him in the lower part of her POE for most of the game.


By contrast her approach to unwnd even early on is...well, openly flirtatious (59/76/79/80). I can't rule out her acting this way toward a partner but the whole vibe of her approach toward him feels super-pockety, see 101/139/142/155. Of course, this is all very early in the game but the expectation is that scum are going to try to build personal connections early on and the dynamic between the two of them continues throughout the game. She also goes out of her way to address him in 413/426 where in previous games she hasn't paid much attention to her partners. There's the whole dynamic in 454/464 where she's discussing her read on me with unwnd, it's not impossible for it to be theater but she's actually bothering to pay attention to him in a way that feels like she cares about what he thinks? I don't know if that's a coherent explanation. And then further on, the pockety vibes continue with 898/937/1151. I almost...I have a hard time seeing her acting toward a teammate this way. I feel like I need to review dark waltz III again to see how she approached him there.

The moment she finally bows to the pressure that's been on unwnd for most of the game is 1394, and from there she shades him in a few posts in 1452/1496/1497. She speaks to him in 1502, but contiues to begrudgingly scumread him in 1544. I guess the question is would she bother to walk back a townread on a townie she was white knighting? She could simply keep defending him regardless until she flipped. But then I don't know why she'd bother distancing from him so late, either. Or why she keeps talking to him like she does in 1555/1562/1576. It looks like she wants his support still by complimenting him? I almost feel like the "you're doing great" comment would be something she'd say in the scum PT rather than in-thread, but that's really stupid reasoning. The vibe of 1589 is, I don't know, conciliatory even. Looking at the whole ISO threw my read in doubt because it doesn't feel like an interaction pattern that makes any sense as intentional distancing. If I had to guess at an explanation for her turning around and shading unwnd after acting pockety toward him for most of the game it'd be because she was shifting her reads to align more closely with Anastasia so Ana would be sure to vote for her.

Gosh, I need to take a nap, that took forever. (⌯͒ᵕɪᵕ⌯͒)zzZ

[catboi]

Who do you lean when it comes to Catboi/S_S and why

I currently think it is catboi. I thought I mentioned it in my post on Dunn, but maybe I forgot. I plan on making a case when I get some proper time to work on it.

god

[catboi]

I'm glad we didn't end up in the same spot because I cannot deal with you misreading me again

[catboi]

Catboi is moving into the "if scum I'm gonna cry" zone.

what exactly is difficult for scum to fake in that post

70% of it is literally just recapping what happened
20% of it is saying stuff does or doesn't look like a partner interaction with zero explanation
10% of it is based on Ydrasse meta which is the only actual analysis there but that's so easy to fake

or is it just, you would feel bad voting against someone who's put in so much effort?

This is a poor attempt at minimization. Yes, I have to summarize what I'm talking about as part of my analysis. That's necessary for the sake of other people knowing what I'm talking about. However, I'm also presenting the data as part of the solving process for the keep so people can look at it themselves and draw their own conclusions. Regardless "zero explanation" is a complete load of shit and you know it. Further, just saying it's "easy to fake" is avoiding actually disputing anything I'm claiming in my analysis.

[catboi]

I'm glad we didn't end up in the same spot because I cannot deal with you misreading me again

I've walked it back.

I think my main issue is that I don't see SS and Dunn as partners. So if my solve in the Wall is Dunn, then that makes you the scum in the keep... Plus I typed that before I read your recent long post.

Why do you see them as unaligned, again? I know you made a post about that but it hasn't stuck in my memory. I didn't find strong associatives between something_smart and any of you at the start of the phase, if I recall correctly.

[catboi]

Checked again, there were some vague hints of something_smart and unwnd being partnery but not much else, no anti-alignments that I was able to spot.

[catboi]

I mean, that suggestion was placed 10 minutes before Dunn hammered the wall, and Infinity was nowhere in sight. I don't see how that makes them independent. You could argue him saying that was what spurred Dunn on but it's not like that'd be hard to stage.

At least give my analysis a look?

[catboi]

Oh, it's over? I was hoping for more dramatics...but at least I don't have to worry now.

(´ω｀*)

[catboi]

Catboi is moving into the "if scum I'm gonna cry" zone.

<3

I'm feeling like a lost kitten...

[catboi]

For the record, I entered day 1 thinking Anastasia was someone and was trying to pocket her, then found out her main was not at all who I thought it was and promptly informed the team while changing my approach.

This really is an interesting setup, despite the outcome of the game I found it incredibly challenging - you more or less ride or die on your teammates' individual merits and the most you're able to do is WIFOM a bit. We really didn't have a plan going into the day and the idea of getting the 1-1-1 split and swapping a heavily suspected townie into the keep was invented on the fly. I really did want to play this as town, because from that perspective you get an interesting puzzle to work though while as scum I felt pretty constrained.

I think something_smart's strongest point against me was that my logic for jumping to the gate really wasn't very good - I got antsy and wanted to move the game forward because I felt like prolonged discussion would make things harder and someone might start towntelling, and ultimately me going to the gate specifically was obviously for strategic purposes.

Team MVP was definitely Ydrasse, though - without us having a plan for the game she simply brute-forced her way into winning the keep where I was practically ready to concede it and play a hard game from the start. I really did find her play here to be very impressive.

[catboi]

people who enjoy being in ELO.

Do such utterly depraved beings really exist?

[catboi]

nya nya~ (≚ᄌ≚)ℒℴѵℯ♥

[catboi]

I think this would be a fun setup in a more fast-paced environment, like a marathon game or face to face

[catboi]

Meh, it happens, ELo is really hard and my own track record there as town is pretty poor. For being new you shouldn't feel bad about it at all.

[catboi]

Oh, I should say: you all were wonderful to play with, thanks for making the game enjoyable~

:3

[catboi]

Oh, and thanks to Marashu for hosting. 2/2 on well-run games so far