Micro 1075: The Coalition of Imaginary Creatures (Game over)

[patchwork]

Hm, so patchwork has decided to open wolf. Good to know.

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[Bingle]

HURT: Everyone

[Eiralox]

HEAL: patchwork

HEAL: northsidegal

Lesser certainty here. Not fully trusting nsg like almost everyone seems to ngl.

But I'm down with sheeping N_M for now so theres at least two base coalitions. Key and patch did feel good previous pages, near these two bases.

No idea what's going on with Bingle tbh. I had some Bingle/Umlaut vibes but instead of seeming certain on that I'll just say it's something I have to study.

[Bingle]

I'm busy for the next several hours, but I have thoughts I'd like to share before coalition gets hammered. I don't imagine that is going to actually be an issue, but this is explicitly a request that that not happen in the next 12 hours.

[Eiralox]

Yeah no that happening for days. Have fun <3

[Eiralox]

*that ain't

[lilith2013]

V OTECOUNT 1.010
E LIMINATION V OTES
P LAYER N AME	C URRENT V OTES
Keychain (2)	northsidegal, Not_Mafia
patchwork (0)	None
KawaiiKame (1)	Keychain
Not_Mafia (0)	None
northsidegal (0)	None
Eiralox (0)	None
Umlaut (0)	None
Dunnstral (0)	None
Bingle (0)	None
NOT VOTING: patchwork, KawaiiKame, Dunnstral, Bingle, Umlaut, Eiralox
C OALITION V OTES
P LAYER N AME	C URRENT C OALITION
Keychain (4)	Keychain, northsidegal, Eiralox, Umlaut
patchwork (4)	patchwork, northsidegal, Bingle, Eiralox
KawaiiKame (5)	Eiralox, Dunnstral, Keychain, northsidegal, Umlaut
Not_Mafia (5)	Not_Mafia, Keychain, patchwork, northsidegal, Eiralox
northsidegal (2)	northsidegal, Eiralox
Eiralox (5)	Eiralox, Not_Mafia, Keychain, patchwork, northsidegal
Umlaut (5)	Umlaut, northsidegal, Keychain, Eiralox, Bingle
Dunnstral (4)	Dunnstral, northsidegal, Umlaut, Eiralox
Bingle (0)	None
With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lock in a Coalition and 5 to eliminate. Deadline: (expired on 2023-04-06 14:49:20)
Notes: Imaginary creatures have completely fallen by the wayside

[Dunnstral]

KawaiiKame, what do you think of 367? Is that an accurate post?

[Bingle]

While that's an excellent callback to that game proving your memory is better than mine, "what progression" was not asking him to explain the townread, I just didn't see any progression between the two posts so was asking about that.

And your imaginary Keychain is correct Shirley, if Kawaii were my partner struggling with one of their first scum games, I would probably not jump on them so hard from their very first post, read up on how they're acting different than previous games to push them before the people with direct experience with them can chip in, and keep them as my top scumread ever since their appearance unless they asked me to bus them because they were hating the game, that's technically possible. I feel I'd be much more likely to try to make it easier for them to post naturally - I might fail, but I'd give it a shot first.

The point isn't that you would remember that game, but that I have reason to believe you would totally do something along those lines. And I think you would have no problem admitting that you would totally do something along those lines. Those lines being seeing someone expressing a townread on your buddy poorly and asking for clarification.

wrt the self meta, my normal response would be to dismiss self meta, but this actually rings true. I do think that personality wise you would tend to be a more supportive scumbuddy than a less supportive one, and I don't think kame is receiving the kind of support that you would give in a PT. In fact, I'd say that argument extends a bit farther to include patchwork. I think you, specifically out of the player list would be inclined to coaching and I think patch's play has a distinct lack of "coached by a scumbuddy" behind it.

[northsidegal]

i think im willing to compromise on keychain, maybe umlaut. might have been overthinking things.

someone bother me if i don't do a full reread of the game today, please.

[Bingle]

Viable pairs:

NSG/Dunn
NSG/Patchwork
NSG/Kawaii
NSG/Key
Dunn/Umlaut
Dunn/Patchwork
Dunn/Key
Umlaut/Kawaii
Umlaut/Key
Patchwork/Kame


NSG: 4
Dunn: 4
Umlaut: 3
Patchwork: 3
Keychain: 3
Kame: 3

While going through the playerlist, it struck me how few antipartnery vibes NSG actually had. Initially, I was also concerned about the same thing with Keychain, but her response to my points about her actually does make me feel better there, so I removed those pairs. Looking at this, I actually have a desire to explore the reason why you'd have a townread specifically exclude themselves from the coalition:

A player who is acknowledged as having particularly strong reads and a particularly good scumgame can be leashed to create a townpool excluding themselves in some setups. This pool can be useful for things like directing cops or doctors without said cops or doctors having to out. It's also particularly useful for weird setups like AITP where reducing thread content is desirable.

In that vein

@nsg: If you were to create a pool of five players for the coalition right now which did not include you, which five would it be?

[Bingle]

I agree he has good posts though I'm not sure they outweigh the fluff that feels more empty to me - people naturally have different posting rates, it's more of a percentage thing, and by percentage I mean how much I feel like it's one or the other because I haven't counted. 226 is certainly one of those good posts. 57 is one of the posts I was thinking of more as generic helpfulness with not much personal opinion though.

Fluff to content ratio isn't a good metric for reading me directly. There is a thing it points to, but me fluffing isn't actually scum indicative, even if it's the only thing I'm doing.

Basically, the more fluff, the more I'm enjoying the game. That can be helpful when looking to see if I'm acting like I'm enjoying the game for other reasons (If for example I'm detached but still fluffing that's a red flag, because the fluff indicates I want to read the game and the detachment indicates there's a reason I'm not reading the game) but your calculus is lacking in depth.

Similarly, mech to analysis isn't a good metric for me, because I'm going to post exactly as much mech as I think the setup needs and the rest of my field will be analysis. If I'm being mech heavy, it means that the fields in which I'm growing my fucks are insufficient to the requirements of the game.

Together, having a lot of mech and a lot of fluff with not a lot of analysis and a level of detachment from the thread is a pretty solid reason to scumread me, but I don't actually think I've been analysis light this game, and I think it's interesting you feel I have.

[Bingle]

buddying the newbie vibe

Explicitly, yes. I buddied Delta. I've also been buddying nsg. That's not really scum indicative, though.

[Bingle]

NSG/Dunn
NSG/Patchwork
NSG/Kawaii
NSG/Key
Dunn/Umlaut
Dunn/Patchwork
Dunn/Key
Umlaut/Kawaii
Umlaut/Key
Patchwork/Kame

Based on updated reads and this:

My desired coalition would be:

Bingle

Eir
Umlaut
NM
NSG

Key

Dunn

Kame

patchwork

The top 4 are individually my strongest townreads, roughly in that order. I have reservations on Key for calling me out as 'too helpful' without explicitly mentioning my buddying. I don't take exception to her read on me, and if I am excluded from the coalition she's my inclusion. (It's somewhat expected, tbh.) NSG hasn't done anything that I can't see scum her pulling, but I explicitly want her in the coalition because town her is a bullet magnet. I think on the whole what Dunn has given is towny but there's very little precluding him from being scum with anyone and so I'm not particularly thrilled with seeing him join the coalition.

[Bingle]

A bit about NM:

Admittedly, it has been years since I've played with N_M, but when I did his contribution to the scumthread was nonexistent. He was intensely useless as a scumbuddy and only marginally less so as a town player. His reads were aight, but he had all the charisma of a wet paper bag.

355 is already more of an explanation of reads than I would ever expect from the old NM. The active antagonism towards Delta is also +town points based on my old metric, because old N_M just didn't give a fuck about scumgames.

I don't know if this is still true, but viewtopic.php?t=90377 strongly suggests it is. If no one contradicts this, it means N_M is almost certainly town by meta.

Also worth noting, that link is a scum PT that N_M forgot about for several days, which means that nsg's reason for townreading N_M holds water about as well as the aforementioned wet paper bag.

[Not_Mafia]

A bit about NM:

Admittedly, it has been years since I've played with N_M, but when I did his contribution to the scumthread was nonexistent. He was intensely useless as a scumbuddy and only marginally less so as a town player. His reads were aight, but he had all the charisma of a wet paper bag.

355 is already more of an explanation of reads than I would ever expect from the old NM. The active antagonism towards Delta is also +town points based on my old metric, because old N_M just didn't give a fuck about scumgames.

I don't know if this is still true, but viewtopic.php?t=90377 strongly suggests it is. If no one contradicts this, it means N_M is almost certainly town by meta.

Also worth noting, that link is a scum PT that N_M forgot about for several days, which means that nsg's reason for townreading N_M holds water about as well as the aforementioned wet paper bag.

That took place immediately after the site upgrade where PTs were not appearing in egosearch

[Bingle]

Spoiler: A Bit About Patchwerk

Patchwerk originally appeared as a boss in classic Naxxramas, being one of Kel'Thuzads most powerful abominations. His strength and speed came as a shock to those that faced him in combat. Far from a sluggish, mindless undead, Patchwerk used his immense power to pulverize any adversary with a flurry of potent, powerful attacks.[1] When word of his existence first reached the ears of the Brotherhood, none believed the tales of an abomination with such immense speed and strength. Fewer still believed it when he fell the first time.

Patchwerk was called to Acherus to put down the Knights of the Ebon Blade's insurrection after they broke free of the Lich King's control.

During the Scourge resurgence, Patchwerk was one of the undead forces reanimated by Mawsworn kyrian in the Sanctum of Reanimation in Icecrown. Later, adventurers of both the Alliance and the Horde were sent by the Argent Crusade to kill him once again.

Defeating Patchwerk depends on sustaining heavy DPS and managing Hateful Strikes. Without sufficient damage, Patchwerk's enrage will eventually destroy the raid. Without dealing with Hatefuls, Patchwerk will rapidly kill the raid's melee; losing these members will likely put the rest of the raid in an impossible situation. However, dealing with these two concerns will make Patchwerk an easy fight.

Spoiler: A ZEBRA!

I've already talked a bit about Patchwork's weird approach to me. At the beginning of the game, they just started responding to my posts as if I were conftown, and there was no paranoia invested into whether what I was doing was protown or not. Everything seemed to be taken at face value. Additionally, patchwork seemed particularly invested in making sure I read them as town. When I pointed this out, the response was that 'people are supposed to be nice', meaning patch probably doesn't rely heavily on manipulation as town.

However, recently, that progression has taken a turn for the worse:

At page 9. Can we hammer n_m after coalitions pls they're really fucking annoying

A request to policy N_M, esp in response to delta's frustration with N_M, isn't particularly eyebrow raising. It is something scum would see as safe, but it's not really scummy on it's own.

Hot take, we should lim inside the co-alition

n_m this isn't a hot take this is what you're supposed to do if the winning coalition has scum in it

What is scummy is this. patchwork explicitly understands the theory of the setup. Note, this is before my mechposts, so patch knew that limming on coalition was optimal before making the post about policy-ing N_M (a post which had 0 joking vibes, by my reckoning) and yet...

n_m i can't really read, dunn's play pings me very subtly, kawaii doesn't act the same as they do in towngames

N_M is a coalition veto. So, patch has the positions of "Let's lim N_M", "Let's lim on Coalition" and "Let's ensure N_M is off Coalition".

understandable, but can you give like a rough list of the players from most wanted in the coalition to least? I'd like to get more opinions from you

me
delta/eira
nsg
keychain
bingle
kawaii
umlaut
dunnstral
n_m

note that this is a very rough approximation. some players havent' caught my attention so they just naturally have to be nearer the bottom, bingle i used to tr on vibes but now i'm a little more skeptical of, umlaut i literally do not remember being here at all and i know they've been posting it's just like they haven't been really there
same for kawaii they're just not doing anything
n_m's at the bottom because cringe, but their play feels more towny than not

This, in the wake of me being obviously not consensus town, is a shift from buddying me to buddying Keychain. Like, the exact same treatment, just shifted from one player to another.

If everyone makes a list like this, we can start totting up our collective coalition

Coalition

northsidegal
Eiralox
patchwork
Keychain
Not_Mafia

Compromise

Umlaut

Veto

Dunnstral
KawaiiKame
Bingle

yeah, this is basically my list but with kawaii and umlaut swapped

And note: I had 0 posts between these last 2, but on the basis of, as best I can tell, Keychain saying I've put in effort as scum before and N_M putting forth a coalition that included patchwork, I've moved to the top veto slot and the person patchwork wants to exclude most has become sheepworthy.

Collectively, this suggests to me that patchwork is building reads as a political tool to be townread, not as an actual attempt to share legitimate beliefs they hold. There is clearly an agenda driving this, imo.

[Bingle]

That took place immediately after the site upgrade where PTs were not appearing in egosearch

Hm. Further research shall be conducted immediately.

[Bingle]

Further research suggests N_M still better at town than scum, but also makes nsg tell less explicitly wrong. Particularly there was a Haunted Village game where he made 3 whole posts in scumchat.

[Keychain]

Too short on time to think about this game in depth tonight but later on definitely want to think about Bingle's patchwork read, and also why Umlaut and Bingle's respective familiarity with N_M led them to opposite conclusions on his towniness

NSG/Key

the DREAM, the THEATRE

Umlaut/Key

including me/um as a pair doesn't follow from your comments about our interactions?

Also 436 self meta is acknowledged but I'm not just talking about mech but also what I think I called "generic helpfulness" - I didn't call it buddying because I view buddying as targeting a specific player but the generic helpfulness is more a way to look like you're ~progressing the game~ particularly to newer players

I'm pretty sure I'm making fuck all sense at this point I'm tired I'm going to bed

[Not_Mafia]

NSG is town, she wouldn't play this angle as scum

[Not_Mafia]

^ Wrong game

@ lillith

please delete

[Eiralox]

I highly doubt Bingle will be in my coalition today. I'm happy with where I am, my uncertainty is still on patchwork and northsidegal but they're staying for now.

[Bingle]

patchwork

Any inclination to engage with why I'm scumreading patch?

[Bingle]

including me/um as a pair doesn't follow from your comments about our interactions?

Also 436 self meta is acknowledged but I'm not just talking about mech but also what I think I called "generic helpfulness" - I didn't call it buddying because I view buddying as targeting a specific player but the generic helpfulness is more a way to look like you're ~progressing the game~ particularly to newer players

You/um doesn't seem likely, but I'm not taking it off the table as a viable possibility at the moment.

Can you point at any posts of mine that look like they're progressing the game but actually aren't?