Mini 1918: Paint Mafia Threequel! Game Over!

[Varsoon]

Hello !! Playing here after a long time.My main reason to play this game was the shorter deadline.Don't really understand the mechanics of this game so if anyone is around and can link to an earlier game would be great(i'm going to search myself right now).

I was a part of the review crew for the first game.
When we start the game, players are either the color BLUE or the color RED. Some roles might change this, like a miller-type role could start RED or YELLOW or something. But you really shouldn't worry too much about that as of the start of the game, unless it gets claimed.
Town players start out as BLUE.
Mafia players start out as RED.
As the game goes on, different roles/abilities will be able to change these colors and interact with them.

At the start of each day phase, we get to vote on a PUBLIC REVEAL of a player's CURRENT color.
So that means, barring role shenanigans, on day 1, this is pretty much like PUBLICLY CONFIRMING a player's alignment.
As the game goes on, this system will become less and less reliable and more and more of an asset for scum to drive mislynches and rely on town trust to move attention from them.

The way you should take this is:
If a player is ever revealed to be RED, lynch them. Unless you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they somehow 'became' red because of a role/ability, there's no reason to EVER take a chance on not lynching a player revealed to be RED.

This isn't so much true with trusting a player who is shown to be BLUE, however. In the first game, Mafia couldn't become Blue (as far as I recall), but that doesn't make it so in this one. That said, I would still trust BLUE = TOWN for this first color flip.

TL;DR:
Each day we get to vote to see someone's current color.
RED colored players are almost certainly scum and should be lynched.
BLUE colored players are very likely town.
As the game goes on, this becomes far less reliable except for the RED = SCUM part.


VOTE: Twoface
Not just because he gets a drawing, but also because I'm curious why Aristo joined and fell off after the drawing.

[Varsoon]

Just went back to make sure--in the first game, the scum team could paint a player blue once per game and had infinite uses of painting a player red, green, orange, yellow, black, white and purple. There was also a mechanic revolving around 'freshly' painted players where several roles could figure out if a player had just had their color changed.

Cheetory didn't like the 'bastard' elements of painting a player red/blue and also didn't like how some role interactions could allow town a very easy victory (one player could check what the total color of players were of each color at night and another could remove one player from that check, essentially letting town, if coordinated, color-check players each night as well as each day).

The second game was scaled down to a 13 player setup and the 'wet paint' mechanic was removed. Town roles were made more direct/straightforward, too and scum power was taken down a whole lot. In that game, the mafia could only paint players as Black, white, red, orange, green, yellow or purple.


So, why bring all this up?

I was thinking about my first post here and started to recall that scum could paint players a lot of different colors, then realized that in the first game they could even paint players red and blue. In the design topic for the game, I recall telling Cheetory that I thought Mafia might, outside of gambits, only paint players blue/red because that's most effective at throwing a wrench into town strategies based on public mechanics.

While it's clear that between game 1 and 2, Cheetory removed painting players blue, the ability to paint them red stayed in.

That said, I would still trust that Red = Scum unless we have any provable role-claims that can show us otherwise.

And for D1, Red definitely equals scum and Blue definitely equals town.

Just flip the script here from what I said previously:

BLUE players are very, very likely CONFIRMED TOWN unless someone can prove that players can change others blue.
RED players are likely to be CONFIRMED SCUM in the EARLY GAME but we can't rely on that as much moving forward.
Again, this is somewhat speculative, as Cheetory could've changed some core things between the second game and this one, but
I do NOT see Cheetory giving Mafia the ability to paint players blue, since he really didn't like how much that could skew things in scum's favor in the first game and was essentially 'bastard'.

[Varsoon]

Even bigger TL;DR:
Cheetory wanted to design a game with a public cop mechanic that becomes less reliable as the game moves forward.
Let's treat it as such.


Also, Cheetory has a lot of talent in paint and has been sneakily trying to use it less and less between each game, so that means he definitely has time to give me a paint avatar.

[Varsoon]

BUT HE'S STILL A NERD, ARISTOPHANES
AND NERDS GET JOCKED ON

No, but, honestly, did he really do anything to change your mind once you started putting pressure there?

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Twoface

You're playing an ms-paint themed game of mafia on an internet chat forum in 2017
You're a flippin' nerd.

[Varsoon]

Curious what other people think of the mechanic and what I've said.

[Varsoon]

24: eh, I think painting a scum player blue is basically a godfather. I don't consider it bastard but it makes towns life hell.

It could be perceived as a mid-game alignment change, if only because there was no indicator to town that colors would change and could change to even blue.

I think that's a huge part of the setup design that Cheetory takes for granted as being communicated to players--colors will change.
Unless he's pulling some real long haul trolling and after two games where that's the CENTRAL mechanic, colors don't change in this one.

MOD: Is it safe to assume that colors can change or is that not public information?

[Varsoon]

As far as I'm seeing, only the blue/red color 'standards' are expressed here.
Gonna go see if that's the same wording in previous games...

[Varsoon]

Seems like the wording is the same as the other games. Was starting to get paranoid that 'standard' meant there would be starting deviations as well, which still might be the case.
Regardless.

I also don't think he'd forsake the color-changing gimmick because it is the driving core mechanic of the game--otherwise, this is just a standard mafia setup with a public cop to skew it into town's favor.

[Varsoon]

But this does make me realize that first-time players who ONLY read the opening posts might not realize:

The gimmick of previous games in the 'Paint Mafia' series by Cheetory6 was that the mafia team could change player's colors each night phase.

[Varsoon]

Hey everyone! These mechanics sound like fun. One thing I'm a bit confused on is what the colours tell us. If we later on in the game vote for someone to reveal their colour and say for example they come out as purple, would that mean anything other than they were targeted by mafia at some point to change their colour? Also any idea if we are told if our colour changes and what it changes to or if we get voted for it's a surprise for us too?

In previous games, only very specific PRs knew if their color changed.
To this detail, we should probably ask people to claim their color at FLIP -1, because that's gonna be helpful.

Not just because he gets a drawing, but also because I'm curious why Aristo joined and fell off after the drawing

What do you mean?

I read the last paint mafia, and iirc scum had enough ways to change town's colors that red wasn't a very reliable scumtell at endgame. Am I correct?

I'm curious why Aristophanes dropped off of TwoFace after very insignificant interaction.
And, yes, red flips become less reliable as the game goes on if this is anything like the previous ones.

Nope. We're voting to reveal colour, not to lynch scum.

Yes, but we want to, ideally, confirm a RED player right now rather than confirming a BLUE player, because, barring any negative utility/color shenanigans that are in play already, RED players are scum players and BLUE players are town players.

That said, our color flip becomes less and less reliable as a scum-catcher as the game goes on and, if Cheetory's mod meta is to be believed, a blue result will always be a reliable town result.

What this means is that we want RED flips early and BLUE flips late.

The ideal result would be a RED reveal from this first color flip phase. I'd rather a chance at catching guaranteed scum rather than forcing myself to be an IC at D1.

[Varsoon]

There is no ideal result from this phase. If we get a red result later on then we're still probably lynching it, aren't we?

We win when we lynch all of the mafia. Red results early are more important. Getting a red result here is far more useful than getting a blue one.
I still think we should lynch red results throughout the game regardless, and I still think red results are more important than blue results, but blue are more likely to be true throughout the entire game.

[Varsoon]

@Varsoon

do you have any color flips in mind yet for today?

pedit: hi

I'm interested in TwoFace and maybe Aristo, depending on a few factors.
Otherwise, just waiting for different people to post and put more content down.

[Varsoon]

I'm surprised people think I'm a strong player. I think I'm a rather mediocre player with strokes of good luck and/or brilliance. Guess that's more discussion for post-game, though?

But unlike a cop we can analyse the posting and everyone's motives to flip someone . Flipping someone we find scummy is better than a random null read . That leads to inactivity in the thread , everyone will have one or two posts here and there and chill . I would like people to think like we're​ lynching scum here and go after that . Not just chill around because we're​ flipping colour flipping

Basically this, though. We can't 'just treat it like a cop' because there's a public element and less reliable/more variant returns on non-blue flips as the game goes on. We win by flipping red early and blue late. I could see an argument for hitting slots people are unsure of in the late game as it will help sure up their alignment and force scum into poor situations where they may easily get lynched out due to process of elimination. However, early on, it's best that we use it as a scumhunting tool because it's more reliable as one, it's public, and doing so will function similar to a lynch in terms of player interaction and post-flip connections.

[Varsoon]

Basically, what fro99er said.
I think enough of us see eye to eye here.

I'm curious what people think of Two-Face essentially shrugging off being the leading wagon for awhile.

[Varsoon]

My primary goal with the color flip D1 is to find scum. I seriously think that's the best way to go. IF we happen to hit blue, we hit blue, but we should be trying to find scum.

Who is your main scumread then? And would you rather flip a secondary read and lynch the scumread flat out?

I would advise against lynching outside of a red result (holding on to 'known' scum) unless someone for sure can roleblock them.
In previous games, the scum team had some useful roles.

[Varsoon]

Apricity, why do you think of mechanics discussion as anti-town behavior?
Doesn't it behoove us to discuss how best to use the public mechanic that we're most pressed for time to use?
Furthermore, the fact that colors are very likely to change over the course of the game isn't stated at all in the opening posts--is bringing that up and discussing it anti-town?

I've been in other games where players are quick to call mechanics discussion anti-town, and it's always been pretty NAI for me.
That said, where do you think Aptil is trying to push for redundant or anti-town discussion over solving the game?
Because that makes more sense for me when thinking if a player is playing in an anti-town or even scummy way.

[Varsoon]

Yeah, I get that.
Typically, when thinking of the division between "This is a scum post" and "This is an anti-town post," I try to discern motivation for a change in game flow.
For instance, poor town play could be just getting wrapped up in mechanics discussion because that's all that's on the table, whereas scum play would be moments of purposefully deflecting momentum from game-solving/scumhunting towards unproductive mechanics discussion.

I was wondering if you saw evidence of the latter or if you were simply pushing for more game-oriented content from the slot because you feel they're doing more of the former?

[Varsoon]

Disagree entirely with using the color flip on inactive players. It should be a scumhunting tool first and foremost, and that's how I am using it now.
I feel as though TwoFace's suggestions for other ways to use the colorflip all are attempts to deflect from flipping him. If I wasn't already voting there, I'd hammer it through.

iirc, someone asked me a question, but I'm not sure if it's still relevant or not?
If anyone has questions for me, please bold them. I tend to skim when catching up sometimes and can miss/forget things. It's a shite habit, but it is what it is.

[Varsoon]

Found it!

Varsoon, what do you think of my opinion on that subject in 108

108, for reference:

I'd like people to give reads instead of argue theory, because bomberman is right that scum can argue theory for days. At the end of the day, we'll all vote for who we want flipped no matter what our theories are.

FoS apricity for not following up on his questions to me about ari.

I agree--players should be focused on the game of mafia first and foremost.
For instance, I have already managed to make some reads so far and, as it stands, twoface is still my top scumread and a player I want flipped most because, if scum, great, he's caught. If town, then I can know that I'm wrong and avoid mislynching there.

So long as people approach the color flip phase as an extra lynch phase, it gives us the same sort of information we'd get from an actual lynch phase in terms of pushes, flips, and contextual evidence for alignments. As players of mafia, we have the most facility in approaching that situation rather than treating the color thing as something different from the core game we are used to playing.

Obviously, it's important to consider how the color flip should be treated as the game goes on, but that still shouldn't change how people play around the mechanic.

TL;DR:
We get the most out of the color flip if we treat it like a lynch.

P-EDIT:
Of course I love you, fro99er.
In other news, you actually are one of my top townreads right now.

[Varsoon]

Aristo, where do you stand?
I'd like to know more about what you find 'odd' about twoface to help inform things there.
Also, why were you willing to hop onto the bomberman wagon? Did you have a townread there--which seems evidenced by the fact you were encouraging Bomberman to self-vote, or was that just a form of pressure?

[Varsoon]

Thanks--I was unsure of what you were putting down/picking up on Bomberman, so that helps.

As for Twoface, you say that you hope 'all it is' is a 'new and improved' approach--are you hoping for a townflip from TwoFace?
I'd prefer for this difference of play to be indicative of TwoFace rolling scum, imo. I'd much rather have a D1 catch than not.

I think your insights are helpful in figuring your slot out (your play makes a shitload more sense to me now) but that you don't put down enough when playing. Probably leans you town more than anything, since you're not justifying play as you make it, but you certainly can when asked. tbh, I had a middling read on you because you seemed to just jump at different opportunities. Depending on what TwoFace flips, it'd do more to cement you one way or another for me, but your response here has helped me a lot.

[Varsoon]

I know reading that reading tone in a Mafia game is kinda tough but I was just having a funny there

Making jokes about what I presumed to be pretty ridiculous

...for the sake of clarity, what did you presume to be ridiculous?

[Varsoon]

We have 30 hours to go, so I really would appreciate if the wagon doesn't fall apart at the last minute here.
Stay the course.

[Varsoon]

MOD:

What happens if we do not reach a majority vote by the deadline during the REVEAL and/or FLIP phases?

[Varsoon]

@Bomberman: So you were mostly giving Havo a hard time for being on you for dumb reasons?

Also, 'someone of [my] stature'?

I do see that you employ a playful tone with the whole breaking from it for joking melodrama, but that really doesn't do much for the gamestate, homie.

[Varsoon]

@Varsoon, could you do a bomber wagon with me and JJ?

No.
While Bomber is tonally awkward, that's coming of as NAI to me and I could see their play as either town or scum.
If you're going to give shit to Bomber for playing the "Vote me, I don't mind flipping IC" card without self voting, you can apply the same metric to Twoface when they played similarly.

I simply have more evidence that points towards a TwoFace scum flip AND the wagon there is at L-1 AND it's got far better associative information tied to it given the direction the game has taken so far.

Stay. The. Course.

[Varsoon]

If you're going to give shit to Bomber for playing the "Vote me, I don't mind flipping IC" card without self voting, you can apply the same metric to Twoface when they played similarly.

but twoface said they'd happily self vote

And did they?
Are they voting themselves now?
I feel like TwoFace's "I would happily vote myself" was just rhetoric to appear town. If they really wanted to play in that direction, they'd commit to it. Regardless, if this sort of rhetorical approach is scummy, it fits TwoFace in a similar way to Bomber, although Bomber's deflect was to how another player might contort their play rather than garnering for towncred. /shrugs.

@Mod: Thanks for the answers, my guy.
I assume that regular days can end in a no-lynch if we vote for it or if we fail to hit majority?

Anyway, apathy is the beast that will kill this game. I ask that everyone stay active and commit to their votes, because vanity wagons and lurking is what will destroy us. In every case that I've seen short deadlines outside of Blitz games, they always benefited scum.

[Varsoon]

Well, let's see if they nut up or shut up.
If Twoface doesn't self-hammer, then we can just lynch them D1 anyway.

[Varsoon]

@MOD:

Please continue your MSPaint Avatar series. By the time you get around to mine, I might actually be able to afford to buy you a pizza. Wouldn't that be grand? On the real, though, thanks for the responses. I wasn't sure how much of the normal game mechanics also applied to the color reveal phase.

[Varsoon]

Hey varsoon you should tell me what you think of this discourse going on right now regardless of TwoFace

I don't think anyone needs to defend their play here;
JJ swung off the wagon to vote you, Fro99er rightfully called it out, JJ got back onto the TwoFace wagon where they should be.
I think JJ's play isn't as damning as anyone's called it out to be, and it seems that Fro99er and JJ have worked out some understanding of each other's positions in regards to both wagons.

All in all, it makes me more confident in my read on Fro99er and it provides for worthwhile interaction with JJ that'll provide the associative tells/information that I've been talking about (stuff that's useful moving forward post-flip).

[Varsoon]

I'd prefer that another player hammer just because it produces more information.
TwoFace has already expressed that they're going to stall out.

Also, someone mentioned earlier that they want to slow down and weigh options or something of the like--as if we don't have just 10 hours (mostly AM hours here in the USA) to do so.

[Varsoon]

Hahaha, fuck yes. Die.
VOTE: TwoFace

And don't play that 'you got lucky' card. You put down scum play and you got caught for it. If you blame others for all your mistakes, you'll just keep repeating them.

[Varsoon]

Keep making excuses.
At the end of the day, you're done, son.

[Varsoon]

Hey, apologies for not being here for the last few days. Been busy with interviews, work, my laptop's visual output died entirely so I had to get my desktop computer up and running for the first time in several years. On top of that, this weekend is my fiance's birthday and, for the last few days, a friend of mine has been marathoning Game of Thrones with me so I'll be ready for the premiere of Season 7 by this Sunday. I have watched three seasons of Game of Thrones within a 74 hour span. While working. I did not sleep very much.

I bring this all up because I won't be able to have the game presence that I had during D1, especially during this critical Color Reveal phase.

Here are some leads I have and notes I took before:
-Twoface self-voted on his color flip, but did NOT self-vote on his lynch. I figured he self-voted color-wise to deny town information, especially as I brought that up just before he did it. However, if he was trying to deny more info, he would have also self-voted for his actual flip, right? Checking the game rules, scum has daychat during the lynch part of the day--I find it very likely that scum may have been on TwoFace's lynch wagon (for that sickhot towncred) but not his color wagon, especially evidenced by TwoFace allowing for that lynch wagon to have more on it. This is a weak lead, but worth checking out.
-We should be most critical of people that tried to drive the wagon away from TwoFace. There were several moments where other wagons were proposed, iirc.
-I think that it's safe to say that TwoFace was very likely not bussing on D1--It is worth looking at who he voted for colorflip and why. This could give us some leads for players likely to be town.
-The kill was on Infinity; Who/what was Infinity pushing? Was Infinity playing in a way that betrayed their role? Having a protective role go down that early is suspect to me--scum could've gotten lucky, though, in my experience, someone on the team typically catches a crumb or has a meta-gut feeling that the player was a PR. Regardless, we should consider why Infinity was the kill. Notably, they were on the TwoFace color wagon. Why kill on-wagon rather than off?

If other players could look into these leads, I think it would help us a lot.
As of now, I do not have the time to dedicate towards them, and that, honestly, bums me right the fuck out.

[Varsoon]

I think that Aristophanes is town--I noticed some suspicion there earlier today and wanted to get my two-cents in.
As for Apricity, I have no idea and would have to re-read their interactions with the game.

[Varsoon]

VOTE: JJH

But why don't you like Apricity?
Is it just the cool thing to do?

[Varsoon]

Was Infinity playing in a way that betrayed their role?

What does betraying the role mean here ?

I'm wondering if, based on his play and posts alone, there was evidence that he was PR.
In a previous game, I butted heads with Infinity and I'm a bit more used to Infinity playing in a more direct and argumentative way--I was wondering if his more reserved approach to this game could've tipped off someone who knows his meta better?

I know that when I roll a killing role, I tend to make threats to players more--like "I'll kill you" or "You're dead if you don't..." This tends to be my way of crumbing. Similarly, when I am a protective, I tend to tell my town reads to play more aggressively and not worry because I have their back. The few times I've been an investigative role, I tend to kinda sit back and try not to draw attention to myself while cultivating interactions and reads between players. Even when I don't try to do these things, I find myself trending towards them depending on my PR. I'm wondering if the kill was informed by some similar play from Infinity, and, if so, it might point to scum being someone who has some meta experience with Infinity.

JJH, you still need to tell me -why- Apricity, though. I get that votes are split around, but you're calling for Apricity to be the color lynch out of that split. So, why?

[Varsoon]

Please do grab some posts for evidence.
I hear that "commentator" and "busywork/not scumhunting" angle a shitload on-site and I think it's usually just Not Alignment Indicative or an easy way to look informed on a read. It's as popular as it is shallow.
It helps if you can show HOW their catchups and empty questioning furthers a SCUM agenda.
Most people just say "They are doing catchups and empty questioning to look like town" and, again, I'm like, "Howso? Where? And why does that make them Scum?"

[Varsoon]

Infinity 324 was killed last night, he was..

the Town Modified Jailer.

I've been assuming Infinity's role functions like a jailkeeper--where he can target a player at night to keep them from acting and being affected by actions. I should probably ask the mod, though.

MOD: What is a 'modified jailer'?
Also, what color was Infinity at the time of death? Or is that info that we're not allowed to know?

[Varsoon]

Just caught up reading so far
WIFOM about the paint mechanic isn't getting us anywhere and it's hard for me to tell what's an innocent assumption and what's scum trying to mislead people about it.
Reality is:
JJH began as Blue and became Purple, but was NOT informed of it--since no one else claimed this paint ability, we can assume it is a non-town effect.
JJH began as Purple and was hoping to gambit that he started blue and changed purple--this requires JJH to lean on the assumption that players can change to the color purple, but still reflects JJH lying for towncred.
JJH began as Red and became Purple, likely as a scum effect due to what I mentioned earlier, and was okay with their own flip because of their new purple status.

@Apricity: I agree with your latest post in that Aristophane's theory is too rush-oriented. It assumes/posits that only one player can be painted at night, which is dangerous if not true and would allow scum to hide in extra paint if so.
Furthermore, the lack of voting JJH while positing that theory is weird.

@Aristophanes: Why aren't you voting JJH if that's your theory? Also, explain where you're getting this "colors don't mix unless they are wet" idea?

@Bomberman: Cheetory has sidestepped the mid-game alignment change aspect of previous games because 'paint color' isn't your alignment. No matter your color, you still play for the same team you began on. However, when I brought up that Cheetory felt the first Paint Mafia was bastard, that was because scum could paint players BLUE and RED, which was too influential. For instance, if scum was color flipped as Blue, then town would almost never lynch them, which was quite a problem. Less so was town flipping red, because that would fuel one mislynch first but then have town be more skeptical of red flips after the fact. In the second game, notably, Scum could NOT paint anyone Blue.

@JJH: Why did you self-hammer? We've been over how that denies information to town. Also, why claim VT instead of just Town? Why are you talking about color mixing mechanics? Where are you getting the idea that colors mix if wet/dry? iirc, the wet/dry mechanic was only important in the first game as a way of seeing if a player was recently painted.

@Maxwell: Why assume 3P? And if assuming 3p, why don't you think JJH's purple flip reflects a third party--why does it HAVE to be that he was painted purple rather than a third party that starts off that way?

@Havo: Why are you assuming that colors 'mix' like that? I don't think colors 'mixed' like that in ANY of the previous games, iirc.

[Varsoon]

So you're just assuming that the mechanic works that way despite having no evidence besides basing your expectation off of real life colors?

[Varsoon]

This is precisely why I think discussing mechanics that we don't fully understand is a distraction.
We need to focus in on scumhunting and working towards a lynch.

I'm glad that you're posting more than just answering about color, Havo.

[Varsoon]

I think that, if we were in a normal game with a 2 week deadline, that discussion would have more of a place and we could explore it. However, we've got 3 days to get to a lynch here.
As I said earlier, it's kind of hard to suss out, in mechanics discussion alone, what is town making assumptions and what is scum providing misleading information.

Havo, what do you think of the JJH color flip?
Specifically, what do you think of the color wagon on JJH and player's positioning after that?
If not JJH, then who do you believe is scum and what are you doing to push there?

P-EDIT: Glad we can be on the same page, Havo. Hope that these questions get us there moreso.

@JJH: I'm not seeing where fro99er pushed you to self-hammer. I see them asking Gamma if Gamma would self-hammer, though. What do you think about fro99er's push on you?
Your 775 seems to reflect that you know that someone else hammering is another vote with analysis potential. Why did you self-hammer when we still had 24 hours left?
You were talking with Raya about self-hammers and seemed to express that you saw no worth in self-hammers, whereas Raya did posit that they felt town would be a bit more comfortable self-hammering.
I'm trying to understand why, after that discussion, you decided to Self-hammer on that page, where you caught two votes and huge momentum was coming your way anyway.

Blah. That answer about not getting nightkilled bothers me. If you're scum, no shit you're not getting NK'd. If you're town, then you're not getting NK'd BECAUSE you claimed VT, meaning scum now has a smaller pool of players to choose from to hit potential PRs. That said, I don't see scum painting you and then not just keeping you alive for WIFOM if you are town.

So, you, too, are getting paint mixing mechanics from a place purely of speculation? It's weird that so many people are, imo, given there's no evidence for it aside from IRL paint. Regardless, please don't focus on discussion of assumed mechanics.

[Varsoon]

@JJH:
D2 began Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:45 am
Your self-hammer came at Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:50 pm.
You're right-- there would've been about 9 hours left if the deadline was 48 hours as it should've been.
I think I got the 24 hour figure from when you were going back and forth with Fro99er on page 36--he said you had a lot of time and you said you had 24 hours less than the last day. I was recalling that as you saying 'we only had 24 hours until the end of the day/reveal phase'.

I've read over the hammer discussion a lot. The only town reason I can see for self-hammering was based on time, but it still seems to fly in the face of where you were at the top of the page before you hammered yourself.

I do agree, though, if anyone on your wagon requires more scrutiny, it is very likely Aristophanes. They've been pretty transparent when asked questions before--no reason to believe they wouldn't now.
Otherwise, what are the 'good reasons' you are seeing for Bomber joining your color wagon?

[Varsoon]

Gamma is probably a vanity wagon so you're probably gonna have to make a decision between me and Ari

What makes it a vanity wagon?
I thought there was some, albeit light, casing done against Gamma?

Also, when did Cheetory6 get an all caps red name? Spooks me right the fuck out.

[Varsoon]

...wait, walk me through how you think this loyal-town-painter role works and why you're so super special important to get targeted by both them and scum?
Also, if there were such a thing, why would they not claim at this point to confirm you as town?

I'm just curious why that's your first line of defense over "Oh scum must've painted me purple."
It seems like an unnecessary hoop to jump through.

[Varsoon]

Honestly, at this point, if there is such a role out there, I would encourage them NOT to claim unless they are sure that the mechanics align the way that JJH is proposing.
Otherwise, JJH outs a PR after one just got killed.

I've been internally waffling on the slot since the colorflip. Was pretty sure they were scum before it, and their posturing after it has me between deluded town or reaching scum.
That said, as far as information is concerned, JJH's flip gives us the most.

I was hoping that there'd be a bit more in the way of interactions both involving and independent of the JJH slot, though.
I'm going to be around for the next few hours and was going to lay a vote before going to bed.

[Varsoon]

my desktop just stopped outputting video via any hdmi that I own.
posting this from my ps3.
I can hook a keyboard up but if my ps3 follows suit, I am fucked
VOTE: jjh while I do have access

[Varsoon]

if anyone wants to send me a laptop so I can play mafia, I would appreciate it

[Varsoon]

What's going on?
Why was Raya the lynch??

[Varsoon]

...but why Raya?
It seems like an odd way to swing if you went off of JJH, then to Aptil, then swung off that but not back to JJH.

[Varsoon]

No one's given me a good -reason- for why the Raya lynch happened, so I'd vastly prefer a color flip out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo. I would think scum would be around near deadline and on that wagon, too.

On the other hand, if Gamma-slot/Penguin flips purple, they are definitely scum, imo.
Plus Fro99er is saying they weren't painted?

Fro99er, what were your previous results?

[Varsoon]

i'm some kind of role that can figure out whether people were painted or not. you think that's a scum role, given it's almost a guarantee the painter is scum?

if I was scum why would I need to detect who got painted

Fits JJH's 'town-aligned loyal blue painter' theory, which, imo, is still a shit theory.
That level of precise role interactions isn't something I see Cheetory including in the game.
Town's had a town-sided paint-detector in previous games, iirc.

[Varsoon]

Fro99er's claiming you weren't painted last night, while assuming that only one player can be painted a night and we know JJH was painted on N1.

I've read the end of day. I'm curious why you guys didn't just double down on JJH or Aptil?
JJH's reasoning of "Scum has to be in Aptil/Raya!" is clearly shit and it bothers me that everyone was so quick to hop onto a half-assed plan that relied on a last-minute vig claim and JJH's judgment.
It reads as though scum was entirely okay with that situation, which, ergo, reads to me that Aptil is either scum or that scum was totes okay with controlling the situation, especially given the JJH flip.

[Varsoon]

Either that or Fro99er is pressing really hard on a narrative that only one player can be painted each night because he's scum and of course scum know who gets painted or not when they are the ones doing the painting.

Actually factually, Fro99er, that's such an easily fake-able role that it kinda strikes me--why would you claim that here and now?

[Varsoon]

What I'm saying, fro99er, is that you're either:
-town making the assumption that scum's painting ability is limited to one person per night
-Informed, by role, that scum can only paint one player per night
-scum doubling down with a claim that pushes town towards thinking only one person can be painted per night

Regardless, Penguin is going to flip their original color, because:
1. Town-you has no reason to lie about this.
2. Scum-you would only ever benefit from penguin flipping their original color if this is a gambit

Does that make sense?
I think we should flip the penguin slot because of that info regardless, because it is most likely to give us a 'true' color, and because a lot of players aren't sure of how to read the slot.

VOTE: Penguin

I still trust you, Fro99er--I'm just curious

why

you'd claim now?
Because it reads hardest to me like you taking the reigns of game control, ushering us into a Penguin color flip rather than anywhere else. And I want to know why that's important to you.

[Varsoon]

The only way Penguin DOESN'T flip their original color is if
1. you're scum gambiting on a level I can't comprehend (then I am fucked anyway)
2. scum actually can paint multiple players and hit Penguin N1 or some other time, some other way, that town-you couldn't detect.

However, I highly doubt either of those would be the case.

[Varsoon]

@Maxwell: Walk me through your process of elimination that leads to Aristophanes.

[Varsoon]

To me, scum is almost certainly on the Raya wagon, out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo.
Which makes my skin crawl that we colorflipped Penguin instead of one of those suspects, and it drives my paranoia more because fro99er lead that push for the colorflip.
Where this gets unnerving is looking at people who were complicit with colorflipping OUTSIDE of the Raya wagon: MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, Havo, Fro99er.
Literally the whole Raya wagon with the exception of Aptil, who was voting for Maxwell.

What does this mean to me?
We should be most critical of Bomberman/Havo.
If we find scum in Max/Aptil, it's very likely the other is town.
Fro99er continues to be an enigma to me and why they color checked outside of the Raya wagon confounds me.

[Varsoon]

Notably, Havo, Fro99er, Aptil, and myself were also pushing for the JJH lynch after the purple flip.

I feel like the common thread in all of these is Havo and that we really should've color-flipped them instead.

[Varsoon]

I wish I could've looked at the game more before color flip phase was over

[Varsoon]

That said, Bomberman, Aptil, and Max were all off the Two-Face wagon. In the case that he wasn't bussed, scum is very likely in those three given the common links across the game.

[Varsoon]

My bad, that's the Lynch wagon.
The color wagon that sealed his fate actually had Aptil, Havo, and Max off of it.

Once again, Havo is the most common link here.

I really think we should have color flipped Havo and, in lieu of doing so, we should look at that slot a lot more today.

[Varsoon]

Gonna guess me and fro99er?

[Varsoon]

I don't see Max controlling game flow that much, though I definitely see it in the case of Fro99er.
Where do you see Max pushing direction of the game a lot?

I could swing an Aptil lynch, too, since they're in my pool of suspects, though I'd kick myself in the ass forever if they flip town because scum making us lynch our own vig is definitely what they'd want if Aptil is town.

[Varsoon]

If he's town, scum have higher priorities, which means he's not a significant threat--or they're playing around him being alive.
If he's scum, then that explains that.

[Varsoon]

If conf-town don't play, they're as good to us as dead town.

[Varsoon]

@Havo: If the choice is just between Apricity or Aristo, I'd take a lynch on Apricity. I still feel that Aristo is more likely town than scum.

[Varsoon]

I really wish people would post and play. Our deadlines are really short and chances are that scum want to take advantage of that.

[Varsoon]

Nut up or shut up.

[Varsoon]

Well, don't shut up.
Shutting up is the worst thing we can do at this point of the game.

[Varsoon]

I've already stated my stance, which is a bit at-odds with Havo who would lead lynches away from my pool of suspects.

VOTE: Havo
I'll stand by this.

We're better off with Frog alive. Tomorrow, we color flip him and have him check someone who isn't him. If he's town, that gives us the best info, imo. If he's scum, we'll at least have associatives.

[Varsoon]

Your 1423 resonates with me;
I also feel like I'm really thrust into being globally townread and also that if I make a poor decision, people will sheep it without doing any thinking for themselves.

[Varsoon]

It lets us know ahead of time that they were painted, bomber.
If a player is painted, color-flipping them no longer is a cop result for us.
In this way, fro99er's role (if it's not all a bullshit gambit) lets us know whether or not we should color flip someone.

For instance, today, he said that Gamma had not been painted.
So we flipped the Gamma/Penguin slot.
It flipped Blue. This townclears Gamma/Penguin if no one is lying and scum doesn't have access to Blue Paint.

If Cheetory designed the game such that scum has access to Blue Paint and Fro99er gambitted around that in an attempt to force us to soft-confirm scum-Penguin as town, then this game is practically bastard.
However, given what Cheetory had to say about Blue Paint in previous games and the current paint trajectory, I highly doubt that's the case.

The mechanical logisitics of fro99er's claim don't bother me so much. What throws me off is the way he claimed--when and why. I see it as a bold play regardless of alignment, which is why I've been critical of it.

[Varsoon]

@Havo: My proposed lynch pool is, from least likely to yield scum to most likely:
Fro99er, Maxwell, Aptil, Bomberman, Havo.

You began pushing towards Aristophanes and Apricity. Those people aren't in my pool. They're not actively engaged, but neither is half the playerbase. I've got a townread on Aristo. I don't on Apricity. Neither is where I'd like to focus my efforts today.

By not lynching fro99er, we bind scum's play regardless of fro99er's alignment.
If fro99er is scum, he'll have to paint himself purple, wasting scum's paint resource.
If fro99er is town, scum will be forced either kill him (which keeps us from lynching him) or paint him, thus keeping scum's paint resource from hitting someone else.
In the case that fro99er lives, he can then yield (hopefully) a result on a different player. Then we can go on to either flip that player (if unpainted) to get another confirmed town OR
if they are painted, we can flip fro99er.
If fro99er is blue, we've confirmed fro99er as town.
If fro99er is purple, a lynch there eliminates fro99er scum and proves town-fro99er's clears.
If fro99er is red, then we definitely lynch it.

In short, if we proceed this way, we maximize our results regardless of fro99er's alignment.
If he's scum, he's lynched tomorrow, putting us in good stride to win.
If he's town, he's either dead tomorrow (meaning we don't waste a lynch on him) or he provides us with another result (he flips blue, clearing himself, or he flips purple but clears another).

If we lynch fro99er right now, though, we don't get any of that extra info, we don't inhibit scum's play if fro99er is town, and we gamble with less info than we could have.

As for my push on you, you're the most likely person to be scum in my eyes. Of course you have to seem like you're contributing and gamesolving, because otherwise you slip right into the group of lurkers that you'd have executed for being absent.

I appreciate your effort if you are town, but I want you to do more to case out scum and win. Take my vote as encouragement to do so.

[Varsoon]

@Aptil: Why don't you start doing some game solving rather than just trying at it? As far as I can see, the last few pages that you've been active have just been short backs-and-forth about what actually happened with your claimed shot.

[Varsoon]

But, yes, I would really appreciate it if Penguin and Apricity could play the game.

[Varsoon]

Varsoon, who is scum?

To me, scum is almost certainly on the Raya wagon, out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo.
Which makes my skin crawl that we colorflipped Penguin instead of one of those suspects, and it drives my paranoia more because fro99er lead that push for the colorflip.
Where this gets unnerving is looking at people who were complicit with colorflipping OUTSIDE of the Raya wagon: MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, Havo, Fro99er.
Literally the whole Raya wagon with the exception of Aptil, who was voting for Maxwell.

What does this mean to me?
We should be most critical of Bomberman/Havo.
If we find scum in Max/Aptil, it's very likely the other is town.
Fro99er continues to be an enigma to me and why they color checked outside of the Raya wagon confounds me.

I'm voting Havo right now. That's my pick.
If you look at Bomberman and Havo's contributions for the last few pages, Bomberman's feel more town than Havo's--at least, that's what's apparent to me.

I really feel like one scum may be in the 'active' group and one in the 'inactive' side, but that really only leaves Apricity given my reads. However, I'm curious if scum-Havo would be so quick to commit to throwing scum-Apricity under the bus as half-heartedly as they have today. Hm.

[Varsoon]

I already have put my case out on Maxwell. No one either saw it or have seen and not react on it . It's pretty to similar to what you're saying and I reacted to your post and said why you should look at Max instead of Havo.

I'd be cool with consolidating on Max if more people believe that's where we should go.
That said, there's just more that points me to Havo-scum.

[Varsoon]

That said, do your own thinking (aloud, preferably).
Aristo, who is scum?

[Varsoon]

Read and check in. Today has worthwhile interactions.

[Varsoon]

@Apricity:
D1: Two-Face was color flipped Red and lynch-flipped Red Scum. Infinity was killed at night and was Blue Town.
D2: JJH was color flipped Purple. Raya was lynch-flipped Blue Town. JJH was killed at night and was Purple Town.
D3: Penguin (who replaced Gamma) was color flipped Blue.

Aptil claimed 1-shot Vigilante and claims that he shot JJH on Night 2, which was what was agreed on if Raya flipped town.
Fro99er has claimed to be able to tell if players have been painted. He claims to have targeted the Penguin/Gamma slot and gotten a 'Not Painted' result, which is why we color flipped that slot.

You should look at the end of D2 and all of D3 to understand the situation we are in.

[Varsoon]

When I asked, everyone deferred that they were just making last minute decisions and no one took serious blame for the Raya lynch.
If you check my ISO, you can see where I track wagon and color-flip analysis and narrow down the pool of most likely suspects.

[Varsoon]

Notably:

No one's given me a good -reason- for why the Raya lynch happened

then read through the fucking day. We were less than an hour away from deadline

did you want us to no lynch?

What's going on?
Why was Raya the lynch??

Raya was a victim of circumstance.

To me, scum is almost certainly on the Raya wagon, out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo.
Which makes my skin crawl that we colorflipped Penguin instead of one of those suspects, and it drives my paranoia more because fro99er lead that push for the colorflip.

Bomber and Havo came at the last minute to just put the lynch through. Max was the one who changed from Gamma to me to Raya to make sure the lynch went through.

To me, scum is almost certainly on the Raya wagon, out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo.
Which makes my skin crawl that we colorflipped Penguin instead of one of those suspects, and it drives my paranoia more because fro99er lead that push for the colorflip.
Where this gets unnerving is looking at people who were complicit with colorflipping OUTSIDE of the Raya wagon: MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, Havo, Fro99er.
Literally the whole Raya wagon with the exception of Aptil, who was voting for Maxwell.

What does this mean to me?
We should be most critical of Bomberman/Havo.
If we find scum in Max/Aptil, it's very likely the other is town.
Fro99er continues to be an enigma to me and why they color checked outside of the Raya wagon confounds me.

Go back and read the entire situation leading up to the Raya lynch. I had voted JJ and went to bed, that entire thing happened without me.

I woke up and the lynch deadline was within an hour so I hammered Raya, because I felt like that was a better option than No lynching.

[Varsoon]

Maxwell and Bomberman have both avoided talking about the Raya wagon at any length.

Apricity, what do you make of all this?
What are your reads?
How do you think we should proceed?

Several players are having difficulty reading your slot. It would be helpful if you could put down content and be transparent about your goals here.

[Varsoon]

Notably, I have my own thoughts about Max and Bomberman, but I want to hear what others have to say first.

[Varsoon]

I know; your earlier exasperation with fro99er commanding game momentum reflected that for me.
I'm glad to see your feelings/story hasn't changed, either.
That said, what do you think we should do now? How do you think we should proceed? No arm-twisting. No last-minute having to bend to the will of many.

[Varsoon]

I'm hoping that I can encourage players to contribute more content earlier into the day, rather than lurking out to another deadline lynch.
Pretty much everything I've done today has been working towards that.

[Varsoon]

I already outlined why it serves us most for Fro99er to not be lynched today in post 1441.
If you've got a better plan, let me know.

[Varsoon]

You should think about what you can do now so that if you are town, there's more to go off of rather than what's there as-is.

Ask questions.
Make pushes.
Generate pressure.
Solidify your reads transparently, in posts, based on the interactions you cultivate and see.

Successful town doesn't mean being a fisherman, waiting for a bite so you can fish up scum.
Successful town means chumming the river, wading waste-deep, and killing these sharks.

[Varsoon]

My 1475 goes to both of you, for what it's worth. Really, to everyone who's footing the bill and not putting in the work.
The whole point of being here and making posts and driving pressure is that you can more confidently push for an informed lynch while also making it clearer what your own alignment is.
As it stands, it's a goddamn nightmare to murk through the morass that is the current apathetic play and try to generate any sort of worthwhile alignment-related info from that--I can't differentiate between town apathy and feigned apathy by scum. It all looks the same to me. That's why I've had to rely on wagon and vote analysis to get this far, and why I'm pushing for everyone to do more.

[Varsoon]

Please go into specifics on bomber and Apricity.

[Varsoon]

I can't see why any scum wouldn't paint Aptil (regardless of alignment) last night. But if you are right about having been colored already and you are town, then all you need to do is outguess scum and not hit the same person they do.

[Varsoon]

Have you used this pairing down system before, fro99er?

[Varsoon]

Was just curious how effective that strategy would be and if you've successfully used it as town before.
That said, I am always very strongly against lynching down a list unless roles guarantee scum is in that list.

[Varsoon]

C'mon Havo.
Is your defense really

[Varsoon]

"No one is legitimately scumreading me!"

[Varsoon]

This is just fucking sad . Fucking absolutely day2 all over again just this time i'm actually getting lynched.

Yeah, but this time you don't have a fakeclaim to last-minute push off to a mislynch.

What I'm hoping is that it's D1 all over again, where we lynch scum. Wanna make me a happy man? Go on and flip red. Or whatever color you've painted yourself, I guess.

VOTE: Aptil

[Varsoon]

Titus, do you think a player like Varsoon would risk such a ballsy strat and not NK? I'm basing the remaining scum on that play.

If I'm scum, I'll do anything to secure a win. If an NK was the best way to get us to victory, I'd gamble on it. I guess I tend to play high-risk, high-reward as scum a lot?
Regardless, it seems pretty clear that Aptil claimed the way they did to try to bait out PR claims, imo. Which leads me to believe that scum think there might be more town power than what we've already seen.

Someone explain to me how the paint mechanic works on this game please.

During the first half of the day phase, we only vote to see a player's current color.
Town players generally begin the game colored BLUE.
Mafia players generally begin the game colored RED.
From what we've seen, players can end up colored PURPLE.

Given the flips from town so far, I think that whatever scum remains is either a PR or scum have factional abilities beyond just painting a single person purple at night. No way that town gets both a jailkeeper and, essentially, a second cop if scum is all just goons.

[Varsoon]

With fro99er's flip, you're confirmed town beyond a doubt, Titus.

[Varsoon]

Honestly, I'd take a flip anywhere. We should try to choose outside of people scum would be most likely to paint. So long as we can stay ahead of scum in conf-town, we chain their kills down.

[Varsoon]

I think we should flip Varsoon for color just based on the contention in current reads there.

Thoughts?

I didn't think there was any contention of reads on my slot other than bomber's paranoia.
Max brought it up because he thinks I'm unlikely to be painted, though I find that the most likely painted players are between me, Aristo, and Havo.

I'd much rather color flip someone who I'm unsure of but who is also far less likely to have been painted.

[Varsoon]

I feel like Apricity, iirc, was never focused on yesterday. A lot of people seemed unsure of the slot, but given player focus and were people were slamming their votes, I'd say it's unlikely that Apricity is painted unless they are scum.

So, yeah, Apricity would be a good flip for me. If they flip purple, I'd probably want a lynch there, but if they are blue, then scum'll have to kill them off and they are, honestly, a slot I wouldn't miss given the very low amount of interactions they've had all game.

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Apricity

[Varsoon]

I highly suggest looking through them, especially in regard to design and how players interacted with it.
That's what lead a lot of our D1 conversation

[Varsoon]

votecount goes here

Does it, though?
Doesn't -look- like a pagetop, cheetos.

[Varsoon]

Max, why are you holding on to your vote?

[Varsoon]

Holding on to my vote?

Didn't realize you were voting, nvm.

[Varsoon]

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

@Max: Why lay the vote on Bomber out the gate?

[Varsoon]

Looking back, Bomber's tried to keep a really wide lynch pool.
That said, a lot of their rhetoric feels really, really town to me; They didn't realize Aptil had gambited the claim for a second, they had what felt like genuine exasperation at being an early townread because of the Twoface flip, etc. Does anyone have experience with Bomber? Are they generally more methodical about their rhetoric or off the cuff?

[Varsoon]

...which is why you're voting for neither of the people on the tail end of that wagon?

I'm sensing sarcasm there, Titus. Are you actually concerned about the makeup up the Apricity wagon that gave a blue result? That was kinda our goal.

[Varsoon]

I get the feeling Titus can't handle wounded pride that she couldn't flip me and now must only accept my lynch as a result.

[Varsoon]

Titus, are you even reading?
My vote came at 8:50 PM on the 29th. At the time, I also thought that Maxwell was not voting.
Furthermore, the Havo/Bomber votes came during PM times of the next day (IRL) altogether.
I'm wondering why you think this was a fast hammer.

Are you aware of the short deadlines in this game?
When Bomber hammered, there was less than 5 hours in the deadline and no indicator that Apricity would contribute more in that time.

I can't hold this against you because I know you're town, but I'm trying to work out the logic behind your posts, reads, and pushes.

[Varsoon]

Oh--I'm saying to consider game balance.
Town has a Jailer. Town has a soft-cop that informs where to shoot with their public day cop. Town has a public day cop.
What abilities have we seen scum with? Goons and the ability to make people purple.
I would say that we account for more and we don't rule bussing out as a strategy, given scum has given up two goons and no PRs.
In every previous game, scum had PRs. I either see Cheetory doing that again or giving scum a lot of factional power that wasn't in the previous games.
That's why making assumptions based around the info we had on deck re:fro99er wasn't going to hard-clear anyone, because we don't know the full mechanics at play.

[Varsoon]

Is there anything that precludes scum from being blue?

Literally where the mod said he would never do that in future games in this series.
But ayyy, if you don't want to trust word of mod, then we can't trust the system the game is built on, at which point color flipping becomes a pointless endeavor.
Don't just take my word for it. S'not like I helped design the first game and read through the entire second in prep for this one.

[Varsoon]

But, ay, here's more:

In the first game, scum could paint players blue. This is what Cheetory had to say 'bout that:

Subject: Paint Mafia! - Game Over!

Brief modthoughts:
I had a nightmare running this game.
The mechanics ended up being even more complicated than I had already thought.
Scum was kind of given the shaft in some ways. Especially the unintended ways that Spiff/Elbirn's role could interact. I didn't see that coming at all.
The mechanic being borderline bastard was kind of giving town the shaft in other ways which was upsetting.

Which I feel somewhat responsible for because I okay'd it and didn't catch how it'd be a problem and gave players far more merit than I should'a:

Subject: Paint Mafia Setup

I agree with that.
Given there's no protection, the paint mechanic does feel scum-sided (as any publicly confirmed 'dry blue' player can be killed at night or left alive if not a threat) especially due to false positives at late game.
I find it appealing and worth doing regardless, because it punishes players for relying entirely on mechanical effects, and unlike godfather, the players are at fault for assuming blue=town in all scenarios.

I think the false positives also aren't too horrible, as the Palette knows for a fact paint colors can change (otherwise it is a useless role) and Sensor knows dry/wet paint is important.

But hey, it's not like anyone brought this up in the first page of this game for any reason...

Just went back to make sure--in the first game, the scum team could paint a player blue once per game and had infinite uses of painting a player red, green, orange, yellow, black, white and purple. There was also a mechanic revolving around 'freshly' painted players where several roles could figure out if a player had just had their color changed.

Cheetory didn't like the 'bastard' elements of painting a player red/blue and also didn't like how some role interactions could allow town a very easy victory (one player could check what the total color of players were of each color at night and another could remove one player from that check, essentially letting town, if coordinated, color-check players each night as well as each day).

The second game was scaled down to a 13 player setup and the 'wet paint' mechanic was removed. Town roles were made more direct/straightforward, too and scum power was taken down a whole lot. In that game, the mafia could only paint players as Black, white, red, orange, green, yellow or purple.


So, why bring all this up?

I was thinking about my first post here and started to recall that scum could paint players a lot of different colors, then realized that in the first game they could even paint players red and blue. In the design topic for the game, I recall telling Cheetory that I thought Mafia might, outside of gambits, only paint players blue/red because that's most effective at throwing a wrench into town strategies based on public mechanics.

While it's clear that between game 1 and 2, Cheetory removed painting players blue, the ability to paint them red stayed in.

That said, I would still trust that Red = Scum unless we have any provable role-claims that can show us otherwise.

And for D1, Red definitely equals scum and Blue definitely equals town.

Just flip the script here from what I said previously:

BLUE players are very, very likely CONFIRMED TOWN unless someone can prove that players can change others blue.
RED players are likely to be CONFIRMED SCUM in the EARLY GAME but we can't rely on that as much moving forward.
Again, this is somewhat speculative, as Cheetory could've changed some core things between the second game and this one, but
I do NOT see Cheetory giving Mafia the ability to paint players blue, since he really didn't like how much that could skew things in scum's favor in the first game and was essentially 'bastard'.

P-EDIT: ><
I'm just gonna leave this here because I was so going off on you
If Blue is scum, I'm going to have serious words with the mod in post

[Varsoon]

Pretty sure scum could paint their own in earlier Paint setups.

[Varsoon]

And, yes, at this point, I would be very surprised if anyone flipped red on the color flip.

[Varsoon]

I actually need to go back and see who really pushed for Aptil's color to be revealed, especially the day they got lynched.
Because they were definitely purple by then, at least.

[Varsoon]

Wait, what's your theory?
I don't see this being a 4-man team unless scum is just 4 goons with no abilities besides painting people purple. Even then, I think we'll know when we lynch another scum and the game doesn't end.
If you think we should proceed with caution and assume Lylo is when we're at a 2-scum situation, I think that's fine, too.

[Varsoon]

That's a lot of why I have been trying to get others to engage more and look at the game rather than just taking the reigns. Scum's left me alive for a reason, and I'm worried that's because I'm moving us in the wrong direction. :/

[Varsoon]

Havo's engagement strikes me as town making an effort, but their vote patterns and play in regards to wagons doesn't.

[Varsoon]

I mentioned going back and looking at the Aptil lynch and:

What throws me off is that Havo kept saying Aptil was a good lynch after the vig fake-claim and 1 kill that night, but
They didn't vote there for the color flip or the lynch. They color-voted Titus' slot (even before fro99er's claim) and lynch-voted Max, who Aptil was also encouraging them to go after (alongside fro99er, though it seems Havo came around to a townread there).
In 1445, Aptil talks up looking at Max instead off Havo, too. You can track this from Aptil's 1410 and forward.
It isn't until Fro99er drops off the Havo wagon to vote Aptil for a lynch that momentum heavily swung that way and Havo joined on there.
I don't know what to make of it in regards to its relation to the colorflip stage.
All the Havo avoiding lynching or colorflipping Aptil despite wanting a lynch there hard early in the day--then only applying the vote when it's a chance to avoid themselves lynched--that reads scummy to me.
The back and forth where Aptil keeps trying to get Havo to go after Max, though, doesn't exactly look like a scum conversation to me, though Havo did eventually drop a Max vote in 1488--was that all just scum theater to justify Havo doubling down with his scumbuddy on Max?
But what would be the point even? If scum can only paint one person a night, then they painted JJH N1 and Aptil on N2. If Max flipped town with Aptil leading that wagon, it'd only lead to a huge push against Aptil, imo. Why was Aptil pushing for a lynch there? Was it just to draw the next day's colorflip to himself so he could WIFOM around it? Or was it to drive a lynch away from Havo (or someone else) who might flip red? I don't think Max would be flipping red there, as I can't imagine Aptil committing to bussing after losing Two-Face on D1 because of a red color flip and, given the claims, fro99er was dead set on Max still being a primary color and it didn't look like Max was gambitting towards some miller-who-starts-off-painted-red role, either.

VOTE: Havo

[Varsoon]

Good setup for my post, Havo.
You couldn't have timed that better.

[Varsoon]

I'm not going to lynch Aristo.

[Varsoon]

Havo > Bomber > Aristo = Max.

[Varsoon]

Why do you think there are 4 scum rather than 3 in a 13p setup?
Has there ever been a 13p single-scumteam setup with 4 scum?

What I'm selling is Havo-scum. That's all.

[Varsoon]

Fro99er's clear on Max was only contingent on him being aware Max's color was still primary.
I feel as though Aptil's push against Max might be better evidence for Max-town, tbh.

I'm townreading Aristo harder than Bomber and you (Havo), that's for sure.
I guess it's because he hasn't really done half the scrambling to show that he's town that both of you have. That and he's much more genuine in his posting, imo.

[Varsoon]

I'm probably letting my few interactions with him this game paint a lot of what I'm feeling, but
It's never felt as though he tried to appeal to me or look like anything but what he is.
It's not just disinterest. There's more there.

[Varsoon]

One of the few reads I've felt good about for most the game, tbh.

[Varsoon]

Only point against Aristo that does give me pause is his treatment re:Max, but Havo is in the same boat there for me, plus all the other points I've raised vs Havo.

[Varsoon]

I'm disgusted with everyone who wasn't here, didn't compromise on a wagon, and the fact we had TWO confirmed townies not voting.
I wish there was just a clear-cut "This is the person responsible for there being a no-lynch" but there isn't and that annoys the fuck out of me.

Let's actually focus and play and put down votes this time, please.

[Varsoon]

Right now, I'd vote Bomber for flip, but I am sure they're already painted because:
1. If they are scum, they have for-sure painted themselves
2. If they are town, they are for-sure painted and set up as a mislynch

I'm curious why Bomber is focusing so hard on getting my colorflip when it's far more likely that I am purple and a colorflip for me is a waste, whereas we have several other slots in the game that players are far more contested on.
Like, fuck, the Aristo/Havo divide is literally WHY we didn't have a lynch yesterday

Bomber:

What makes you think the colorflip on me is more important than getting one on anyone else? Do you think the colorflip is likely to be painted or non-painted? Why?

[Varsoon]

If I am not painted, then, yeah, me flipping is great. And if that helps us, I'm down for it.
Thing is, I'm pretty sure that I am painted.
In that case, what does a color flip from me help at all?

[Varsoon]

Ideally, yes.
Either a red or a blue flip helps us way more than a purple one at this point.

[Varsoon]

By 'favor', you mean you think he's more likely to be that color?

[Varsoon]

Only way I could see a red flip would be:
1. Scum can paint people red -- this was something in both previous games, iirc.
2. Scum didn't paint themselves and they are going to gambit around it.
3. A 'miller' type of role exists, but since they haven't claimed that negative utility, we can only assume they are scum trying to gambit.

Given everyone so far that's been painted has flipped purple, I don't think scum can paint people red. Why wouldn't JJH be painted red, for example?
Basically, any red flip at this point should probably be lynched unless we can prove, beyond a doubt, they are town despite that.

[Varsoon]

I'm down for a massclaim.
Who should go first?

[Varsoon]

Self-voting in this situation is probably against your wincon, right?

[Varsoon]

@Bomber: What

still

makes me town? I didn't realize I had to constantly

prove

I'm town. Pretty sure I don't have to do anything to have my alignment. If you want proof for why I'm still here despite being a good player (this is still news to me), look no further than your own play and who was killed so far. Your paranoia of me, if you're town, has driven you to playing in a really self-destructive way. It's likely why town!bomber gets painted and town!bomber gets flipped, all to drive that paranoia while keeping as many lynch options on the table. Now look at scum's kills. Infinity (a PR), JJH (necessary kill after Aptil's scumgambit), fro99er (another PR), and Titus (confirmed town). I can bet you dollars to donuts that if I was colorflipped early or had either of those PRs, I'd be dead and one of those folks would be alive, likely in the same position I'm in now--left alive because scum can do precisely that.

@Aristo: If we lynch inside of Purple, we risk letting scum control the game flow and relying too hard on the mechanic instead of just playing the game. At this point, it probably behooves us most to completely not let the colorflips influence our play unless they come up red/blue. If scum keep killing how they have, then if we mislynch today, Apricity dies tonight and 2/4 of us are purple tomorrow, assuming scum can only paint 1.

P-EDIT: We should still mass-claim, imo. Thanks for unvoting yourself, Bomber.

[Varsoon]

Havo/Bomber/Ari/Varsoon/Myself/Apricity claim order?

I wanted to say that this is probably the best order to go with.
Havo claimed VT.
Bomber claimed VT.
So, Ari, you're up, then it's me, then I've gotta go to sleep.

[Varsoon]

VT here, too.

[Varsoon]

Because Havo knows that they lose any other fight they pick.
They tried fighting Bomber and Bomber won. They could do that again now, given the purple flip, but if Bomber is town and Havo's scum, that just leads to a Havo lynch tomorrow.
They tried fighting Aristo and town no-lynched. If they continue to commit to that, it's bad for them regardless of align.
They can't go after Max given their position.
Apricity is confirmed town.
What's that leave?

[Varsoon]

The only way scum-Apricity wins right now is pushing a lynch on someone who hasn't been colorflipped AND who they could conceivably mislynch and look town for doing so. I'm the only player who falls into that category.

[Varsoon]

My bad, scum-Havo*

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Havo

Especially egregious is Havo throwing down a vote for me when Bomber is openly on the fence after what may have been a very exasperated moment for them;
There's no way that I can read this other than Havo trying to take advantage of this situation.

[Varsoon]

You have no other option, as scum, but to come to that conclusion.
Town!Havo has several other outcomes that make plenty of sense, but this is the only way you can feasibly win if you're scum.
Ergo, you're scum.

Look no further than your ISO.
You've got me as one of your top townreads until 1550 where you start to paint paranoia on me and fro99er,
but by 1619 you're still townreading me yet.

It isn't until I start pushing my case on you that you start to saddle up with the position that scum's in me or Ari.
Even then, you're not laying down casework or reasons why.
So you then go for the Aristophanes wagon.
Doesn't go anywhere.

Why don't you double down for that today?
If you're town, what leads you away from your scumread on Aristophanes?

I'm curious. You even wanted a colorflip on me and a lynch on Aristo--that's how sure you were about this.
Why does town-Havo change their mind like that?

P-EDIT: You self-voting won't have the same effect it did for Bomber, so you can stop trying to replicate that.

[Varsoon]

Don't fold.
Tell me why you swapped from having such a hard scumread on Aristophanes to pushing a vote on me.

[Varsoon]

We have 48 hours left.
Please, play this game.

[Varsoon]

Fro99er had Max as town due to investigating him and knowing he was still primary color (iirc, after the point where we didn't have all our colored players accounted for, but I might be wrong on that?) on top of outting Max from being a likely pairing with any potential remaining scum in his eyes. Fro99er was working with the assumption I was town to form that basis for evaluation, too. Knowing that I am town, and trusting in fro99er's judgment given results so far, I've got Max as one of the last people I want to lynch.

I did my own wagon analysis and found Aristo far less likely to be scum than Havo and Bomber. That, coupled with early transparency from the slot, lead to an early town read that nothing has really caused an upset over. The only negative I can really even pin on the slot is a last-minute sheep of Aptil onto a lynch-wagon for Max, but that was post-hammer and, if anything, is not a townslip that I see the last scum of three manufacturing.

[Varsoon]

Consider this: In what world does scum-Aristo see his already LYNCHED teammate and decide to SHEEP them on a last-minute wagon on Max?
Only if it was intentionally meant to be read as a townslip, but that kind of shit wouldn't even be read as such after the scum flip from Aptil.
Does this make sense?

[Varsoon]

They would've seen the P-EDIT of me with the hammer; there's no fucking way that's scum sheeping their already lynched partner.

[Varsoon]

I could see maybe WIFOMing it if Aptil was the first lynch on scum, but given gamestate and the likelihood we have only 3 scum here, there's literally no fucking way Aristo, as the final scum, does that.

[Varsoon]

NL lets us get a color result and narrow the lynch pool--it's the option I'd prefer.

[Varsoon]

Bomber's already purple.
It's between me, you, and Max.
We know that, as of Fro99er's claim, Max was his primary color, so if we flip him, we'll know he was made purple between now and then and that's 'bout it.
If my math is right and scum can only color one person purple a night, then one of us has to be unpainted, right?
If scum didn't paint themselves, they have bigger balls than I imagine.
If anyone flips blue, scum will just kill them tonight.
So I dunno how much colorflip gets us. Ideally, we get a blue flip, because then we lock scum's kill down, I guess, but then they'd probably be thinking of that going into this phase. That said, if we get a purple flip, scum gets to just kill whoever they want, but we still get a townflip that gives us some info. Sooo

it's probably all moot.

[Varsoon]

Yeah, lemme see:
N1: JJH gets purple'd -- is killed N2 and is town.
N2: Aptil gets purple'd -- is lynched D3 and is scum.
N3: ??? gets purple'd.
N4: ??? gets purple'd.
N5: ??? gets purple'd.

Out of those ???'s, one is confirmed to be Bomber.
Since every other death so far has been red or blue, that means that two of the other ???'s are in me, you, and Max.
Again, assuming only 1 paint per night and no other paint chicanery.

[Varsoon]

Fro99er claimed that Max was still primary on D3, but, barring paint being once a night, that had to be the case for literally everyone other than JJH and Aptil anyway.
Rationale for his Max townread was 'based off my N1 result and the fact that he doesn't have many plausible partners adds to that.'

[Varsoon]

Works for me.
VOTE: aristo

[Varsoon]

I think there's probably not a single person not painted by now, but that's just me.

Why'd ya think this?

[Varsoon]

What are your thoughts right now?

Also, should we no-lynch, knowing Aristo is very likely the kill tonight?

[Varsoon]

I dont see the point in NLing. Ari isn't in the lynchpool and won't be tomorrow.

Basically this, though there's always the chance that scum DOESN'T kill Aristo. /shrugs.

Gut tells me to lynch Bomber, paranoia has me on Max.

[Varsoon]

Because I've basically had it narrowed to Bomber and Havo until this point, so for me to still be around now feels like I'm being led along to make a lynch there in LYLO. :/

[Varsoon]

True--I thought there was a kill in there that wasn't a claimed PR, Aptil being leashed to that vig-gambit, or a blue-flip, but that's pretty much all of them.
Max, did you claim VT early?

[Varsoon]

...seriously?
Is anyone planning on posting?

[Varsoon]

Bomber, Aristo's flipped Blue and Max is by no means cleared by Fro99er--just confirmed to have not been painted on N1 (but we knew that from our flips anyway).

[Varsoon]

That's literally what fro99er claimed that it does.
I'm outright saying that Max is not mechanically cleared as town. Doesn't make him scum, though.

[Varsoon]

Any other NK makes me the tie breaker, and I don't think scum would take that chance.

Unless scum think you'll vote in their favor, /shrugs

[Varsoon]

Good. Was thinking about how claims/crumbs might've influenced kills early on and moving forward.

I'm scumreading Bomber, yeah.

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Bomber
Doesn't hurt to put my money where my mouth is.

[Varsoon]

I was really hoping that voting would make people actually start playing, but all it did was garner a crossvote and little else. :/

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Varsoon

Well, you made this easy for me.

[Varsoon]

VOTE: Bomber

Again, you made this easy for me.

[Varsoon]

Assuming you killed Max because they were voting you yesterday but Aristo was still up in the air?

[Varsoon]

Scumcase for Bomber:

To me, scum is almost certainly on the Raya wagon, out of Fro99er, aptil, MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, and Havo.
Which makes my skin crawl that we colorflipped Penguin instead of one of those suspects, and it drives my paranoia more because fro99er lead that push for the colorflip.
Where this gets unnerving is looking at people who were complicit with colorflipping OUTSIDE of the Raya wagon: MaxwellPuckett, Bomberman, Havo, Fro99er.
Literally the whole Raya wagon with the exception of Aptil, who was voting for Maxwell.

What does this mean to me?
We should be most critical of Bomberman/Havo.
If we find scum in Max/Aptil, it's very likely the other is town.
Fro99er continues to be an enigma to me and why they color checked outside of the Raya wagon confounds me.

To add on to that: Bomber's been on pretty much every bad town mislynch and kept a wide lynch pool. When confronted, Bomber AtE's and acts like they are crumbling under the pressure to perform as town.
Furthermore, Bomber's constantly been trying to get people paranoid of my slot all game while not dedicating a case or wagon there. :/

Towncase for me:

@Bomber: What

still

makes me town? I didn't realize I had to constantly

prove

I'm town. Pretty sure I don't have to do anything to have my alignment. If you want proof for why I'm still here despite being a good player (this is still news to me), look no further than your own play and who was killed so far. Your paranoia of me, if you're town, has driven you to playing in a really self-destructive way. It's likely why town!bomber gets painted and town!bomber gets flipped, all to drive that paranoia while keeping as many lynch options on the table. Now look at scum's kills. Infinity (a PR), JJH (necessary kill after Aptil's scumgambit), fro99er (another PR), and Titus (confirmed town). I can bet you dollars to donuts that if I was colorflipped early or had either of those PRs, I'd be dead and one of those folks would be alive, likely in the same position I'm in now--left alive because scum can do precisely that.

To add on to that: Last night, the kill could've been on me, Max, or Aristo. If I was killed, Max would very likely still be townread by Aristo and Max was already voting Bomber. Bomber gets lynched and loses.
If Aristo was killed, Max (who is townread in this situation) goes back to voting Bomber and I vote Bomber as I was doing. Bomber gets lynched and loses.
With the Max kill, the same dichotomy of Varsoon vs Bomber exists, but because I'm not nearly the universal townread that Max was, the lynch could go either way.
If I am scum, there's no reason for me to kill Max over Aristo, since Max was already dedicated to a Bomber lynch.

[Varsoon]

For most the game, I thought you were town. I had to readjust and re-read and when I did, you ended up near the bottom of a list of people likely to be scum.
If you're trying to uphold that my infallibility is somehow equal to me being scum, you're disregarding the people who've voted me and the flak I've taken for having controversial opinions and pushes in this game.
There's no excuse for you, as town, to have allowed so many mislynches to go through. That alone should be enough to prove you're scum to anyone.

What really bothers me is that it's clear that you half-assed your way through the game. I can't recall any hard stances you've taken or any major game moments that you were a part of besides when shit wasn't working out. You've drug your feet and gotten by and it's incredibly frustrating that your final defense, when you're finally at LYLO, to get out of the loss you've had coming your way since your buddy Aptil's gambit fell through, is to just continue to insist that scum-you wouldn't be so incompetent.

It's especially fucking annoying that you're propping up competency as a scum feature and lackluster play as a town one, not just because it's NAI as fuck, but because it's a fucking huge problem on this site. You sowed town disinterest and now you're trying to uphold that you're town for doing so? Please, eat rope.

[Varsoon]

P-EDIT: There's no excuse for you, as town, to have allowed so many mislynches and NO LYNCHES to go through.

[Varsoon]

How many no-lynches have we had? Two? Three?
And you can't try to convince me that you 'just were not around' at the time.
You swung the Raya mislynch the second you got the chance to.
You were complicit on every mislynch since then and abstained wholly when the wagons were between you and other players--all the way up until the end here, where a lynch on me yesterday would've won you the game.

[Varsoon]

It's no surprise that game interest tanked the second both your buddies were gone and you were the only one left.
You ducked out and let town go at it against each other.

[Varsoon]

Being wrong does matter to me.
I was wrong about Havo.
I lead that. I own that.
Havo kept telling me it wasn't them.
No amount of me blaming myself over fucking that up will change what happened.
But there's just no way I'm going to flop over and not play as best I can to win now that it's only me against what is clearly just a singular person who could possibly be scum.

I've been voted by almost every player in the game at least once, iirc.

[Varsoon]

I'm glad you're taking the time to read over things, Aristo. I've seen a lot of conf-town in your position just go with a gut quick-hammer and the game feels cheapened for it. Then again, I'm assuming that's also why you're still alive instead of Max. :/

Regardless, please keep the deadline in mind. I can't be critical of Bomber for not being around for lynches without also telling you that a lot of why we're in this predicament is because you weren't around to make a decision during the last day we had. Then again, you not showing up has given you more time to consider the options, but this time the deadline really is important and this time Max can't give any PoV.

Deadline is: (expired on 2017-07-22 09:00:00)
Just set an alarm or something so you can be around before it, is all. I do that all the time for my games, especially when I'm modding them and I need to flip the game phase before people get all frustrated in twilight.

[Varsoon]

I'm just tired of being left around in LYLO in games that I feel I'm doing good in. A long time ago, I realized it was often because scum had me pinned and I wouldn't be able to perform late-game, or that they knew I'd fall for their gambits, or I was already buddied, etc. Which, of course, lead to me being really critical of myself when I got to those clutch game states, which also weakened my play.

Just wish scum had the sense to off me early, like they did in the last game I was town in, where I was identified as too dangerous for scum to keep around because I was already making cases against 2/3 their team. Then again, the kills this game have been kind of locked down due to the paint mechanic, and there was never a really huge push (from scum) to get my color revealed here.

Regardless, if you need anything, let me know. I'll be around, but I don't think we gain much from me walling up against Bomber any more than I have.

[Varsoon]

You're sweeping a lot of my play under the rug so that it looks good for your case, which amounts to "He is playing too good to be town and be alive right now, must be scum."
I play great as town, sometimes. I suck ass as town sometimes. I play great as scum sometimes. I get demolished as scum sometimes.
We've been over this time and time again. Outside of N1, which was a kill that ended up on a PR anyway, scum didn't seem to have leeway with their kills.
As far as having some master plan--of course I did. I was on the fucking design team for the first paint mafia. When I got my role PM, I was already thinking of the best ways to utilize the paint mechanic to benefit town. I was already intimately familiar with the previous Paint games and aware of what was not conveyed in the opening rules posts that people needed to know if we were going to win. I pushed very hard to color flip my biggest suspect and they flipped red and we lynched scum on D1. If anything, the reason I'm still alive is because you were banking on paranoia (evident by players like Max being kept alive, too) and using my own strong early play against me.

In fact, going back and looking at it, Aptil was pushing hard not to let Max get cleared (via Fro99er's sure-fire clear on Max) and Bomber was insisting on a bussing narrative from the get-go. You also were sternly against Fro99er (who was the most townread voice pushing Aptil's colorflip) and their townbloc, which, as we've discovered, was just full of town players. If anything looks 'calculated' and played at a discerning pace behooving scum, it's your play on D2 after the Two-Face lynch.

[Varsoon]

Even your posturing on the Aptil wagon colorwagon D2 looks contrived as fuck, followed by you jumping ship onto JJH the second you get a chance.

[Varsoon]

Feels like you're projecting there. I can't recall anything you've done all game besides flounder around and skirt from phase to phase.

The entire game exists for Aristo to read and draw conclusions from. At this point, you're just painting the events to fit your narrative. If rallying doesn't "take much effort," then why did you fail at even that? I only talked when it was relevant? So, like, when anyone talks ever? I was a fairly instrumental part of the color flip phases for pretty much every one of them besides Gamma's, iirc. Again, Aristo can just read the game. It's a truer presentation than either of what us will conjure against the other.

[Varsoon]

Who is Two-Face?
Who is JJH?
Who is Havo?
Who is Bomber?

I've been pushing my scumreads all fucking game, homie.
Again, the whole thread exists. Aristo's been here and can just read it.

[Varsoon]

Heck yeah, I made the right calllllls

[Varsoon]

Thanks for running the game, Cheetory. Had fun, obviously.
That last night kill was something I debated for eons internally.

[Varsoon]

I still hold that the setup is a bit townsided given scum was just 3 goons with no factionals outside of a single paint purple per night.

[Varsoon]

I still think the paint mechanic is really cool and you could do a lot of neat stuff with it.

[Varsoon]

<3 S'all good, Cheety. Sign me up for the next one. And, ay, you made me proud here, too~

@Apricity: Thanks--I was really hoping to work around the fact we'd always have at least one or two confirmed town kicking around.

[Varsoon]

Now I at least have a good scum win and a good town win in my recent meta, which makes me feel not-so-bad.

[Varsoon]

Aristophanes and Maxwell have their drawings up now!

Two to go!
Wooooo

Love Aristo's scene, 10/10, would look at it again

[Varsoon]

I also felt like Bomber was very town--just in terms of rhetoric. It'd take a lot for them to fake that much exasperation that consistently as scum.
That said, I also picked Bomber to go into LYLO with me because they looked far scummier than I did to Aristo and Max. That's all that matters--perception, and knowing where people stand.

[Varsoon]

That's also why I couldn't No-Kill or kill Aristo on the last night;
Max would be too liable to second-guess his continued survival and change the script with a vote on me.

[Varsoon]

Yeah--I was trying my best to come from as legitimate a place as I could regarding absences and poor town performance. I knew that my play (votes, positioning, etc) looked better than yours, but for the last few days of the game I was really coming from a place of genuine frustration with people and hoping that it'd come off as town rhetoric.

Regardless, you're right: You can know who the entire scum team is, but if you can't convince other people to lynch them, it's no use. People often focus so much on what they can do to find scum and don't cultivate enough of a game presence to rally town onto those lynches.

[Varsoon]

Exactly that.

Taking early initiative can go a long way.
Just look at this game. By stepping up and not backing down from the Two-Face lynch and reminding people to stay on it when they were going to ditch for other wagons, both Fro99er and myself were pretty cemented as town worth following. You see this repeated again when Fro99er made the hard push for the Gamma flip. Obviously, yielding worthwhile and tangible results to town works best in your favor, but charting a plan of action and sticking to it and being clear about it typically provides a deal of transparency while also making the waves you need to succeed.

P-EDIT:
There were several times where I would type something, only to back away and not make a response.
You were 100% right that I was waiting out on time and not putting down content--Aristo was already where I needed him, why chance that with more content that might change his mind?

[Varsoon]

That's also why I couldn't No-Kill or kill Aristo on the last night;
Max would be too liable to second-guess his continued survival and change the script with a vote on me.

As soon as I voted Bomber and left i regretted it. I thought Varsoon had to be scum then, but i was already with no internet and then was killed. You def made the right call.

I'm glad I read that correctly. You didn't really seem to 'own' your Bomber vote and, if you, me, and Bomber were around for LYLO, you probably wouldn't stick to it.
Couple that with your growing paranoia of my slot and bomber's own casing relying heavily on building that paranoia, I figured I would have a worse chance in LYLO with you over Aristo.

That said, Aristo, I feel like you were playing a good game early on and did a ton of things that made you absolutely town--I expressed a lot of that in the thread. I think you'd probably benefit from being a bit more outwardly transparent about your reads and where you'd like to the game to go, while being a little more critical about everything.

[Varsoon]

Was shakin' in my boots when we started rolling the replacements in, especially because then my whole 'Bus D1 and coast towncred' strategy falls apart for people who have a fresh set of eyes on everything and weren't there D1.
Titus immediately went after me, and it's lucky that I could write the Titus kill off as 'Scum killing conf-town' and not 'Scum killing the person leading a wagon on them'.
Even at the end, when Bomber was asking who pushed me, I neglected to mention Titus, because of that fear.

[Varsoon]

For instance, early on, I was trying to pin you as a mislynch by putting some pressure on you:
viewtopic.php?p=9315994#p9315994

However, when you were straightforward, answered me pretty quickly, and gave pretty solid rationale for the actions you were taking, there was no way I could push a scumread on you there for reasons that I typically scumread people. That's when I realized that you were coming from a town PoV and, if I were town, would probably have started townreading you--so I decided to do that as scum and hope that an early townread on you (from a logical place/actual interaction) would help to buddy you.

I think if you had more places where, as you made a play, you explained why you were playing the way you were, then more people would townread you and follow you early on.

With everything, it's a balancing act. Explain too much and people will peg you for overexplaining and seeming like you need to constantly 'justify' your play. I think you were doing well on D1, where you were playing in a way that made sense to you, but when questioned, you could actually back up your play because it was all coming from an informed, town place, rather than just being random votes or flimsy posturing.