Open 708: Pick Your Poison - Game Over

[Maxous]

so just reading page 67-69 there and man does Athena just blank the Texcat situation so hard.

Yeah, I think i'm comfortable with an Athena lynch here.

[Maxous]

VOTE: CultOfAthena

L-1

[Beefster]

Someone should hammer.

[mozamis]

*crosses fingers*

[CultOfAthena]

@COA: Is there any reason to be afraid of being lynched as town when we literally have room for 2 mislynches before scum wins?

Let's say you

know

someone is town – a cop innocent, a friendly neighbor, whatever. Would you ever accept a lynch on that person just because it's

unlikely

that town loses?

UNVOTE:
Athena is digging in pretty hard on her EP read. It's her easiest shot at staying engaged and active in a gamestate that is very hostile to her currently. So that is a very plausible floundering scum.

Last question before I vote again, Athena: what do you think the intent behind my line of questioning was?

I honestly have no idea.

@ Cult - your last few posts sum it up: no scum hunitng, you're not trying to get EP lynched (remember him? your supposed "suspect"?). Just defensive survival mode form you.
"Town you" may have made some of those points, but you would have also said "c'mon, lets lynch EP" or something like that.
Cult's scum. Hammer her.

How am I not trying to get EP lynched when I spent a serious chunk of time (moreso than usual) writing up an entire case that nobody has responded to yet? This is the exact same thing that happened early in the game except now instead of me getting ignored and townread it's me getting ignored and lynched. I'd appreciate if you responded to 1830 because I sincerely feel like you're making the same mistakes you made in 702 and this time it's going to get me lynched.

[Beefster]

@COA: Is there any reason to be afraid of being lynched as town when we literally have room for 2 mislynches before scum wins?

Let's say you

know

someone is town – a cop innocent, a friendly neighbor, whatever. Would you ever accept a lynch on that person just because it's

unlikely

that town loses?

I see what you're saying, but it's a lot easier to vet someone else than it is to vet yourself. Sometimes being a team player means letting yourself be mislynched when there isn't pressure to get it right the first time.

[Klick]

I can't buy into this COA wagon. I'm also flopping again on Maxous-scum.

VOTE: Errantparabola

I'd like to see where this goes.

[mozamis]

jesus man

[CultOfAthena]

I would think the question of why scum would avoid the Transcend wagon would at least get you to assess EP's reads in relation to that wagon to discuss why you think he'd avoid it.

I don't think it was a question of reason – I don't think EP was even around for that wagon in the first place.

I mean, I'm willing to consider scum!Maxous given that my EP case doesn't appear to be going anywhere. I'm not really confident in it but I don't think town loses this game either way.

Okay, so why don't you do that?
Let's discuss your EP and Max read right now.
That's what I'm trying to do with you.

Max is a gut townread to me. If he's scum he's been playing a very nonchalant game for having both of his partners lynched one after the other. More than that, he has some comments in his ISO regarding HWS!scum and tex!scum that really don't seem to come from a partner:

Spoiler:

Page 2

- Instantly reminded why i got such an early town-read on Moneybags. Argues with Thor about his pushes on myself and Penguin. this looks even better given Penguin's clear. Dunno why scum!Money would defend the two of us from a town!Thor. no point really.

still kinda icky about this response to the argument from Beefster. *Particularly* if Thor town. Could be stirring the pot on a town-town fight.

Page 3

- you know in retrospect i dunno how well his post sits with me. it ends up being a lot of fence-sitting and not really saying anything

Page 5

- My town-read on Beefster might actually be tested here. I think his push on Flubber here is weak.

It's hard to define it to a particular page but Thor is dogging on both Penguin and Flubber early on here. his arguments are still a bit hard to follow.

Page 6

- I like Kilck's interactions with Bella on this page. It's a minor thing but felt rather fluid and genuine.

Page 7

- HWS's #164 here. Again a lot of words, not saying a whole pile. In the context that he's not as much of a newer player as i thought initially, this doesn't look great, idk.
Beefster's #165 Again seems like a weak read.
Klick's #167 either Klick is obv-town or he's pretty f'n good at scum.
texcat #171 I know she has a low content playstyle but she ignores so much of the game in the post and it doesn't sit well with me.

page 8

Beefster gives a mildly disapointing read-list here
errant also gives a read-list/catch-up there's not much to it either.
slight twitch with texcat's OMGUS accusation towards Flubber. actually texcat's push on flubber isn't great at all.

while i don't think Athena's posts are scummy...she's not quite as town feeling as i initially thought

Page 10

Some of these HWS posts are starting to trigger me I hate looking at meta but i feel like i might have to here.
Texcat ignores a lot of the game again and just tunnels on Flub. meh.

Page 11

- I know Errant is struggling to catch-up but not much in this post to sink into at all. surely there were more things to talk about.

mozamis seems to be giving people town-reads based on activity here. not entirely sure how i feel about that.

Hmm. Thor makes a really good point for Beefster being town missed that first time round.

Page 13

- Bad vote on Athena from Errant. Very nitpicky and i feel disingenuous, quoting her out of context.

Page 16

Klick, what's your opinion on 78 and 123 which seem townish to me?

I'm not really seeing anything alignment-indicative about the two posts? You're going to have to explain what you see to me.

pedit quick reply to Klick: I see Max townhunting and I'm liking the reads he's giving in these posts. It wasn't anything real big, just pinged me as town like.

Highlighting this exchange. maybe HWS really is scum.
such a fluff question.

Page 18

is this really playstyle? nothing else caught Texcat's interest?

Page 19

- Interesting post from beefster defending Transcend considering the circumstance. Transcend seemed like a very plausible lynch there. Town brownie points for beefster

Page 20 & 21

- you know errant is probably just scum. backs down from athena and then just...meh?
considering we know RC and transcend are town i'm not liking HWS' #506 here. Feels like stirring the pot between them. particularly considering how passive HWS tends to be on reads.

-

end of page 25

alright i've done 25 pages. i might do the rest tomorrow, i might not.

Errant and HWS are scum.

Texcat and Athena are fighting it out for the last spot. Maybeish Thor.
g'night

uhh yeah fine.
i do think HWS is likely to be scum.

Official Vote Count 1.9

HeWhoSwims

(4): Transcend, Thor665, RadiantCowbells, mozamis

Beefster

(3): CultOfAthena, Flubbernugget, texcat

texcat

(3): Klick, Moneybags, Beefster

Errantparabola

(1): Maxous

Not Voting

(2): Errantparabola,

HeWhoSwims

I mean

TL on Beefy and he's talking which is good.

SL on Tex who's... not talking.

There could easily be one scum between those and if so I'd say it's tex every time, 90% of the time.

no vote on texcat?

Granted, at the end of day two yesterday he came around to a texcat townread based on the HWS lynch day one – if he's scum, he had a pretty good strategy of having one bus to confirm the other buddy as town.

@COA: Is there any reason to be afraid of being lynched as town when we literally have room for 2 mislynches before scum wins?

Let's say you

know

someone is town – a cop innocent, a friendly neighbor, whatever. Would you ever accept a lynch on that person just because it's

unlikely

that town loses?

I see what you're saying, but it's a lot easier to vet someone else than it is to vet yourself. Sometimes being a team player means letting yourself be mislynched when there isn't pressure to get it right the first time.

How is it being a team player to knowingly harm my team by allowing my own mislynch?

[Klick]

I've given reasons several times over the course of this game as to why I have trouble with COA-scum. There are reasons to scumread her and they're not invalid. But I think she's town.

[CultOfAthena]

@Moz

I'd appreciate if you responded to 1830 because I sincerely feel like you're making the same mistakes you made in 702 and this time it's going to get me lynched.

[mozamis]

Fuck me, I was really banking on dying last night
Okay I'm outta time for clear reasons but, yeah. Reading soon and all that, fuck

This feels like a bit of an unethical argument. But:

I believe wholeheartedly that EP wouldn't straight-up lie about out-of-game problems.
Similarly, I don't think they're fudging the truth about banking on dying last night.
Scum who just lost a partner don't bank on dying last night.

EP is now a strong townread and I don't feel justified allowing a lynch on them any time in the foreseeable future.

so whats changed?

[mozamis]

UNVOTE: unvote

[mozamis]

love to hear people thoughts on Klick scum?

[mozamis]

VOTE: cult

i'm probably overhtinking it again. I'll leave it to thor.

[Klick]

That's literally the only piece of evidence in this game that I can pull EP-town from, is the thing. A single towntell doesn't give me enough confidence to stick by a townread. Meanwhile, I have multiple reasons to townread you, Beefster, Thor, COA, Maxous.

[TesXX]

Something's up with the vc...

[mozamis]

he's been in my scum reads all gamee. i'll kick myself if we let him slide. and cult...i dunno, shes hard to read.
VOTE: errant

[Beefster]

I can't get behind this EP wagon. I don't see it. It doesn't look like he knows something that we don't and he was pretty strong on the texcat wagon, which would be a stupid bus move for D2 with 1 scum already down.

I'll take a look at COA's case and try to see another angle.

[Beefster]

Overall, this looks like a standard scum desperation case.

Errant has terrible associatives with texcat and I'm not sure how you all aren't seeing it. I'll go through them.

texcat: That line thing looks like a smart way to format posts. In fact, I’m doing it right now. Thanks texcat. I'll give it a test run, see if I like it.

If you read 178, he gives some kind of read on literally every single other player that he mentions except for texcat, who he simply makes a comment to regarding using lines for formatting. Even further, there were multiple people he didn't mention at all in his readslist, so it's not even as if he was going and commenting on everyone – it seems to me like he felt the need to mention his scumbuddy but didn't have a meaningful comment to make.

That is the only mention of tex for day one.

Personally, I feel like this is reaching. D1 is usually a shot in the dark. There were a lot of other players he didn't really mention on D1. This looks like cherry picking.

Flubber:

Your sudden focus on texcat doesn't make sense to me. What about her catchup that you reference in 179 is weird? Is it just lack of content?

Defends tex where HWS was doing the same thing, possibly coordinated in daychat:

Spoiler:

So make a case or something

Hmmmm...

VOTE: Flubbernugget
Telling me to make a case, when you are not. Plus telling us that voting Bella is a town thing to do, when you are not.

QFT.

Flubber, care to explain why both of these points are a thing?

Hm, guess I can see that. It just sounded like you were trying to let texcat make a case while ducking suspicion on your own so to speak.

I still think the Bella wagon is really meh but w/e. As long as it's not lynched without more incriminating stuff towards Bella.

pedit: I see moneybags being a voice of reason but don't see why it's bad. Especially in D1 which can be a chaos of accusations/reads without base and the highest amount of players screaming through each other.

1261 is large to the point where I don't want to quote it but it's basically the classic oblique angle that scum take when talking about a scummy partner, the "willing to vote there but I have other avenues I'd rather pursue", same thing in 1492.

I think that's a fair point about 1261, but I don't see it for 1492.

---

RC's gonna hate me if he ends up being right, but I'll go here for now, I think I vastly prefer it.
VOTE: texcat

His vote on tex in 1627 comes at a time when it looked almost certain that moz was going to get lynched and despite EP expressing willingness to vote moz beforehand – that's a play for looking good on VCA and doesn't come from someone who had a real scumread on mozamis.

What kind of scum derails a mislynch to bus? That is the dumbest possible strategy.

Around 1700 RC switches off moz and begins considering the possibility of an EP/tex scumteam, and then EP enters the thread with this:

think scum just wins this game. It doesn't seem plausible that all remaining scum is in {Maxous / tex / Klick / moz} just from basic scumteam theory. I'm also really surprised that RC scumreads me, the distance from my scumgame here is extremely easy to identify

And RC notices the exact same thing that I did:

why did you suddenly get super demoralized when I expressed support for the same lynch that you did and stopped voting someone you thought was town?

EP's explanation in 1710 speaks to the

content

of what he was saying, but I don't think he can conceal the emotional reaction contained within 705 initially.

Reaching.

It seems like nobody else shares my opinion on this, and I'm not sure why. If it's just for the tex vote yesterday, I think it's very realistic that scum!EP feels like it's necessary to bus tex in the situation that he was in, and the context surrounding his vote makes me think that it's very likely.

"y u no agree with me?" This could just as well look like frustrated town as desperate scum, but given the context, I'm going to go with "desperate scum"

I don't see how this scum!EP tex bus makes any sense. It's a dumb move because WIFOM and bussing almost always comes back to bite you in the butt. EP is clearly not this stupid... We could get into WIFOM here, but we have room for 2 mislynches and I'd say EP's third on the chopping block anyway.

More votes on COA.

[CultOfAthena]

Personally, I feel like this is reaching. D1 is usually a shot in the dark. There were a lot of other players he didn't really mention on D1. This looks like cherry picking.

I am not faulting him for simply not mentioning texcat enough on day one – I'm saying that the one mention he

had

of texcat was superficial. How is that "cherry picking"?

What kind of scum derails a mislynch to bus? That is the dumbest possible strategy.

You're not getting what I'm saying. EP wasn't "derailing" the texcat wagon to bus – he was hopping off of it to have his vote on a scumbuddy when the day ended (in the moz lynch). Nothing about it is a dumb strategy in the slightest – I'd say it's a fairly good strategy.

I don't see how this scum!EP tex bus makes any sense. It's a dumb move because WIFOM and bussing almost always comes back to bite you in the butt. EP is clearly not this stupid... We could get into WIFOM here, but we have room for 2 mislynches and I'd say EP's third on the chopping block anyway.

More votes on COA.

"Because WIFOM"? I don't think you actually understood what I was saying.

[CultOfAthena]

Argh, submitted before I was finished.

There's nothing reaching about my comment in 1710 and it's consistent with someone who employed the strategy that I'm describing (hopping off of a mislynch to put your vote on a scumbuddy when the day ends) who then had that vote end up being the lynch. Yes, as scum moving the lynch from a mislynch onto a scumbuddy

is

a really bad move – I don't think EP expected tex to get lynched there and that would explain the despondence present when he realized that RC had moved from moz to tex as the lynch.

[Errantparabola]

VOTE: CultOfAthena
L-1.

Klick is probably town:
- Deflects away from tex/moz in D2 with a pretty strong conviction on Athena scum. This is scummy in a vacuum but take into account the following:
- Slowrolls the Athena wagon with yet another turnaround onto trying to start an EP wagon. If this is scum then it is a very unexpectedly patient move. I'd say scum very rarely take this route, rather than just sticking to a very established foundation on Athena scum (from Klick's POV) and pushing this wagon through.
- This move displays a rare amount of forethought in scum play (that would ultimately be towards giving Klick the momentum to take scum victory) and people should decide whether they think that it happens here. I lean strongly towards no.

Beef/Thor is town:
- There was active bussing going on in a 2-person scumteam on Day 2. Ultimately this would be done knowing texcat would die and they 1v1 in thread to give the other partner the longevity required to endgame. It's an unnecessarily risky strategy that should in most gamestates be tabled until Day 3 or Day 4.
- I think the Tex lynch was a very unexpected route for town to take in the end. with moz being pushed so heavily and constantly. The people driving that are probably town. I think the possibility that it's a bus is non-negligible.

Moz is potential scum but it would require a bit of an odd D2 situation. I second Klick on Max but I thiiiink I would lynch him before moz.

The intent behind my line of questions to Athena: as third scum getting lynched ends the game. Third scum would not be willing to get lynched under any circumstance. Town might be willing to get lynched, especially if they thought that it would result in a gamewinning lynch for town next day. I would have actually thought that this line of questioning was obvious enough (RC did something similar to me in Space Invaders I think) and I expected for Athena to say something like "yeah I'd be willing to get lynched but I'd rather just lynch you now first" or something like that. Unsure what to make of her response.

I still think her behavior is very much cornered scum still. I think Klick's point about pronouns is maybe salient but not significantly telling. Doesn't necessarily have to be a faked townslip. Could be a mistake. I'm just going to move forward with this wagon.

[CultOfAthena]

EP isn't at all acting like he believes that my lynch ends the game. Compare his last post and vote on me to moz or to Beefster and they way they've gone about this.

The intent behind my line of questions to Athena: as third scum getting lynched ends the game. Third scum would not be willing to get lynched under any circumstance. Town might be willing to get lynched, especially if they thought that it would result in a gamewinning lynch for town next day. I would have actually thought that this line of questioning was obvious enough (RC did something similar to me in Space Invaders I think) and I expected for Athena to say something like "yeah I'd be willing to get lynched but I'd rather just lynch you now first" or something like that. Unsure what to make of her response.

I think I've only ever seen people say that they'd be willing to get shot or to get vigged as scum trying to act nonchalant. The question also feels like a no win situation – say "yes" and people just lynch me. Say "no" and I get called the last scum to concerned about the game ending.

[CultOfAthena]

Note also how none of his questions furthered a scumread on me and he actually found more reasons to

townread

me and yet he still places his vote back there.