Open 815: Forest Fire Redux [Endgame]

[Noraa]

Aside from a survivor game but I consider that to be the same as town.

[Noraa]

Alright, fair

Why don't you think you'd get any heat here if you were scum? Like, how would you be playing this differently?

I don't know what I would do but I'm always more townread as scum.

[Lukewarm]

Basically skitter, if Noraa entered the game, and thought that the town had narrowed it down to "it must be nora or skitter," then hard scum reading you, and you flipping town day 2, means they just loses the game Day 3.

So they had to break the idea that scum must be between Nora and skitter, and all they did Day 2 points to that imo. They did not go with you being scum, instead they went with "Both me AND Skitter are town, so we all need to re examine all of the other slots out there"

[Hectic]

Noraa, the truth is your wall is so more effort than I expected from town!Noraa, and reminiscent of scum!Noraa going all out with effort to make herself look towny. The motive behind it reads a lot like it's designed to make us read you better, in the sense that's it's not as free flowing as I'd expect, but more structured and presented to look good

I did some game analysis and Prism scum actually makes zero sense mech wise. I hate reading mech but I mapped out the game yesterday and thought of all sorts of possibilities and Prism has to be the worse scum ever to bus their buddy on day 1 in a setup like this.
My conclusion was basically that Prism, if scum would have to get through 3 town mislims on their own(number might be wrong. I did the analysis yesterday and can't remember atm) and also all the targets put on at night have to stay alive. Which doesn't sound too bad maybe but the probability of it all working out are pretty low and if anyone catches on, it will all come crashing down. Other options include not setting them ablaze the same night but doing it twice or just getting to lylo and doing it the normal way. Both are difficult because the winning odds typically go down to like 50% which isn't that high. Also, seeing that prism got the lim of their choice in such a disorganized group means that prism could've easily got the lim elsewhere. All in all, Prism scum makes zero sense is an opinion that I developed overnight.

I also find this read very bizarre in the sense that it seems to be an overexplation that Prism's town because scum won't hardbus day 1

[Noraa]

Well, if you're town, you'll be surprised what my alts have done to me after this game.

[Noraa]

The main reason I am town is still that I would never hammer skitter after calling skitter town for a whole day as scum. It is a very strong point and absolutely not something I would do as scum.

[Noraa]

Also Lukewarm is completely misrepping me. I TRed skitter and in a game like mafia, if the limpool is you and someone that you TR, it is much easier to break free of consensus together than as one person.

[Prism]

I also want to note that this setup mechanically incentivizes bussing. It's the quality of play and tone that HEM brought to the table that makes bussing dumb. This is one of the most bus-friendly setups you will ever find on account of being completely vanilla and with zero scum nightkills before endgame.

[Lukewarm]

Also Lukewarm is completely misrepping me. I TRed skitter and in a game like mafia, if the limpool is you and someone that you TR, it is much easier to break free of consensus together than as one person.

I am not misrepping you. Yes, you stated in thread that you had a town read on Skitter. I am in no way saying that that is not what happened. I am not even saying that you town reading skitter there was scum indicative.

Skitter said that scum!you would not have made that play, and would have instead scum read skitter.

My point is that town you, who really town read skitter, would have played that way AND scum you, who would need to break the idea that scum must be found in [skitter, nora], would need to play that way as well, so the reason skitter is town reading you, is actually NAI.

My reasons to scum read you are earlier in my iso.

[Lukewarm]

Spoiler:

I would not be against a Nora flip here.

Yes, I know, OMGUS - but also, every take they have made this game looks like it is revolving around "lets destroy the town block in the game" when the town block in the game literally just voted out scum - which certainly an interesting time to do it.

Also, refusing to read the thread gives her a nice plausible deniability behind any and all pushes they might want to make. Like they they replace into the game, announce they have not read the thread and don't plan to, and then they start making pushes without considering "maybe there is stuff I missed, that would make this take bad"

Also. also, they seemed really certain they was on the line for elimination for the day, when I don't think they really were? Like, me and Hectic were pushing Skitter. Skitter was pushing Hectic. Prism's stated scum team solve was HEM+Ydra. T3 voted Ydra.

And even though there was a lot of different directions the thread was being pulled in, this is the impression Noraa got

Right now, people mostly agree we are limming one of her or me?

And I feel like scum is primed to expect to be more scum read then they really are.

I also feel like Noraa's play around me was off (and to a lesser extent Infinity). Like they started out accusing me of being scummy, but then quickly tried to transition to being buddy-buddy with me, which is strange if they were genuinely suspicious of us.

Like:

I mean if Prism actually isn't scum [snip] then Lukewarm is just deep wolf and this game is a loss no matter what lmao

Ok Lukewarm and me vibing. Soul mason acquired yayyyyyyyyy

Infinity was a little less extreme, but started off with being suspicious that Infinity was so unreadable, to also declaring them soul-masons as well.

[Lukewarm]

Spoiler:

I would not be against a Nora flip here.

Yes, I know, OMGUS - but also, every take they have made this game looks like it is revolving around "lets destroy the town block in the game" when the town block in the game literally just voted out scum - which certainly an interesting time to do it.

Also, refusing to read the thread gives her a nice plausible deniability behind any and all pushes they might want to make. Like they they replace into the game, announce they have not read the thread and don't plan to, and then they start making pushes without considering "maybe there is stuff I missed, that would make this take bad"

Also. also, they seemed really certain they was on the line for elimination for the day, when I don't think they really were? Like, me and Hectic were pushing Skitter. Skitter was pushing Hectic. Prism's stated scum team solve was HEM+Ydra. T3 voted Ydra.

And even though there was a lot of different directions the thread was being pulled in, this is the impression Noraa got

Right now, people mostly agree we are limming one of her or me?

And I feel like scum is primed to expect to be more scum read then they really are.

I also feel like Noraa's play around me was off (and to a lesser extent Infinity). Like they started out accusing me of being scummy, but then quickly tried to transition to being buddy-buddy with me, which is strange if they were genuinely suspicious of us.

Like:

I mean if Prism actually isn't scum [snip] then Lukewarm is just deep wolf and this game is a loss no matter what lmao

Ok Lukewarm and me vibing. Soul mason acquired yayyyyyyyyy

Infinity was a little less extreme, but started off with being suspicious that Infinity was so unreadable, to also declaring them soul-masons as well.

[Prism]

I'm back in business and I finished reading Hectic.

I'm not voting that slot without a silver bullet. This will take some time to put together since the reasoning is kind of a mix of my own thoughts from ISO+rejecting a lot of the reasoning given by others.

[Noraa]

If I'm not scum, who's scum? Nows a good time to start thinking about that. Seeing the gamestate, I will much rather die today than tomorrow. If tomorrow, no one can settle on a lim, lim the most townread townie because that probably drags the game out of lylo by getting rid of one of the flagged people. Scum will have 3 by then and just need to blow them up. Get rid of one of them and scum can't win and will have to wait another night which is pretty bad for scum since the dead townie is still there technically and probably means that scum has to flag someone that is a mislim option which is risky. My guess is that the people that are flagged are probably Lukewarm, Prism, and Infinity by tomorrow. I still think Lukewarm is scum in the event that Hectic isn't but if Lukewarm is scum, none of this matters because it's already a scum win. One of those will be flagged tonight so they may stray from the original plan seeing this post. Idk but my speculation tells me that the best bet for elimming UTR is infinity if it ever comes to that. Aside from that, I don't know what to say. Like I'm not scum here but I'd rather die today than tomorrow.

[Prism]

Spoiler: Bulk of quotes about Hectic's Child push

Fairy Child was very comprehensive and thorough in their responses to both Prism and I, but I find it scum-indicative to have that kind WIM to defend yourself but not put nearly as much effort into discussing other things that doesn't involve defending themselves (earlier in the game)

It's a more defensive mindset which can come from town but also comes from scum a whole lot of the time

like ?
feels like he's making up reasons to push them, fairy's iso is pretty townie esp. for someoen without a lot of recent experience

Why do I need to just force a push through as scum here if both wagons are town? There's no stakes here for me

i don't know
but the fact that you keep juggling back and forth kinda makes me think that you don't particularly care which ones gets flipped

and still asking a scumread to help flip another scumread is bizarre to me
i also kind think child of faiies is townie and that you're looking for reasons to scumread her

On "making up reads", I actively try and force myself to have scumreads as town and don't settle only having town and nullreads. That involves searching for motivation and digging deeper into everyone's ISOs, it has mixed results. I was kinda in that town and null only reads place for a while but then found stuff Fairy Child could be doing as scum, and the responses could have a scum-motivation.

also given that you're apparently doing this i still don't fully get why you're cycling between reads anyways? lik why was she your preferred flip given that you were looking for scumreads and found her?
idk this feels weird

also hectic doesn't stick with child because it's not a popular wagon and it seems liek there's much more appetite for monkey?

who’s the everyone that’s townreading him? why’s child so townie?

Uh nobody other than luke would entertain a hectic vote?

Fairy jas a level of nuance to their posting that i think is unlikely to be found in the iso of newish-scum
(And i also thing hectic should recognize that, esp since he:
A) understanda they would be new-ish scum
B) literally admitted to going fishing for scumreads and that he didnt inherently scumread them until he tried to find a scumread)

i also think that it's even *more* sus that he flipflopped between child and hem given that hem flipped scum, and that asking hem (who he scumread) to join him on child looks incredibly partner-indicative. it's baffling to me why town would ask a scumread to join them on another scumread when it shouldn't matter to them which one gets flipped, but it makes an insane amount of sense for scum (hectic) to ask their partner (hem) to vote flipbait town when the partner is the biggest other viable wagon.

i also think the timing of flipping off of child onto hem is also sus given that it was obvious a child wagon wasn't happening at that point

I think it's easiest if I distill these down to a few salient points and tackle them one by one.

1. Child was town, not scummy, for the reasons Hectic provided and he should know it

I hard disagree with this. I noticed the exact same behaviors as Hectic: Child was very intentional and careful in their posting/voting, and while you disagree that the slot was defensive, a simple revisit of the beginning shows where our concern came from. We both agree that there was some good nuance behind their extended reads: Our issue was that these posts seemed crafted to be nuanced but as narrow and as non-committal as possible, making them well within range for a more careful scum player.

At a minimum, I picked up on the exact same behaviors as Hectic did and I don't consider this scum-indicative for Hectic.

2. Hectic was actively looking for a scumread and found one with Child

I don't think this is scummy. Hectic has said it repeatedly, but he gets uncomfortable without a scumread and a bunch of townreads. Going back and combing over the ISO of a likely candidate to find something isn't scummy, it's just good play. He has not tried to hide this process or progression at all, and I think this transparency-as opposed to planning something more organic looking/starting out with a scumlean on Child-is +town if anything.

3. Hectic asking a scumread (HEM) to join them on another scumread (Child) is scummy

I'm sorry but this is a basic and very fundamental play in mafia that good town do all the time. It lets you test reads, it makes getting a vote on a scumread more likely, it helps you test for teams. There's literally nothing to see here. I can go back and meta Hectic to see if he specifically only does it as scum but this is a game fundamental and doing this would be a waste of time IMO. The real question here is why HEM didn't join on the vote.

4. The Hectic vote on HEM wasn't town as the Child wagon wasn't likely to go through

This is false and I was terrified that a Child vote would go through over HEM. This vote happens in 949. The voting before this is Hectic/T3 on Child, me on HEM, Lukewarm on me, with the rest not voting.

Crucial to this is that

T3 has just switched off HEM and voted Child in 927 in reply to a wall of quotes from Ydrasse defending HEM

.

At this time, the most recently expressed reads are:

-Ydrasse has been shoving Child scum and harddefending HEM as town
-Lukewarm was actually just voting Child but switched to wanting Prism/Hectic, neither of which was likely to go through (eg. Child vote is likely). Middling reaction to HEM.
-HEM is not voting
-Skitter has replaced in but

not yet given any content at all, instead just posting that she's worried about deadline

ie. no push on Hectic yet, no townread on Child
-Infinity is waffling on HEM but recently unvoted him and I don't feel like tracking down her Child feelings atm

The Child vote was extremely likely to go through w/o Hectic swapping, as I and arguably Infinity were the only ones scumreading HEM while others actively defended and townread it. This wagon was 100% not dead and Hectic's voteswitch is what killed the Child wagon, it was not at all reactionary to the wagon dying.

Spoiler: Miscellaneous response I typed up

ok so i think that hectic's reads are somewhat political:
if he's scum, there's a few different people in this game that he pretty much has to townread (ydrasse and infinity, maybe lukewarm but i don't have enough context on him so not sure)

Fidget is actually in here, but is noticeably null for the most part all day despite Hectic spending a lot of time on that slot. It is unclear to me why they have to be political, as opposed to natural. Ydrasse wasn't ever bad and Infinity was pretty town for most of the game.

i don't think that he wanted to scumread prism but upon prism scumreading him, he felt he needed to push back and scumread prism in turn. i think that prism seemed to have backed off a bit right before hectic townread her / dropped the scumread - i think he didn't actually want to push her and if she wasn't going to actively push him he felt safe sticking her back in a townbin and dropping the fight (which is indeed what seemed to have killed the momentum of the 1v1).

This was my concern around the time he OMGUSed and originally backed down a bit without removing his vote. Removing it much later is arguably null out of desire to avoid stumping me but there is zero chance Hectic keeps scumreading me as town when he came back from extended V/LA, and I knew it, even if Hectic did not.

[Prism]

If I'm not scum, who's scum?

Nows a good time to start thinking about that.

Seeing the gamestate, I will much rather die today than tomorrow. If tomorrow, no one can settle on a lim, lim the most townread townie because that probably drags the game out of lylo by getting rid of one of the flagged people. Scum will have 3 by then and just need to blow them up. Get rid of one of them and scum can't win and will have to wait another night which is pretty bad for scum since the dead townie is still there technically and probably means that scum has to flag someone that is a mislim option which is risky. My guess is that the people that are flagged are probably Lukewarm, Prism, and Infinity by tomorrow. I still think Lukewarm is scum in the event that Hectic isn't but if Lukewarm is scum, none of this matters because it's already a scum win. One of those will be flagged tonight so they may stray from the original plan seeing this post. Idk but my speculation tells me that the best bet for elimming UTR is infinity if it ever comes to that. Aside from that, I don't know what to say. Like I'm not scum here but I'd rather die today than tomorrow.

Great, you can start!

Please make the case for why either of Lukewarm/Hectic are scum. Feel free to tackle either individually rather than both.

[Prism]

While I didn't feel this was important enough to include in the wall response, which is what you should focus on, I also want to note Skitter that I find it very irrational and unfair that you pushed Hectic for being "indifferent" to which of Child/HEM flipped and then later pushed these same interactions as making him more likely scum with HEM.

[Prism]

Hectic, what do you think about the Ydrasse slot? I think Nakata is hardtown in and of himself even if I'd have a hard time verbalizing a lot of it, but what really sealed the deal for me while driving the other day was that Ydrasse simply wouldn't be able to muster the optimism and effort at the start of Day 2 solo. Am I right here?

[Prism]

Okay I have extra work I want to do but the site is lagging and making it annoying so I'll be back later

[Hectic]

What a beautiful thesis

I thought a lot of what Ydrasse posted was in her scumrange but she left it in moments. Whenever she's scum I usually see a few reads I just don't buy in the sense I don't think she really believes it, like the reasoning is too out there, but I haven't really felt that way at all this game

There were also a few moments that

might

be out of her scumrange in the sense she doesn't remember to fake them:

irritation at feeling like i should be apparent vs energy too low to try

i don’t remember how to play as town anymore

this is why i only vibe and don't try to give thoughts. lmao.

i think i'm frustrated because i feel i'm giving slightly more effort than i intended to and it's fallen flat

^last one could be nai but I lean town-indicative because she's more entitled to be townread when town, but doesn't expect to be as scum

[Hectic]

skirting around the inactive slot all day is ?_?

Oh I just ISO'd ydrasse and I agree

If you wanna vote me i'll be an afk stump probably for a few days

My gospel will be to kill infinity

Ydrasse where are you getting the idea that you can read me

Ydrasse where are you getting the idea that you can read me

Openwolf

The spitefulness here seemed kinda towny

Oh yeah, also this

[Hectic]

that Ydrasse simply wouldn't be able to muster the optimism and effort at the start of Day 2 solo. Am I right here?

Yeah, I don't think so

I think it'd maybe be a different matter if she'd set herself up by bussing monkey and was feeling it. Instead though she just remained unvoting for the later part of day 1 and didn't help save her partner at all despite defending him

I think a scum!Ydrasse coming out of that wouldn't have that initial burst of optimism/effort

[Hectic]

I still haven't gone through my hectic case I realize but I didn't do that overnight so that'll wait a bit. My strongest reason atm is that his read on me feels faked. He's never really given me a read straight off the bat and then thrown me into a readslist just like that. He always hesitates a bit when town because he knows that I react badly to pressure and because my reads and towniness fluctuate depending on surroundings.

I was confbiasing a lot probably yesterday. Seeing skitter slot as scum made it a lot easier to see everyone else as town, I wanted to

believe

that was the case and that we'd win the game

[Hectic]

T3, what're your thoughts for scum?

[Hectic]

Lukewarm. I was ready to come in with a townread today but no. I see why I'm a suspect but voting me right off the back and defending T3 is such a bad look. I hate it so much. I was 100% certain last scum was hectic but now I'm questioning everything. Like the issue is this: I do NOT ever want to be the game losing lim tomorrow but if I die today, I am very worried about tomorrow. T3 has said recently(outside of this game) that he is pretty busy. I don't TR him but if he is town, he is a very big mislim possibility. The fact that Lukewarm is hard town reading T3 gives me the heeby jeebies. There's too many wifom possibilities there and I've sped run through those in my head with the main ones being saving him to be the game winning mislim and using like "reverse mentality". Its that thing I talked about yesterday how if someone told me to vote someone but not someone else. Or "or someone else". I'm more likely to not vote the one I'm told to vote.

It's honestly such a reach to say Lukewarm could be lining up T3 as the game-ending miselim by

hard townreading

him, rather than say lining up miselims normally by leaving your options open so you don't look sus when you flip later on. How is that enough to flip your townread on him?

This combined with the Prism-bus-read and I think Noraa doesn't believe the words she's putting down right now. It's "nuance" for the sake of nuance to look towny

I actually feel pretty good about Noraa being scum but I feel sheepish after the uh slightly incorrect skitter push, so I shall refrain

I still like all the Fairy Child reasons I've given in the past too

[Prism]

Yeah I'm on the same page. I'm worried about T3's sparse activity, I concur with Lukewarm that he's unlikely to really have the confidence to try and solocarry here but it's possible he got scared into bussing. I think not voting me is less indicative, sometimes you choose to white knight a town and get burned by that commitment later.

...but I think the Child/Noraa slot is a lot more straightforward and my only real fear is the replaceout.