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[the worst]

monkey<3 lovely to see you again

who's scum? i haven't read up yet but like, it's me, i'll get there in due course and will get more out of talking with y'all anyway

[the worst]

i am nothing if not efficient

[the worst]

yes elements and i are masons

i had not realised they'd already claimed sweet now i don't have to convince people to townread me anymore

[the worst]

that ain't how this works pal i'm confirmed town now you tell me your reads and beg for validation

[the worst]

in earnest though, i've said hello caught up on the pt and i don't think el & i have been online at the same time yet so like. we haven't talked in there yet.

[the worst]

they talked about mason theory for a bit & how to go about distancing. i can go dig up why they decided to do that if it'll help? i probably would have done it differently but like. yes, sometimes people who rand mason lean into their scum toolkit to decide how to distance. honestly, el would be more helpful than me.

where are your reads at hem?

[the worst]

VOTE: Bingle missed u friend <3

these are both good wagons

tweet i'm paranoid that you've charmed me and pocketed me and is the deepscum

??? but I'm already the deepscum

[the worst]

Hi Worst

I beleive the mason claim. Although i dont get some of elements posts if elements and worst are two of the masons.

hey Bob nice to see you're back.

If i was to setup spec this is what my gut say this set up is

2 masons, one backup or novice mason, one invest vs one weak scum role

can you expand on this because all flips so far have been vanilla?

[the worst]

Summing up, nit voting for

Elements
The worst
For mason claim

And save the dragon because of how I think they could have interacted with the scum we caught

can you point me in the direction of what from Dragons was unaligned with camel?

[the worst]

VOTE: Bingle missed u friend <3

these are both good wagons

tweet i'm paranoid that you've charmed me and pocketed me and is the deepscum

??? but I'm already the deepscum

I subbed into this game specifically to play with you, and you immediately betrayal me like this. You really are just the worst.

didn't you sub in after me? this is still really sweet so i'll take it. who shall we kill together?

[the worst]

novice mason sounds made up because it's not really a role i have ever seen. you're the one who mentioned novice mason, so I'm not sure why it's me who jumped to any conclusions?
and i don't understand what other motivation you're looking for here, other than getting out of poe?

This is probably town, fwiw. Scummonkee is more likely to realize that if bob is lying about there being a novice mason the claimed masons would presumably just say that. Bob is probably telling the truth, which doesn’t really make him town. Rolecop definitely makes sense as a scum role in a three mason setup, and assuming the masons aren’t the novices in question that’s what it sounds like.

i'm on your wavelength so far tbh

but worst is a mason he is good solver. True i wouldnt give that power to elements

although prob obvous dont want to out the 3rd unless they hint that its fine

none of that please, do your own job. i'd rather *not* solve until everyone gives me their solve lmao i'm sure el feels the same

[the worst]

i think it's smart for the 3rd to be outed just so when the masons die, there aren't any scum claiming to be the 3rd. we already have two of the masons outted, so I'm not sure why there's value not outting a 3rd. it's not like scum has a shortage of pr claims to flip.

what's your solve in a world without a third mason bc that's important

[the worst]

i'd kinda like bob to fullclaim if he's going to do mystical mechanical stuff

[the worst]

i find it bizarre that a town mason finder would, like, target anyone or claim ever but ok go off

[the worst]

Summing up, nit voting for

Elements
The worst
For mason claim

And save the dragon because of how I think they could have interacted with the scum we caught

can you point me in the direction of what from Dragons was unaligned with camel?

I did it here

So, Klick/Dragon was 1st on the town Roden wagon
and was 4th on Camel's scum wagon

Clidd was 2nd on the town Roden wagon
and was on Furtive end of day 2 and is about to be replaced.

But i find it hard to beleive that Savethe dragon is/was scum with Camel.

STD could have pushed a different wagon and then Camel would not have needed to have voted. 2 votes somewhere else would have been very much game changing, and i am not going to vote STD today because of this.

i just went over that slot's history with greeting & camel. it kind of looks like both klick and dragons hedged on greeting/snivy, then just joined the wagon once it had momentum which is like... a very safe bus. what part of it made you think they're not aligned?

[the worst]

Vote Count 2.4

camelCasedSnivy (6):

curiouskarmadog, Elements, OopsieDaisy, Save The Dragons, furtiveglance, CamelCasedSnivy

furtiveglance (2):

clidd, geraintm

clidd (1):

humaneatingmonkey

Save The Dragons (1):

Morning Tweet

Not voting (1):

Emperor flippyNips


With 11 alive, it takes 6 votes to drive someone out of town.

i'm not going to vca because (1) i'm not smart (2) it gets mixed results (3) someone will BULLY me but just a very surface-level observation. if scum self-hammer, it's usually because it will benefit one+ of their teammates. a vca-doer would consider this a sign that there is already scum on their wagon. but shooting oopsie indicates maybe this wagon is cleaner than we're letting on, unless oopsie had particularly good reads or was just super epic.

talk to me about where u see partners around this elim

[the worst]

i agree we're better for bob having claimed and i don't think it's all that scummy a claim but i'm not married to it either

i really want gerrain to expand because i don't think gerrain is town?

pedit: mood

[the worst]

clidd was a goddamn angel you take that back

VOTE: bob

[the worst]

emperor literally did nothing but (1) talk up when pushed, (2) complain about not being allowed to lurk so i'm fine calling that a scum pr iso

elements is unconfirmed in first 4 too so taht another to look at. But is also hit town indicator for me, even if it is weak one that gets trumped by iso

el is kinda easy to have an opinion on and this is a really hedgy read.

A very townie post

strongest read in bob's iso and he's now admitted this was tmi (regardless of alignment)

The gamestate im leaning towards gerain beign town lol. This situation reminds me of game long ago when town could decide on execution all the while gerain wasnt voting. I think scum gerain would have already come down on one side as his last scum game he was on most wagons

does anyone else pick this up? i've read gerain townreads in the mason chat. i don't get it at all. i'm not sure if gamestate is the word i'd use to describe any of these reads though?

though when i repped i foudn my role really funny as in my last game i didnt beleive HEM bg finder role

was it karma lol

i kept thinking this claim was too self-damaging to come from scum. but realistically all it does is justify a nk on a slot who is more threatening than myself & elements. it's independently anti-town to out mt as a mason or the existence of a third mason but hear me out. this is a scum role, and anyone with the town role should be holstering unless they're clearing scum-mason-claim wifom.

possible this is a traitor role or smth too

the "i was hoping to draw a nightkill" is cute in theory. but then you consider that bob allegedly tried to draw a nightkill by outing the fact that there are three confirmed-town players who need to be nightkilled before the final phase/s and it's like

??? there's no way this draws shots off masons

sorry the more i think the less i see this as a town play

all bob's other reads are like, wagonomics or nightkill theories which don't really make me think he's approaching this game in a way that solves it either tbh

[the worst]

sorry, i could have sworn bob's pronoun field was set.

wish i had this game solved but please don't sleep on scum!bob they are not going to be night killed :')

[the worst]

i'm not sold on either of hem or std but i'm open to being convinced

[the worst]

i am really deeply passionately null on dragons, my hungry monkey friend, what's ur scumcase?

[the worst]

points taken, dragons is definitely in my poe!

[the worst]

sure, where's your town case at?

[the worst]

oh, uh, like maybe. idk if he is scum then i think he kinda needed ~something~ to get them past the immediate PoE and his claim does that only if he claims yesterday. the suggestion they'd draw a nightkill over the third mason they'd just outed was kind of absurd.

i get it, i'll go elsewhere first, but i really don't think that's a case for why bob is town in this game. it's closer to a case for why bob is null.

[the worst]

like maybe. my divine senses have no feeling on how many partners were on snivy's wagon just that there was 1+ partner there

[the worst]

Vote Count 2.3

furtiveglance (3):

clidd, geraintm, OopsieDaisy

clidd (2):

furtiveglance, Save The Dragons

camelCasedSnivy (1):

humaneatingmonkey

curiouskarmadog (1):

camelCasedSnivy

Emperor flippyNips (1):

Elements

Save The Dragons (1):

Morning Tweet

OopsieDaisy (1):

curiouskarmadog

Not voting (1):

Emperor flippyNips


With 11 alive, it takes 6 votes to drive someone out of town.

The sun will set in (expired on 2023-07-17 21:00:00).

Notes:

• My attentiveness to this game has not been up to my usual standards as a mod and I apologize. I'll try and pull it together for the remainder.

just checking do we like both furtive + dragons as scum partners pushing clidd while an all-town wagon (assuming gerain) is going after furtive? this is pretty high risk of furtive goes down. then both following you onto snivy at the end of the phase?

it kind of feels like if dragons & furtive were partners they did as much as possible to seem associated lmao

i should probably do some deeper reading

[the worst]

that's all i have. i hope you already can tell I'm town?

i wish i could, i'm so sorry. i think i have a gauge of what to expect from playing with you (we have a lot of energy similarities) but i'm not like, convinced, yet.

[the worst]

VOTE: Ccs

I don't understand this

Okay

this is so funny

i like both players more after this interaction

VOTE: Ccs

I don't understand this

I do

Care to enlighten me, because it just looked a really random vote for no reason

VOTE: Ccs

I don't understand this

I do

this is great lol

[the worst]

I could go for the Greeting slot, I don't rly wanna vote it over Furtive but we need *a* wagon going and I'm not sure Furtive's wagon is gonna be able to make it all the way in the first place.

UNVOTE:

i don't remember why i thought clidd was scummy let me take a closer look

i would like to know why people are so keen on HEM

My stance on HEM right now is that he's a talker. He's someone who was willing to lead town yesterday and the activity he gives to the game tells us a lot about him and those around him. Do I feel good about him dipping out a bit today? Not really. But it shows he'll engage if/when he needs to.

But I feel like if he's scum there's a strong chance he's paired with Furtive because of how I've observed them interacting and the way they've both tried to push other players' votes away from the other (HEM with the limpool of the gera pushers thing, Furtive guiding your vote away from HEM just this page). Because of this, and the fact I feel like he's a really strong asset to us *if* he's town, I want to flip Furtive first.

if daisy was shot for sharp reads (looking more likely) i think i like gerain more than i have and hem less than i have

[the worst]

this brief magical thought experience has me somewhere like this, i refute the onus of consistency & coherency

tw, el
ckd? i'm still sheeping this read lol i have no opinion
gerain
std
hem
bob

[the worst]

i think my mind is open (stakes don't feel very high rn ) i just don't see it!!

[the worst]

alright, do u have anything else on dragons because i think he looks about as unassociated as you're saying you look?

[the worst]

i'm just not seeing dragons as partnered yet

not like, convinced he's town, i'm just not really picking it up and he seems lower probability than people are giving him credit for

[the worst]

VOTE: bob

would also go hem

i'm sorry this is probably disappointing fypov. i don't really find your case on dragons convincing. i think i've explained the stuff i've seen (albeit surface & limited). asking me to elaborate or stuff i'm not seeing is, like, something that sounds challenging but kinda stops me being able to engage.

dragons reads kinda unaligned to me. bob reads scum motivated. i don't really have much on hem, i get dragons' point and find hem's towncase for themself less convincing than dragons' notes on scum!hem

i'll go make sure i'm not sinning

[the worst]

i'm goin from pg 1 as w speak !! first 10 pages are pretty dry, it's mostly now-confirmed town + you + klick circularly casing people who've now flipped town in kinda unsatisfying ways

novel mentions so far

hem:
- convo around 19 + 24 with furtive feels kinda forced for an rvs thing, quick to move vote from furtive to mt. this isn't damning just something i'd bully you for if i was around in rvs.
- furtive's reads in 148 have you hard town; el maybe town
- clidd's posts 159 find you quite organic
- eager & engaged so far

bob:
- 28 furtive greets bob's slot for no reason
there is nothing on this slot bc emperor lurked. i'll grant that emperor lurking with a negative utility role as town makes sense but i've already talked abt my observations here so i'm kinda bias checking...

savethedragons:
- 158 clidd gives this slot a weak townread (i have no notes so far so klick has probably ignored contentious reads or now-flipped scum).
- 162 i like klick picking semantic fights about their daisy reads at clidd after clidd townreads him.
- eager & engaged so far

gera:
- 161 vote from clidd.
- this is a lurker so reading by gamestate, 161 has:

el

(4): ckd, gera,

greeting

, hem
gera (4):

mt

,

taku

,

oopsie

,

clidd

oopsie

(2): klick,

el

ckd (1):

roden

taku

(1):

furtive

nv (1): flippy

at this point, consider either:
- no scum are being wagoned (i.e. gera is town), or there is an all-town wagon on scum!gera who is lurking
- around 173 furtive jumps in and makes a couple of aimless meta comments without addressing major wagons

i feel like this is a fairly good time to move his vote onto town!gera but i don't really know if it's very revealing of gera's alignment




getting to the good stuff just giving myself a foundation

[the worst]

hem if you can cast your mind back i'm kind of interested in your motives on d1

around 240 ur in the middle of an inquisition of oopsie over her mt read. you assess (correctly) that oopsie's read on mt is kind of overblown to generate content. in 255 mt mentions a slight townread on you. in 267 you switch your vote to takutai who is, like, a nonpresence. then in 272 you mention that mt's over-defensiveness is kinda off.

did you vote someone other than mt because she townread you? given that was your angle did you not think voting mt would be interesting?

[the worst]

in the early 400s. you're exceptionally difficult to be confident on in this game because we're in one of two realities.

1) you're scum. you rolled scum with furtive + greeting, and noted that you're capable of carrying the team as scum. furtive did work to distance from you well (328, convo around 397), while providing a fairly generic scum iso. not giving anything away, not really advancing the game, i get the impression he's playing it safe and not giving much away. kinda just hoping he wouldn't be caught too quickly. greeting is lower energy but also offers a pretty safe read on you in 304. i'm going to guess that greeting was planning on a lower energy game and got snagged by something later. issue being that there's a bunch of slots that both of them just, like, do not interact with (incl. bob & dragons), so it's not really obvious if this was the strategy or not.

2) you're just town, you're only really interacting with town and only pressuring town so far. scum are totally uninterested in you because you're high-energy, abrasive town who is only really causing problems for town so far. this isn't an insult, i think it's just a shake-out of the nature of this game; a lot of the active & contentious slots early are just town.

.... and unsurprisingly i just have no opinion on which reality we're in. gonna keep meditating on this

[the worst]

also realising ckd, as someone who is usually good at coming in swinging late in the game, is a nightmare to read in a mason game. because from the perspective of someone who is actually a vt, we have two teams to hunt - one we need to kill and one we don't. i guess i'm really excited for ckd to have more time to play w us.

[the worst]

i don't think those two are mutually exclusive. i don't think furtive approached this game phoning it in because he had you to carry. the opposite, i think it makes sense for furtive to be low-energy if he's comfortable with his team


500 & 520 is such a fucking weird convo for greeting & furtive to both phone in if klick/dragons is scum

[the worst]

alright. i'm not very interested in talking to you about my read on you in a tonne of detail sorry but i'll take that under advisement & keep reading.

ultimately we need to find 2 town in [you, ckd, dragons, gera, bob]. there's probably 4 town there. assuming you aren't someone who can survive to endgame who are your picks for townies who do?

i get you're pretty deadset on dragons, do you have a second place?

[the worst]

cool as of pg 25 i'm surprised people seem to have ckd locktown too

[the worst]

oh hmm ok i think i get the gist of your bob case, why ckd?

[the worst]

Now I'm leaning town on you.

And now I'm leaning scum on you!

It's fine, we will figure something out later.

this is such a cute softclaim. clidd, you're great.

[the worst]

my brain needs a cleanse i'm going to talk to bob for a minute

Also ask your self does interaction between me and bing realy look s/s.

point - i'll consider more deeply when i catch up to there properly.

Only time bing interacts with dragon is via mt. Where bing lightly defends dragon. He interacts with me/HEm and the maosns but not dragon

That really inst that strong of an association as it isnt like furt is only at e-3 aswell as everyones else votes are dispersed. And it wouldnt be first time that scum had a wagon pretty much to themselves.

granted on both counts. i'll consider this.

Also it should be highly likely that scum are simply triple goons.

There were two reasons i did the vague claim plus nk speculation. Is that i wanted to first just get players talking and second to see how players react to a possible town rolecop claim as that would be first assumption of be saying there was a 3rd mason. If scum had a pr i would appear to them as a defacto cop should we get the 2nd goon last day. So i was looking to see how bing the player i was sure was scum would react. It was pretty clear that he wasnt worried about the possibility, Thus, its clear even if rolecop fit (which it wouldnt) it would have no chance of finding a guilty.

So teh set up is prob 3 mason, mason finder and 3 goons

the mason finder acts as an informed towny that also reveals their info on flip. As well as slight boost as they would noraly be able to easily find a town block and thus solve.

3 masons, motion detector and 3 goons in 15p so a slightly boosted pr would make sense. Since one misexecution has been dropped

pretty strongly disagree. this is also a mech argument which isn't, like, super useful, but hear me out.

3 masons + 1 named townie is pretty damn strong. 3 masons + 7 vt vs. 3 goons is a very famous open setup, which is generally considered to be balanced:
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... nd_Enemies

that being said, we're in an era where:
town have won 4 times in a row (100% town w/r)
6 of the last 7 wins have been town (85.71% town w/r)
scum have only won 11 of 20 games with decisive winners over the last 16 years (45% town w/r)

of the 4 recent wins, a final mason has reached night 5 once (1), and endgame 1, 2, 3 times.

i think there's an argument to be made that town is outperforming scum in this setup in this era of mafiascum. i think there's an argument to be made for helping scum to find masons given they're tending to reach endgame which dramatically swings the game in town's favour. i don't think there's an argument to be made for helping town to find masons, given that masons are already confirmable as soon as one of them or one member of the mafia flips. also -- all that you've done here is identify a mason for scum. it's a negative utility town role if it's a town role, and i think it makes *slightly* more sense as a scum role to remove swing which is clearly swinging in town's direction.

this is without any other power roles existing ofc. i just categorically reject the argument that your role is in any way clearing. if anything, it's weakly incriminating. if you're scum, the way you claimed was incredibly clever. if you're town, the way you claimed removed town's chance of a mason reaching final 3 (and mt, to boot, who is lowkey a queen).

[the worst]

VOTE: hem p sure this is a hit i'll expand later

[the worst]

time for my subjective feelings:

furtive is missing a soul in this game.

furtive no longer is soulless. i think he just ran out of fucks to give since i last saw him

It does not take much for HEM to come around to a town!Furtive read, or at least an implied town read since he doesn't want to actually commit to calling Furtive town. Look at their interactions between those two posts I quoted. HEM basically brings out the kiddie gloves, giving off zero aggression and only throwing him softball questions so he can explain his reads as concisely and with as much nuance as possible. It is a VASTLY different interaction than the one he had with me, even though he outright called Furtive soulless and implied that it was a scum tell. It comes across like he doesn't want Furtive to be shown in a negative light, and honestly Furtive does

look

a lot townier after they finish talking.

However, there's a small problem here.

The one that just happened and is multiple pages long

I did think you meant that one, just making sure

I think Roden's towny

Whilst I've got you here, what makes Roden towny to you after the exchange with HEM?

His was a reasonable response to a pretty baseless attack, at least that's how I saw it

I townread Roden before that as well, I gather his scumgame is pretty threadbare

Pooky said in a previous game that if Roden posts he's town - idk how fair that is but it was accurate to that game.

Furtive metas reads me as town, and he thinks HEM's case is baseless. Yet there's been zero objections to my wagon, unless you count this?

the greeting one is because i haven't townread greeting, and can be convinced to vote him if that's the only option open to me.

luckily, everyone seems down to see roden claim.

I don't want Roden to claim. I want clidd to claim!

Which doesn't accomplish much of anything. So why isn't Furtive doing anything to stop a wagon he believes will be a mis-elim? Why did he and HEM talk about reads on several other players but leave their completely opposite reads on me out of the conversation? They're ignoring the elephant in the room and it stands out to me.

this post is a really good indicator of a part of what i'm seeing. worth noting as well that hem + furtive have a conversation about how scummy greeting is while both vote parking (furtive in particular is voting clidd "for pressure"), and neither player thinks that's remotely odd.

furtive is now flipped scum so this is a really bad look for hem

there's some other stuff too lemme finish up in case i dramatically change my mind or smth

[the worst]

by name, by nature.

[the worst]

onto 1200 d1 home stretch heeeeck yeah

[the worst]

i'm so sorry i need to run soon but i've finished d1 and like, i'm pretty sure i'm right about hem, if not it's just dragons, failing that it's bob, but i'm pretty sure i'm right.

ckd is absolutely town.
gera is, to my extreme surprise, probably town!
is emperor/bob town? i don't really know they haven't done much yet (but i liked ~2 things)
is dragons town? like, maybe that world exists. if we're in that world, scum are absolutely fucking wild this game and i can explain why later.

hem has been the strongest voice in the game & has consistently pushed throughout the d1 i've read, but he has consistently missed the mark.

1) on day one, there was a false dichotomy in the [roden, ckd] lim. when roden towned it up, hem went for ckd. when ckd towned it up, he went back to roden. the other viable options were clidd (which never got traction, probably in part because he was a mason with two swing voters) or greeting. this false dichotomy benefits greeting alone.

2) hem was aware of greeting's scumminess, and there are *multiple* points at which hem should have been biting on that and interrogating greeting. he failed to do so at every opportunity.

3) hem absolutely roasted ~half the playerlist, nearly all town and one scum - furtive. his interrogation of town players was consistently lengthy and thorough and forced them to evaluate. he randomly decided he agreed with furtive after like a third of a conversation, and never reevaluated. part of this lack of evaluation was not evaluating furtive's greeting scumread, which he claimed to agree with.

4) the gamestate of d1 was in a stranglehold. there were other voices in the thread capable of taking the reins, but they were not able to. being a mason, mt's attentions were divided. ckd was absent. i get the impression oopsie could have lit shit on fire on another day but i think her energies were spent solving other stuff. hem had the absolute run of the thread on day one, and as a result the gamestate benefited whatever angle hem was pushing. as outlined in point #1, this was scum motivated or a very misguided townie. i feel really bad to lay this blame at a single player's feet, but hem was absolutely the captain of day one and there's a pretty clear abuse of power.

5) takutai is a really fucking weird n1 kill. you would expect scum to go for a fairly strong, widely-townread voice. i understand hem isn't a perfect kill after he led the town down a toilet on d1, but he's kind of the obvious kill to disrupt town cohesion? i'd argue oopsie would also have been a decent kill to disrupt cohesion, but i think hem remaining alive with oopsie dead (especially with ckd onto oopsie) would have put the spotlight back on hem. i'm going to make some points:

5a) takutai wasn't a major voice for a lot of the phase, but they were a cohesive voice when it counted.
5b) takutai did have some posts which make sense as a tpr. i think hem is the only person who picked this up really (297). i can expand.
5c) takutai's reads were, like, not accurate. they had el/oopsie/gera as the scumteam for the better part of the phase, and had greeting as locktown which wasn't evaluated until the end of the phase.
with the kills we've seen + what we know of the masons, please consider that this is a scumpool of 2-3 town, and a locktown of 1 scum. deciding on this kill would *not* have been trivial.





---

ok gotta run. i can do a better case expanding on where i'm seeing these things against hem (with post references and all!). i can expand on why scum!dragons/klick is a really weird reality. i can expand on why ckd is town, but i don't really want to. i can expand on why gera is unaligned. lemme know what will help.


if this all happened on d2 already and i'm dumb let me know, but like. sure hem could be town here. but he could absolutely be scum. he just keeps doing things which align too closely with what the scumteam needs to happen to win. his negligence has had a tendency to benefit scum. his deliberate actions have had a tendency to benefit scum. at times he's seemed 'tonally towny', or even worse, convincing, when he did it. but there's too obvious a pattern of scum-siding here to look past. if it walks like mafia, talks like mafia and makes cute monkey noises like mafia, we need to kill it.


also consider if we're epic wrong and hem+dragons is actually town/town, then dragons is forced to evaluate the game and we get a really cool new perspective which can no longer afford to be tunneled

[the worst]

stop defending yourself. we already know your rhetoric is good, i'm confirmed town and literally above going down the rabbit hole with you. make a better case if you want to survive today

[the worst]

u bussing after that d1 makes a lot of sense but I need to do the full read.

sorry you're so charismatic and persuasive if you were a lesser monkey I'd have no qualms with going into the night with you still alive

[the worst]

hem/greeting d1 literally looks like scum theatre

i literally don't trust y'all to lim hem on d5 and he's like, clearly aligned with flipped scum. i'm not moving my vote unless it's to save from a no-lim or if i have a huge change of heart.

[the worst]

i'm so sorry i need to run soon but i've finished d1 and like, i'm pretty sure i'm right about hem, if not it's just dragons, failing that it's bob, but i'm pretty sure i'm right.

ckd is absolutely town.
gera is, to my extreme surprise, probably town!
is emperor/bob town? i don't really know they haven't done much yet (but i liked ~2 things)
is dragons town? like, maybe that world exists. if we're in that world, scum are absolutely fucking wild this game and i can explain why later.

hem has been the strongest voice in the game & has consistently pushed throughout the d1 i've read, but he has consistently missed the mark.

1) on day one, there was a false dichotomy in the [roden, ckd] lim. when roden towned it up, hem went for ckd. when ckd towned it up, he went back to roden. the other viable options were clidd (which never got traction, probably in part because he was a mason with two swing voters) or greeting. this false dichotomy benefits greeting alone.

2) hem was aware of greeting's scumminess, and there are *multiple* points at which hem should have been biting on that and interrogating greeting. he failed to do so at every opportunity.

3) hem absolutely roasted ~half the playerlist, nearly all town and one scum - furtive. his interrogation of town players was consistently lengthy and thorough and forced them to evaluate. he randomly decided he agreed with furtive after like a third of a conversation, and never reevaluated. part of this lack of evaluation was not evaluating furtive's greeting scumread, which he claimed to agree with.

4) the gamestate of d1 was in a stranglehold. there were other voices in the thread capable of taking the reins, but they were not able to. being a mason, mt's attentions were divided. ckd was absent. i get the impression oopsie could have lit shit on fire on another day but i think her energies were spent solving other stuff. hem had the absolute run of the thread on day one, and as a result the gamestate benefited whatever angle hem was pushing. as outlined in point #1, this was scum motivated or a very misguided townie. i feel really bad to lay this blame at a single player's feet, but hem was absolutely the captain of day one and there's a pretty clear abuse of power.

5) takutai is a really fucking weird n1 kill. you would expect scum to go for a fairly strong, widely-townread voice. i understand hem isn't a perfect kill after he led the town down a toilet on d1, but he's kind of the obvious kill to disrupt town cohesion? i'd argue oopsie would also have been a decent kill to disrupt cohesion, but i think hem remaining alive with oopsie dead (especially with ckd onto oopsie) would have put the spotlight back on hem. i'm going to make some points:

5a) takutai wasn't a major voice for a lot of the phase, but they were a cohesive voice when it counted.
5b) takutai did have some posts which make sense as a tpr. i think hem is the only person who picked this up really (297). i can expand.
5c) takutai's reads were, like, not accurate. they had el/oopsie/gera as the scumteam for the better part of the phase, and had greeting as locktown which wasn't evaluated until the end of the phase.
with the kills we've seen + what we know of the masons, please consider that this is a scumpool of 2-3 town, and a locktown of 1 scum. deciding on this kill would *not* have been trivial.





---

ok gotta run. i can do a better case expanding on where i'm seeing these things against hem (with post references and all!). i can expand on why scum!dragons/klick is a really weird reality. i can expand on why ckd is town, but i don't really want to. i can expand on why gera is unaligned. lemme know what will help.


if this all happened on d2 already and i'm dumb let me know, but like. sure hem could be town here. but he could absolutely be scum. he just keeps doing things which align too closely with what the scumteam needs to happen to win. his negligence has had a tendency to benefit scum. his deliberate actions have had a tendency to benefit scum. at times he's seemed 'tonally towny', or even worse, convincing, when he did it. but there's too obvious a pattern of scum-siding here to look past. if it walks like mafia, talks like mafia and makes cute monkey noises like mafia, we need to kill it.


also consider if we're epic wrong and hem+dragons is actually town/town, then dragons is forced to evaluate the game and we get a really cool new perspective which can no longer afford to be tunneled

@bob & el in particular -- can y'all talk to me about why you don't scumread hem, or don't think he's a threat? i get not having dragons cleared (though i will case for why he's a fucking goofy partner to flipped scum later). but hem is actively aligned with flipped scum, and is a very dangerous player to keep alive. dragons is a safe, easy flip now or later. he's also tunnelled on HEM (as am I), and if he's wrong will need to dramatically re-evaluate. i have no idea why either of you are voting for dragons, except that you're both happy with the POE. this isn't the way to clear that POE out. with respect, what the hell are you both doing?

keen to hear from gera & ckd too but understand one is on another vibe the other is v/la

[the worst]

Ok, maybe all scums are inside of this group: [Furtive, Greeting, Flippy, Klick, Gera].

If only 2 on above, I guess there is a world in which I'm wrong about HEM, and he is playing with our perceptions. If that's the case, then I'm going 0/4 against scum!HEM.

Anyways, the simplest solution is the first one.

I could go for either Furtive or Greeting here.

why do people keep foreshadowing lmao heeelp

[the worst]

it's hem. i haven't had scum on lock so hard since a looong time before my hiatus.
hem 80%
dragons 10%
bob 6%
gera 3%
ckd 1%

kinda thing. my case is going to be an eldritch horror.

[the worst]

i need to go out to a lunch please don't end the phase unless we power-lim hem

[the worst]

we have a comfortable POE of [bob, hem, dragons] rn but who are the people supporting it?

bob, hem, el, myself (+ maybe Dragons)?

gera and ckd are our wildcards, and our most free-spirited players, and those are 2/3 of the players who would form final 3. this gamestate means it's our game to lose. I'll make my case for why monkey is scum and why he needs to die long before final 3.

[the worst]

to be honest

, i thought you were scum....(see what I did there?)

nevermind ckd claimed scum easy game

[the worst]

furtive do you think Elements is scum

I don't think so, interaction with Greeting/Snivy looks good, and otherwise seem to be moving the game forward.

what interaction with the greeting slot made you think it was good?

why is moving the game forward = town. Wouldnut scum also want to move the game forward?

I guess scum could want to control the game by posting a lot, I just don't get why they'd then use that control to bus their teammate when there were other options.

this one aged very well

[the worst]

So Bob is obviously telling the truth but yea that doesn't clear him

Dragons as well what

Where am I sussing the mason claims

I'm finding clidd pretty suspicious right now

I interpreted this as agreeing with HEM that Ele distancing clidd was some kind of contradiction

this convo is really funny because HEM & bingle just spent 2 pages trying to trick bob into outing the third mason

[the worst]

as a wise axolotl i know once said: bloop

[the worst]

okay i've caught up fully, we need HEM dead today so we can have daiquiris together in the town win party. i'm gonna keep this as legible as possible.

[the worst]

that's fine we can do you today, dragons tomorrow, but it's you today

[the worst]

he's not scum, and you're dangerous.

[the worst]

i'm leaving a lot of little tells out of this because it's already going to be awful to read. in abtract -

i understand that hem claims to have been uninformed d1, but we still need to consider that he heavily scumsided. he did a lot of work to grill townies, and was consistently forgiving towards scum. when wagons spiced up, he instilled a false dichotomy between roden & ckd to save greeting, despite allegedly heavily suspecting greeting. he established a townread on furtive as effortlessly as possible, and did not reevaluate this read. i get that this can come from an unlucky townie, too. but please consider how improbable it is that anyone is this consistently wrong vs. how probable it is that they are scum acting against town's interests.

the night one kill makes a lot of sense from scum!hem. the suggestion on d2 that the kill somehow frames hem, and therefore can't be him, is simply too convoluted. it's instant wifom. hem thought takutai was a tpr; takutai was a stabilising voice for town in a gamestate that was otherwise largely under hem's control; takutai's reads were pretty off given the flips we now have. this kill makes perfect sense in a very small number of worlds and scum!hem is one of them.

hem's d2 was absolutely scum motivated. he didn't take his foot off the pedal because he wanted others to contribute; he took his foot off the pedal because he could. he'd come off d1 looking pretty good and needed to do more to set up the rest of the game. d2 was a cross-bussing clusterfuck, and given furtive and greeting were the primary suspects, the scumteam needed to do work to come out of it without being totally caught.

the night two kill makes sense no matter who the last scum is, but hem absolutely works. oopsie's reads were excellent - she had furtive on lock, regularly included greeting in her solve, and had hem in half of her solves. she was also a viable kill because of her relative level of presence in d2. i don't think oopsie was a bad kill from a tpr hunt perspective, either, but i doubt that was the motivation.

hem's d3 breaks into two parts. he sets out attempting to establish a handful of players, conveniently including himself & furtive, as unaligned with greeting. the mason claim splits the phase in half; in the second half, hem fabricates a very flimsy reason to go back on his furtive townread and is suddenly absolutely confident that bingle is scum. this marks the point where hem realises the poe is so small that he can only win by bussing his weakest link and chaining eliminations on low-energy slots.

mt's kill makes sense whoever the last scum was. tbh i think mt's kill was the best way to keep heat on bob. otherwise, who do they kill? me, el? i died casing bob, and el is an unpredictable delight. no, mt was the only feasible mason kill last night.

this gets me to the current day phase. i mentioned this before, but we have a poe of [dragon, hem, bob]. this will probably win us the game, but we need to ensure that it's enforced. the players who would enforce it are either mandatory night kills, or free-spirited wildcards with very clashing playstyles (ckd + gera). i think we are very likely to get two of our three eliminations out of that pool. i think it's possible that we get all 3. but hem is bloody good at scum, convincing, and adorable. if there's anyone in that pool who we don't give a chance to, it's him.

[the worst]

part 1: HEM heavily subsided day one

"HI"

- bob3141, 1816

this is just a flavour quote, it'll make sense by the end of this god-awful wall & i hope it makes someone smile.


----


chapter 1: establishing HEM's motivation enterting d1

Spoiler:

HEM did a lot on day one to antagonise town, and to give now-flipped scum the benefit of the doubt. i would assert that HEM did no work to become pocketed, and neither Greeting nor furtive did any work to pocket HEM, so I don't regard heavy pocketing to be a realistic reality. This means HEM was either town who just unluckily did everything he could to help the scumteam, or more probably, just scum.

Point 1: HEM did everything possible to give the benefit of doubt to furtiveglance.

HEM did a lot to antagonise slots on day one. I can only really revert to oopsie on this because I think she summed up his ostensive motivations really well:

HEM's push on me has really strong things in it (I really like him unearthing reads and getting me to elaborate on em), but also the gotcha thing where he asked me a direct question and then attacked me for answering that direct question over commenting on the Tweet posts rubs me in SUCH a wrong way. I always do my best to try and respond to people who want a comment from me and to have that attacked is eugh ew did not like that did not make me feel good lmao.

This was his modus operandi. If someone could be pushed for any tiny reason, he blew it up as much as possible to get them to produce content. This is a viable town strategy, because if you grill a liar about their story enough they'll slip up. This is also a viable scum strategy, because if you grill a truth-teller enough about their story, half the time they'll slip up. Human brains are fucking weird ok. It's a strategy which advances the game, and looks towny, but please bear in mind that it benefits both alignments. HEM concedes later that emulating his 1v1 strategy is an essential part of his scumplay:

In fact I remember in one of the games Roden provided you held up a super hard 1v1 with another player to the point where the entire game warped around it, and in that very game you were scum!! (I forget which one but iirc it was with the person who's name started with A)

Check the town game where I have done it as well. The third game. Warping a game around me in a 1v1 is kinda my MO, and what I try hard to emulate as scum (which - as I said - how Aristeia caught me)

HEM presses Elements, Roden, Klick, Oopsie, clidd and Takutai all within the first 11 pages. He does interact with furtive, but superficially and he does not press furtive until some time later (realistically, starting in post #655). i'm going to step through the posts that lead to hem reaching a townread on furtive in the next part because it bears reviewing. hem does not engage with greeting or evaluate him at all, but includes him in his scumpool in #741. Greeting never seems to find this particularly noteworthy.

chapter 2: reviewing the basis of hem's longstanding townread on furtive

Spoiler:

i'm really sorry this is a mini-wall. this is literally the entire conversation which establishes hem's townread on furtive and it's a really quick read.

The voting now looks like this:

EmperorFlippyNips (2):

clidd, Roden

Elements (2):

curiouskarmadog, geraintm

Roden (2):

humaneatingmonkey, Takutai

clidd (1):

furtiveglance

OopsieDaisy (1):

Klick

furtiveglance (1):

Greeting

Takutai (1):

Elements

Not voting (3):

Emperor flippyNips, Morning Tweet, OopsieDaisy

I'll vote Emperor if I have to but I'd like more pressure on Clidd.

furtive why do you scumread clidd

time for my subjective feelings:

furtive is missing a soul in this game.

this is good & i liked hem for it.

furtive why do you scumread clidd

Initially for the fencesitting and word salads. I thought his latest readslist was more of the same, too many nullreads on slots who have done a lot this game.

If I had expand on this subject, I suppose you are either accidentally fixated on some expectation or inducing yourself to reinforce the same thought.

One has unintended bias (town!you), the other has malicious purpose (scum!you).

Judging from what I remember of the first time you expressed it, I'm under the impression that it was coming from town!you, but it's not such a difficult fos that scum!you couldn't use it.

If I take HEM as an example, I felt impartiality when he mentioned the scum!Clidd scenarios,

while you seemed to already come with a conclusion in mind looking for ways to confirm it.

This is a really basic way of casting aspersions against me and making it seem like a calculated move by me, when the reality is I just saw more of what I originally sussed you for in the first place - and I knew you were probably gonna omgus at some point right from the response to when I first voted you in 375.

time for my subjective feelings:

furtive is missing a soul in this game.

this response is succinct, informative & factual. it also does nothing except explain that clidd's reads are deliberately on slots which he doesn't have a read on, rather than just null because they've done nothing. there is no soul here and it's a fairly bland case against clidd.

I thought his latest readslist was more of the same, too many nullreads on slots who have done a lot this game.

I feel like your readslist is identical? A couple of townreads, an elim pool, and a bunch of people he hasn't figured out yet.
I guess if you think about it, I don't feel too good that I'm not a townlean when I feel like he treats me like I'm a townlean. Personally, I chalk it up to paranoia.

Do you think his readslist doesn't match how he's been treating this game?

this response is coaching. i've bolded & purplified the question which includes its own answer in itself.

I thought his latest readslist was more of the same, too many nullreads on slots who have done a lot this game.

I feel like your readslist is identical? A couple of townreads, an elim pool, and a bunch of people he hasn't figured out yet.
I guess if you think about it, I don't feel too good that I'm not a townlean when I feel like he treats me like I'm a townlean. Personally, I chalk it up to paranoia.
Do you think his readslist doesn't match how he's been treating this game?

No, it matches.

coaching denied. rather than probing furtive for more of his perspective:

If clidd was town, are you expecting a different kind of readslist?

hem once again asks furtive a question which includes its own answer.

If clidd was town, are you expecting a different kind of readslist?

Yeah, and different gameplay to match.

unsurprisingly, furtive answers with the answer that was included in the question.

Right now, things seem to check out for me. Do you mind walking me through why you're expecting a different gameplay from clidd? Have you been playing a lot with him recently that makes you think he'll have stronger stances than what he has right now?

despite furtive having shown no insightful perspective from his questioning, hem agrees that what he's seeing checks out. he asks for a meta expansion (i broadly dislike meta in general), but this is a perfectly passable way to ask furtive to share more perspective. problem here --

Right now, things seem to check out for me. Do you mind walking me through why you're expecting a different gameplay from clidd? Have you been playing a lot with him recently that makes you think he'll have stronger stances than what he has right now?

I remembered Clidd as an insightful, laconic player who was the N1 kill in my first game on site. I was struck by his indecision and paragraphs of blunt and vague thoughts this game. I think it's all for show.

-- furtive's response shows very limited expansion on his perspective, and a very vague comment about clidd's meta. hem was asking where the strength of his opinion came from ("have you been playing a lot with him recently?", etc.) and furtive's response does not seem all that satisfactory.

I did as skim of the game
and I can see where you're coming from. I don't think the read is reliable, but I can see where you're coming from. Mainly because it's a newbie, so it's not really "normal". I know I'm kinder in newbies.

My thoughts: I do remember clidd to be more combative than this, the targeting inactive slots seem lazy, true. I may be misremembering but I think he likes hero solves - and we're not getting that here. I mean... gerain and karmadog? i also do not understand why Emperor is "fine" for not showing signs of being scummy even though Emperor barely posted.

I also expected clidd to be using this time to be *doing* something rather than what I perceive to be passive commentary. This guy is supposed to be as egotistic as I am, so maybe the absence of "I solved the game in day 1" could be indicative of something. However, I do not know new clidd - the clidd I knew was old clidd. Someone needs to introduce us to new clidd.

but it's plenty for hem. despite the way he's absolutely roasted several town slots so far, he appears to be very quick to align himself with the first scum slot he interacts with 600+ posts into the game. to boot, this townread endured with no reconsideration or introspection until post #1909 (which i'll circle back to later because it's also really evilly-motivated) quoted below:

furtive's slot is sus for abandoning Greeting's wagon when it became too hot — despite having both Greeting and clidd as top suspects. Although he came back to it once Snivy got enough heat.

if this isn't convincing, please look at this handy hem + roden joined iso starting at post #420 (isolation #76) and consider how gritty it remains until #474 when HEM declares himself victorious.

the same goes for oopsie, though she did convince HEM to an extent.

i would argue that there's a very deep double-standard in what HEM required for furtive to pass his test vs. what he required for anyone else to pass his test. this, along with constant leading questions with positive outcomes, tells us that HEM entered this conversation wanting to townread furtive.

chapter 3: hem's conduct around the eod1 wagon consistently & explicitly benefits greeting

Spoiler:

there's a bit of work to do to lay the land here.

1) hem has a really forced scumread of roden.
if you're on the fence about hem's alignment and his motivations here, this ISO excerpt is worth reading to really convince yourself on how much work HEM did to end up with a Roden scumread:

please look at this handy hem + roden joined iso starting at post #420 (isolation #76) and consider how gritty it remains until #474 when HEM declares himself victorious.

2) i don't think hem had really established a ckd read. i don't really think it's important; ckd was an option hem wasn't interested in over roden.

3) hem has a scumread on greeting, but he won't really expand on why. in #769, takutai asks hem why greeting is in his POE first then about clidd second. hem answers about clidd right away (#772) then gives a pretty flimsy explanation about greeting in 2 post's time (#774) including an explanation of why he doesn't want to vote greeting. this is a pretty flimsy read if hem is town, and it's not a good slot to have a flimsy read about given greeting was the third-most-viable lim option and the only scum one at the end of d1.

---

i'm just going to list really weird shit that happens around HEM & the greeting wagon which makes me think they're s/s. a lot of these could be coincidences. but a whole lot of coincidences pointing to the same thing is probably a decent indicator of truth!

okay thanks Watson

what do you make of Greeting asking a question that you had already answered?

i have an excuse. im playing on mobile right now.
but if he's voting you, he probably should have a good idea of where your head is right?

okay thanks Watson

what do you make of Greeting asking a question that you had already answered?

i have an excuse. im playing on mobile right now.
but if he's voting you, he probably should have a good idea of where your head is right?

I think Greeting is scummy for treading water yeah.

wow i am sheeping you arent i
look at you

i suspect this is the exchange which convinces HEM on Greeting. at this point, neither furtive (voting clidd "for pressure") or HEM (voting Roden) is voting Greeting or seems particularly interested in actually rallying for him to be pressured/eliminated. neither furtive nor hem finds this particularly noteworthy. The lack of urgency here looks like two scumbuddies talking about their third scumbuddy.

But my issue is that it doesn't seem like this is out of character for Greeting as a player?

Nevermind, I decided to pick a town Greeting game off of his wiki page to ISO so I could check on this, went with Mini Norm 2262 and wow he was making some louder plays there. Now, it DID result in him getting voted out Day 1, so maybe there's an argument that over the past year Greeting has changed up his playstyle cause it wasn't reaping him rewards, but it's worth noting.

{Roden > clidd > Greeting, Elements}

is my elim pool

oopsie notes meta about Greeting, a player who HEM has in POE but has put no effort into sorting yet. HEM doesn't find this worth pursuing. HEM's reads here are to set up other options without needing to reevaluate Greeting because he like, just epically doesn't.

what if you guys sort me instead by following me on a clidd wagon? will you follow? if that's the reason you're doing it, then you must have no problem following me here.
VOTE: clidd

sorry guys, i must shake it up once again. the sheer speed of that wagon does not feel good.

i'm not the first to talk about how disingenuous this cold feet thing feels. what gets me is just one thing: hem whips a whole lot of votes for roden, then makes a generic comment about "the sheer speed of that wagon". this isn't a silver bullet but it is another thing which looks like tmi.

time for my subjective feelings:

furtive is missing a soul in this game.

furtive no longer is soulless. i think he just ran out of fucks to give since i last saw him

It does not take much for HEM to come around to a town!Furtive read, or at least an implied town read since he doesn't want to actually commit to calling Furtive town. Look at their interactions between those two posts I quoted. HEM basically brings out the kiddie gloves, giving off zero aggression and only throwing him softball questions so he can explain his reads as concisely and with as much nuance as possible. It is a VASTLY different interaction than the one he had with me, even though he outright called Furtive soulless and implied that it was a scum tell. It comes across like he doesn't want Furtive to be shown in a negative light, and honestly Furtive does

look

a lot townier after they finish talking.

However, there's a small problem here.

The one that just happened and is multiple pages long

I did think you meant that one, just making sure

I think Roden's towny

Whilst I've got you here, what makes Roden towny to you after the exchange with HEM?

His was a reasonable response to a pretty baseless attack, at least that's how I saw it

I townread Roden before that as well, I gather his scumgame is pretty threadbare

Pooky said in a previous game that if Roden posts he's town - idk how fair that is but it was accurate to that game.

Furtive metas reads me as town, and he thinks HEM's case is baseless. Yet there's been zero objections to my wagon, unless you count this?

the greeting one is because i haven't townread greeting, and can be convinced to vote him if that's the only option open to me.

luckily, everyone seems down to see roden claim.

I don't want Roden to claim. I want clidd to claim!

Which doesn't accomplish much of anything. So why isn't Furtive doing anything to stop a wagon he believes will be a mis-elim? Why did he and HEM talk about reads on several other players but leave their completely opposite reads on me out of the conversation? They're ignoring
the elephant in the room and it stands out to me.

roden picks up that hem's trajectory on furtive is really fucking weird. this is a very dangerous thing for townies to be talking about if hem/furtive is indeed s/s. coincidentally, HEM is very quick to shut it down and this is the point where HEM starts to consistently reinforce the false dichotomy between ckd/roden (e.g. below).

Im not voting curiouskarmadog.
Im not leaving Roden's wagon again.
Im not forcing another slot to claim.

no, im back on roden's wagon because not only he self voted with a vanilla claim without elaboration until prompted... he lied about my meta twice. once was enough to have confidence to push, twice removes all doubt for an elimination.

i also think karma is flipping town.

around this point, HEM also seems to develop a very strong townread on ckd without apparent evaluation which has persisted for the rest of the game. i think this read is made up; if it's not, it's another thing that has come about at an incredibly inconvenient time for making hem look guilty. just a reminder - if either roden's or ckd's wagons falter, greeting is fairly widely suspected and is the most viable third option for an eod1 elim.

false dichotomy persisted into the end of the phase, more posts which pinged me:

Yes. I'm not sure why Tweet thinks Roden's flipping town with utmost confidence here. It's not like Roden's displaying a uniquely town exit here.

establishing other player as having tmi in anticipation of town!roden flip

I'll be more explicit about how Roden lied about meta twice. I already covered the first lie, here I'll cover the second lie.

In this game, he said this:

VOTE: Roden

This is only E-2 I think

I'm VT (technically all I received was Townie in my role PM, it didn't actually say Vanilla) but I'm clearly just a info flip so whatever

I was 99% sure on HEM being town until he started waffling. Town!HEM fakes confidence even when he's unsure. Don't let him worm out of the bullshit he pulled today.

That's when he scumcased me.

But in this game, the third game he cited, it's clear he already saw me did this A LOT of times. Here is town!Roden reprimanding me and my response.

HEM if you're town this loss is legit your fault.

You backed off of nearly every push

, OMGUS'd everyone who even slightly suspected you, lied about your potions, and decided to death tunnel me Day 1 even after I tried to give you a chance to prove that you're town and work together to elim a common scum read.

Lol

as town my reads are fluid and pushing everyone is my preferred MO because then i never get pocketed or tunneled

. I didnt lie about my potion use at all, i legit thought i had pain potions because setup said everyone gets one so when i pm schadd and tells me i only have harmography im just as shocked. Deathtunnel you d1? You just said i pushed every sloy and how is pushing my scumread scummy?

You all have a wicked way to twist this as if it's my fault. Im not having that.

See there? Roden has experience with town!HEM backing off nearly every push because my reads are fluid.
the same reason he said I'm scum for here (before going back to me being town).
he linked this game, guys. he claims familiarity with me. it's blatant misrepresentation and if town, we haven't heard any admissions of guilt.

this is... it. like that's it. this is hem's best explanation of where he thinks roden's scum agenda is coming from, and it's some highly subjective nonsense about meta. i get being frustrated by this kind of thing, but an absolute deathtunnel which means roden is 100% scum and must die in order for the game to progress is just such an intense read for something as nothing as this. it gets worse too--

up for clidd, Roden?

asking roden to join him on a wagon despite the strength of his read is pretty wild. but suggesting clidd seems to only benefit greeting. hem has stated part of his preference for this eod is having nobody else claim; clidd is unclaimed, and wagons there have faltered. clidd is also not an established wagon where at this point, greeting (who hem has voiced suspicion of) absolutely is. all this accomplishes is trying to create a possible third option which isn't greeting, and it isn't consistent with hem's ostensive motivation towards this end of day.

HEM have you ever seen Roden self vote before?

Absolutely not. I think it's a scum tell. He absolutely felt like he's going anytime now. He felt as if the extended amount of time to play the game was "torture" and "limbo"... not "hope" and "game time" which I expected if he was town. ^_^

this pinged me really hard as well. someone else mentions a potential tell, and hem appropriates it into his case. i do not get the impression that hem had considered roden's self-vote a scumtell until this point. given how flimsy & vague the rest of his case is, i'd be surprised if he *didn't* mention an actual tell he'd noticed. i guess what i'm getting at here is that there's a lot of evidence that hem wants roden dead, but very little evidence that hem has evaluated roden's alignment.

UNVOTE: furtiveglance

We still have time, that’s good.

Surely we're not allowing Monke to tun up more people here, that would be plain dumb.

Oh the monkey is it

greeting, a slot hem has very little opinion of but is in his poe. widely agreed as a possible wagon candidate.
furtive, a slot greeting has been duelling since early in the game.
hem, an assertive player who likes picking up on weird things and grilling players who he doesn't have a read on.

greeting unvotes furtive, the third-largest wagon, because "we still have time" (?) without evaluating the read.
hem posts without acknowledging greeting.
greeting votes ckd because (summarily): "I'm not buying the walls of text at all... A lot of his reads (1189) feel completely contentless, and even the ones which actually have content feel watered-down." - this is a slot which hem is very convinced will flip town. greeting has stated no read on roden.
hem's reaction to this (1) again, asks a question which includes its own answer and (2) literally confesses that he wants greeting to be town despite the fact greeting is in hem's poe and he's spent absolutely no time evaluating his read through the entire game

I'm not buying the walls of text at all

I simply disagree with most of them and have a feeling like they're not genuine.

I would also like you to elaborate why you don't buy karmadog's posts at all. Is it a specific read and progression? I'm truly curious because I want you to be town.

this comes just after the following posts, now including greeting in his scumteam:

Greeting, Roden, Takutai
Day 1 solve

omg

i hope i'm not pocketed because that's a mindmeld

hem is consistently giving now-flipped scum far too much room to move when he's consistently been overbearing and intense when interacting with townies.

VOTE: Roden Time to do it! I have no idea if this flips scum. God I hope so. Not 100% anymore. A good 70-80. Maybe I have been completely fooled by the AtE. I have reasons to scumread him, but it may have been clouded by excitement. However, I lean that I just had valid reads and I should just trust them.

But it's just the right thing to do for town at this point.

this is pretty tonal, but hem's vote here pinged me a bit too. it is definitely setting up for a miselim while trying to distance himself from the utter tunnel (to the point of vote-whipping) he's had all day. again it just doesn't feel sincere, i think hem is trying to telegraph that this is a real read more than he believes it.

chapter 4: end-of-day wagon just for fun

Spoiler:

Vote Count 1.9 (final)

Roden

(7):

Klick,

clidd

,

Elements

, humaneatingmonkey,

OopsieDaisy

, curiouskarmadog,

Takutai

curiouskarmadog (3):

Morning Tweet

,

furtiveglance

,

Greeting

Elements

(2):

geraintm,

Roden

Not voting (1):

Emperor flippyNips


With 13 alive, it takes 7 votes to drive someone out of town.

The sun will set in (expired on 2023-07-06 19:30:00).

we're lucky that greeting & furtive have flipped, because we now know there is certified weird shit going on with this end of day. it makes sense to have scum on the roden wagon:
- ckd was pretty obviously talked onto the wagon so has pretty low scum equity.
- klick sort of drifted onto the wagon, it lines up with his ostensive reads, i'm going to say he just has utterly medium scum equity.
- hem whipped votes for the wagon, made a big show of publicly considering other options while still being very confident that roden was scum for very tenuous reasons, then ends up finishing on the wagon. like this is it.

[the worst]

part 2: don't overthink it. takutai's kill makes sense coming from a scumteam with hem on it.

"I rlly don't get the NKs at all actually."

- Morning Tweet, 2033

this one is relatively short so i've included mt's quote for fun. i think this kill *seems* weird because the d2 conversation got real blurry real quick. i also think nobody very seriously considering scum!hem helped it slip under the radar a little. consider --

But why does Greeting lie? It does not believe that is scummy.

Monkey is selling his Roden lies already, my answer is the same here: External meta rarely factors into my analysis. playing the devil' advocate, having said something similar to greeting, he might just believe you are scum. I absolutely hate his vote just to be clear.

they’re trying to frame monkey with this one right here I guess


Pedit: I think it was cos when I was around they weren’t and I didn’t really “catch up” that could have something to do with it as well

this is a pretty unfortunate first read, because it's not something that anyone is actually all that likely to take out of takutai's iso. i think the conversation around why tak was the n1 kill ended kinda prematurely, and really just ended because the conversation started at a point which was too confusing. i do think there's some cool stuff to learn here.


1 - hem literally thought takutai was a town power role.

UNVOTE:

A floating vote?!
Want to put it on Karma?

I considered it. I'm there in spirit. I agree that the game would benefit more by hearing more from inactive slots like karma, Greeting, and Emperor. I'll move out of the way. Takutai is obviously crumbing something so I'll sort him some other day. Maybe if karma didn't respond well to the pressure, I'll add my vote in for effect.

morning tweet circles back to agreeing in 1483.


2 - takutai was a stabilising town voice

... to an extent.

hem had a pretty free run on day one. there's a small handful of players on this list who could capably control a day phase. removing names who just don't have the playstyle for it imo:

OopsieDaisy (i think she could but was very much on the defensive d1)
Greeting (obviously busy with stuff)
clidd (not exerting the pressure in this game)
curiouskarmadog (busy with wedding)
Roden (eliminated, wasn't convincing vs. hem d1)
Morning Tweet (attention split with masonry, stronger late-game)
Takutai (was totally fine just totally on the wrong track d1)
humaneatingmonkey (ran d1)

i think scum are motivated to remove dominant town voices. i think shooting someone like oopsie who was *obviously* vocal but wasn't quite gaining traction stands out, if someone like hem (literally ran the phase) survives. shooting takutai, who was consistent, makes sense.

i think this probably played into the decision in a very small way, i'd be surprised if it was the main motivation.


3 - takutai's reads were allllllll over the place, this kill wasn't made lightly

this is now fact!

takutai hard townread greeting for like, most of the day (we now know this was an incorrect read). when they wavered, they still had greeting somewhere in the middle of the table.

takutai spends most of the day evaluating teams like:

I was thinking

Roden

/

Elements

/

Oopsiedaisy

. At least you got one right.

geraintm/

elements

/

oopsie

still on the table just because I can't disprove it yet.

reads absolutely were not a factor in killing takutai. it was probably tpr hunting, possibly removing a stable voice without incriminating the more vocal parts of the table.



now on to the part 3 teaser:

VOTE: Greeting I'm still interested in this slot.

VOTE: Greeting I'm still interested in this slot.

What motivation exists in order for Greeting to kill Takutai?

off the back of this flip, hem immediately locks on to greeting with an absolute iron grip. there's no awareness of how bizarre it would be for scum!greeting to have shot takutai n1. he also still has not evaluated his read on greeting at all outside of the flimsy d1 discussion where he just totally let greeting go. this isn't organic read trajectory, this is a bus.

[the worst]

part 3: hem’s d2 makes the most sense if he entered having decided to bus greeting.

"Why is no one doing anything this is insane??"

– OopsieDaisy, 1645

To be blunt: day two was a crossbussing clusterfuck regardless of who the last scum was. Unambiguously. Furtive committed to his scumread of Greeting, Greeting distanced from Furtive (fairly effectively). What I’m hoping to establish is whether or not HEM is also a probable busser. I guess the title gives away my conclusion. Shit.

To quote furtive himself: “the bar for towniness is on the floor this game”. This is a really interesting phase for scum. Furtive & Greeting are both widely suspected, but because so many town players are inactive or kinda lukewarm-scummy, an over-the-top bus is going to stand out.

HEM has shown himself unable to communicate effectively or evaluate, specifically, the two slots who have now flipped scum and who were the primary wagon candidates on day two. In particular, he seems very capable of having a read on Greeting, but seems very quick to change it and profoundly uninterested in having probing conversations with Greeting. Greeting, for his part, doesn’t seem to find this particularly odd. That’s d1 background, I’ll jump into d2 here.

chapter 1: hem does not have a read on greeting and greeting is ok with that actually

Spoiler:

VOTE: Greeting I'm still interested in this slot.

HEM opens d2 with a vote on Greeting, having done as much as possible on d1 to ensure that Greeting was not wagoned while voicing vague scumreads about him (refer part 1).

This doesn’t include reevaluation of his read on Greeting, his reads now that Roden (his strongest scumread) has flipped town, nor that Takutai has died overnight. He does explain the latter away as suspecting scum were PR hunting (1357) which is probably true.

Choosing this phase to chill is awkward for HEM’s optics because he is vote parking the now-flipped scum who he had the hardest time interacting with by far. He also has never established this as a scumread, but suddenly only seems interested in making clarifying points about d1’s happenings and vote-parking Greeting. It’s like, pretty obvious he’s entered d2 deciding that this is his plan until quite a bit later. Despite letting others do the bulk of the talking, he doesn’t really use any of the conversations from d2 to advance his reads. And here’s Greeting’s response and then the reason he’s vote-parking Greeting:

VOTE: Greeting I'm still interested in this slot.

Why?

???

@hem answer my question first, then I’ll answer yours.

Greeting you already know why. I think your karmadog vote is bad faith. It felt like you made up a reason to establish your vote as stronger than it is -- than you really having a strong reason to scumread karmadog.

Despite being a hyper-assertive sorter, and hyper-assertively interacting with several slots excluding Greeting on day one, HEM decides to park his vote on Greeting. HEM interacts with Greeting in a way which indicates HEM already knows that Greeting is scum. And Greeting’s reaction to this, as established, is very lacklustre.

Greeting never posts again after HEM’s response but like, look at the preceding posts. My thesis is that neither of them gives a shit about having this interaction and I’d be pretty surprised if anyone disagrees objectively.

Despite this absolute blank-faced decision to bury Greeting, HEM isn’t interested in seeing this wagon through; he whips no votes the way he did for Roden. He doesn’t evaluate his read on either of the major wagons (now both flipped scum). He just kind of works through the phase.

For Greeting’s part, again, he never really evaluates how underwhelming HEM’s case and progression are on his slot. He goes so far as to question Oopsie’s, while just totally ignoring the fact HEM is pushing him in bad faith.

OopsieDaisy
is having an unnatural progression of her read of me as well. It's concerning.

Greeting doesn’t do a lot to react to furtive’s push either, but he had already established this by writing furtive off as town quite lazily, which was pretty good distancing. I don’t really think Greeting could afford to call HEM town if they’re aligned, even though it’s clearly the way Greeting is treating HEM.

Greeting also chooses to reason with ckd, and discredit his argument in 1435. Despite HEM’s reasoning being much flimsier (and much shorter), Greeting never feels compelled to challenge HEM’s scumread.

He does establish a continued townread on furtive, but only in the context of being disinterested in the furtive wagon:

As for the other wagon,

furtive

, I have been pushing him for a while and I think he's just stubborn and grumpy town in this game. And I don't vote someone whom I think is town just for self-preservation. I vote for scum.

I think it’s pretty easy for scum!Greeting to call town!HEM town given he doesn’t really care about picking HEM apart. I think it’s a lot harder for scum!Greeting to call scum!HEM town despite the fact he’s giving HEM a free pass in the thread.

chapter 2: uh, just other stuff that's wrong with hem this phase

Spoiler:

hem’s silence also occurs during the peak of the furtive suspicion, and again we have a situation where scum who hem has put very little effort into sorting are heavily pressed, and hem doesn’t seem interested in having any nuanced opinion on it. Like even Gera breaks character and cases furtive in 1495.

Yet none of this is interesting to HEM. He retains his townread on furtive for tenuous reasons, and doesn’t reevaluate his read on Greeting despite it having come out of nowhere and not considered the broader gamestate.





El makes a really compelling point here:

I don't think scum is controlling this game at all. It's way too passive. I'm thinking no one is overly invested in the game so everyone is just sort of sitting around waiting for things to happen and going along with them when they do.

Consider, as well, that both major d2 suspects are now flipped scum. What are the differences between d1 & d2?

- as MT says in 2041: “Elements, clidd, and myself are working together so that's why wagons never seem to gain traction there despite most of the thread voicing suspicion of clidd”. El & clidd weren’t going to be wagoned and they were the only other people being looked at.

- HEM isn’t talking, CKD is.

[the worst]

part 4: don’t even think about it the n2 kill just makes sense

"Scum is most likely just looking for a PR at this point. The only claim out there is mine (VT...or is it?!?!)
so with several different options, they had to side with someone who is a threat...(or a 100 other reasons)..."

– curiouskarmadog, 1727

I kept finding flavour quotes while I was building this case sorry



This is easy. Oopsie probably literally called the scumteam at some point her read were fucking excellent.

illustrative quotes, spoilered for tidiness.

Spoiler:

Furtive

is a slot I scumread harder myself because of meta reasons, however my confidence in my reads is not very high at all right now and I'm doubting myself on a lot of judgements. It feels like Furtive has been very careful to not rock the boat and impact the game super hard, and that isn't the Furtive I know. I expect stronger reads and more commitment, it's just I know the forum format can mess with this meta read I have from irl play.

Greeting

is a slot that I also feel is a very viable scum candidate, mainly due to how they were positioned in Day 1 (pushing the Karma wagon is still something I'm not a fan of), and voices that I currently trust in this game (Karma/Clidd) are wanting a push here.

I also don't have a great read on

HEM rn and I think HEM pairs much better with Furtive

than he does with Greeting, since HEM was showing willingness to follow people onto a Greeting vote if need be despite the read he had on Roden at the end of Day 1.

Yea thinking about all of the above, I should be on Furtive I just switched cause of a lack of confidence in myself and that's weak sauce.

UNVOTE: Greeting
VOTE: Furtive

if hem is scum, this kind of read is incredibly dangerous to leave alive. The sheer amount of like, mystic brain energy oopsie radiates at this point in the game is also giving me life. I’ll circle back to this.

Furtive/Klick/HEM as a very possible scumteam

If I’m wrong on HEM it’s probably Klick. Either way, Oopsie is now lock on Furtive who survived d2 and has [hem,klick] firmly in her line of sight.

i dunno sometimes i do better when people talk to me

VOTE: HEM for now

Welcome STD

vote Clidd with me?

VOTE: clidd

^^another point towards my furtive/hem team paranoia

+1 point for hem/furtive nk equity

UNVOTE:

i don't remember why i thought clidd was scummy let me take a closer look

i would like to know why people are so keen on HEM

My stance on HEM right now is that he's a talker. He's someone who was willing to lead town yesterday and the activity he gives to the game tells us a lot about him and those around him. Do I feel good about him dipping out a bit today? Not really. But it shows he'll engage if/when he needs to.

But I feel like if he's scum there's a strong chance he's paired with Furtive because of how I've observed them interacting and the way they've both tried to push other players' votes away from the other (HEM with the limpool of the gera pushers thing, Furtive guiding your vote away from HEM just this page). Because of this, and the fact I feel like he's a really strong asset to us *if* he's town, I want to flip Furtive first.

+1 point for hem/furtive nk equity

VOTE: Ccs

I don't understand this

Okay

this is so funny

i like both players more after this interaction

unexpected townreads on lower-hanging fruits

Neither of the two replacement slots have done anything for me

Agreed, tho on the spot I prefer StD to Snivy, it's not by much tho

correct read on snivy’s replace-in
I’m biased but I think her liking Dragons is probably a factor too

less substantively because I’m getting long-winded:

Point 1: Oopsie’s reads were very good regardless of who the last scum is.

Point 2: Oopsie’s end of day two just isn’t aligned with Snivy at all. I can explain this if y’all need but we also know it’s not true. She makes sense to kill for this.

Point 3: Oopsie stays consistently powerful and her reads get sharper. HEM is quieter, Oopsie is clearer. She’s a kind of obvious NK choice to disrupt cohesion.

I also think that if HEM is scum, I think he likely decided to stay quiet on d2 in part so that they could start shooting vocal players without it being weird that he was still alive. This is backwards reasoning though I just wanna flex on monkey because I like his scumgame and I think I’ve caught him.

[the worst]

part 5: attack of the nasty plan-ruining masons

"Scum is most likely just looking for a PR at this point. The only claim out there is mine (VT...or is it?!?!)
so with several different options, they had to side with someone who is a threat...(or a 100 other reasons)..."

– curiouskarmadog, 1727

At this stage HEM has kinda slipped under the radar. He was correct about Greeting, a fact he’s obviously still very proud of. He was not instrumental in Greeting’s elimination, and he also never showed any kind of readable, nuanced progression on Greeting so I’m not really treating it as a towntell. Somehow he just never caught any flak on d2. D3 is very much about establishing a gamestate where his team can win. I think he unintentionally shows his hand in this stage, in a way he didn’t quite during d1 & d2. Thanks for reading this far.

This day breaks into three parts, from a play perspective. There’s the phase before the mason claim, the phase during the mason claim, then the part after (particularly bob’s claim). I’m going to talk through how actions HEM took in each phase advance scum’s wincon. I’ll say this for the nth time: it is possible that these are all really tragic coincidences that have happened to town!HEM. But when there’s this many coincidences all pointing towards a skilled player negligently advancing the same wincon, I think we need to look deeper. If it quacks like scum and smells like scum, sometimes it’s just a duck. Or something like that. HEM is scum.

Chapter 1: before the mason claim

Spoiler:

HEM opens the phase voting clidd in 1695. His pool for d3 elimination (as of 1708) is clidd/gera/emperor based on d2 vca & a MT townread. HEM works a gera townread in 1714. Muses about a scumteam of clidd/Greeting/Emperor in 1715. Says El doesn’t seem aligned with Greeting in 1732.

I don't think it's indicative of anything, but I think it's an odd coincidence that Emperor is the only slot that Greeting didn't mention/interact with before putting him down on his list. There was no prep work in establishing motive to vote.

Establishing a potential Emperor/Greeting world. There’s a lot of vca around this which I don’t find very useful. He mentions a possible Dragons scumclaim in 1772 (I don’t 100% understand this sentence but it’s not that important). In 1796, HEM says he’ll vote Dragons over Emperor.

My point is this: HEM’s realistic scum pool at this point is: {clidd, emperor, dragons}. Gera is a wildcard 4th but HEM has just made a case that Gera is town. This conspicuously leaves out furtive, the other living scum. Given they’re in f9, 3 elims is exactly enough to get them the win. So this does advantage a scumteam with furtive on it, but it’s relatively benign. This is a pretty nice state, and all of his elims are reasonably low-hanging fruit. So this is a fairly workable path to the finish line.

And then, it goes to shit.

Chapter 2: The Mason Claim

Spoiler:

In 1878, El claims mason, clearing clidd.

cliddoris

HEM finally makes his clidd joke. I’m also pretty sure this is the exact second that HEM’s brain broke.

VOTE: SaveTheDragons

if you aren't masons together then you suck

HEM changes his vote off confirmed town an hour later, only after prompted by El. He is very clearly on the back foot here, regardless of his alignment. I think the fact his first priority wasn’t to evaluate where his reads were wrong is telling, but again, I’m biased. He follows this up by trying to like, disprove? The mason claim in 1884 and 1885 rather than reevaluate his reads.

Big restart happens, bingle and this really cool duck appear. The game is out of action for two days, which has given people time to evaluate their reads.

who's scum?

i haven't read up yet but like,

it's me

freud has never been so affirmed

HEM hasn’t. (but this was really funny)

HEM establishes in 1904 that we’re not just pocketed neighbours. He verifies with me in 1905 that, indeed, clidd & El decided to distance from each other for some reason. This is the point where HEM finally decides to reevaluate his read on Furtive.

Now I’m going to refer to part 1 because I foreshadowed this!!:

Right now, things seem to check out for me. Do you mind walking me through why you're expecting a different gameplay from clidd? Have you been playing a lot with him recently that makes you think he'll have stronger stances than what he has right now?

I remembered Clidd as an insightful, laconic player who was the N1 kill in my first game on site. I was struck by his indecision and paragraphs of blunt and vague thoughts this game. I think it's all for show.

-- furtive's response shows very limited expansion on his perspective, and a very vague comment about clidd's meta. hem was asking where the strength of his opinion came from ("have you been playing a lot with him recently?", etc.) and furtive's response does not seem all that satisfactory.

I did as skim of the game
and I can see where you're coming from. I don't think the read is reliable, but I can see where you're coming from. Mainly because it's a newbie, so it's not really "normal". I know I'm kinder in newbies.

My thoughts: I do remember clidd to be more combative than this, the targeting inactive slots seem lazy, true. I may be misremembering but I think he likes hero solves - and we're not getting that here. I mean... gerain and karmadog? i also do not understand why Emperor is "fine" for not showing signs of being scummy even though Emperor barely posted.

I also expected clidd to be using this time to be *doing* something rather than what I perceive to be passive commentary. This guy is supposed to be as egotistic as I am, so maybe the absence of "I solved the game in day 1" could be indicative of something. However, I do not know new clidd - the clidd I knew was old clidd. Someone needs to introduce us to new clidd.

but it's plenty for hem. despite the way he's absolutely roasted several town slots so far, he appears to be very quick to align himself with the first scum slot he interacts with 600+ posts into the game. to boot, this townread endured with no reconsideration or introspection until post #1909 (which i'll circle back to later because it's also really evilly-motivated) quoted below:

furtive's slot is sus for abandoning Greeting's wagon when it became too hot — despite having both Greeting and clidd as top suspects. Although he came back to it once Snivy got enough heat.

if this isn't convincing, please look at this handy hem + roden joined iso starting at post #420 (isolation #76) and consider how gritty it remains until #474 when HEM declares himself victorious.

the same goes for oopsie, though she did convince HEM to an extent.

i would argue that there's a very deep double-standard in what HEM required for furtive to pass his test vs. what he required for anyone else to pass his test. this, along with constant leading questions with positive outcomes, tells us that HEM entered this conversation wanting to townread furtive.

This is the bit where HEM finally reevalutes his Furtive read (which is now Bingle’s slot). The read which he achieved way too easily, and has sit on without reevaluating for ages. The point where the remnants of the POE pool was literally just [emperor(=>bob) + dragons], meaning that scum were very likely to lose the game by just following status quo. And the reevaluation isn’t even all that insightful!!

At this point, it would be very obvious and very negligent for scum!HEM not to reevaluate his furtive read. They might be able to get lims on bob & dragons and get into final 5, but it’s going to look pretty shaky if the two of them did that without evaluating each other at all. I’ll talk about the ongoing gamestate in my next & final part of this epic rant ([chorus of sighs of relief]). But realistically, this isn’t one where HEM and Bingle can reach the finish line together. At some point, one of them is going to have to try and get a lim off on someone really goofy (which is between Gera or CKD, realistically). That’s going to be a lot harder if they have to do that while defending each other. Realistically, their best chance is to establish one of them as probable town by having them bus the other.

The next part of this is Bob’s claim, so I’ll see u all in my third spoiler.

Chapter 3: Bob3141gate, post-mason claim

Spoiler:

Bob makes an attempt to claim an investigative role very vaguely. HEM presses for more details in 1930 & 1932 (this might impact the POE again of course). CKD also asks for more info in 1941 & 1942 but he’s asking because he doesn’t understand, not to probe Bob.

HEM continues to shade the claim, which he does need to do to keep the elim pool as open as possible. Curious asks for a full claim which like, not ideal from my perspective, but it’s pretty direct. HEM takes the back foot and lets CKD press bob for more info which is pretty shady.

Bob has established that there is a 3rd mason and in 1950, asks the masons to decide whether he should full claim. HEM & bob start arguing about other more semantic stuff. Now we have Bingle’s appearance.

novice mason sounds made up because it's not really a role i have ever seen. you're the one who mentioned novice mason, so I'm not sure why it's me who jumped to any conclusions?
and i don't understand what other motivation you're looking for here, other than getting out of poe?

This is probably town, fwiw. Scummonkee is more likely to realize that if bob is lying about there being a novice mason the claimed masons would presumably just say that. Bob is probably telling the truth, which doesn’t really make him town. Rolecop definitely makes sense as a scum role in a three mason setup, and assuming the masons aren’t the novices in question that’s what it sounds like.

This post is designed to make HEM look good, like, obviously. I’m not going to WIFOM this but this being his only read seems like an attempt at distancing. I think it’s a similar strategy to Greeting’s read on Furtive. But again this is WIFOM. Bingle does more sneaky stuff!

Through 1964, 1968, 1972, he establishes himself as mechanically sensible and shuts down fringe conversations. In 1973, HEM says he thinks the third mason should just be outed (this strictly benefited scum). In 1975, Bingle comments that he’s ambivalent about the third mason claiming. Despite the fact HEM scumreads the slot, the two are working the same agenda. Another thing that could be an unlucky coincidence for town!HEM, but is seeming more and more remote.

If we’re outing the third you should be the one to do it.

Doing this to confirm bob’s role also removes the masons’ agency in having our third member outed (which is clever, but stinks because we were hoping to keep MT secret). This is the point where bob outs the third mason, a situation which explicitly benefits scum and disadvantages us. The good news is that the POE pool doesn’t change I guess so if scum can get one more goofy miselim, they *can* win.



hem: "i think it's smart for the 3rd to be outed just so when the masons die, there aren't any scum claiming to be the 3rd. we already have two of the masons outted, so I'm not sure why there's value not outting a 3rd. it's not like scum has a shortage of pr claims to flip." omg why didn't i roast this at the time......

bingle is here to whisper silky sweet words, be a delight, and then be bussed, tragically. he's doing a lot to stay mechanical and draw out the third mason claim (strict benefit to scum), and a lot to delay needing to give reads.

lets yeet bingle then lets reconvene tomorrow when this gets easier

As of this post, HEM has inexplicably established that Bingle is going to flip scum despite his re-evaluation on Furtive being very tenuous, and his not addressing anything that Bingle has done.

Bingle does not address this, or post again until he is dead.


At this point, HEM can technically say that he has lead two wagons on scum. I can also confidently say that they both have higher-than-average bus equity.

[the worst]

part 6: this is our game to lose, but we can still lose it.

"El, you & I both know Karma doesn't care about the viability of his wagons in terms of the wider game, he just votes who he thinks is scum..."

- OopsieDaisy, 1611

This isn’t an indictment of or specific to CKD, I just thought this quote illustrated the vibe of my point well.




This is a quick point. We generally agree that a POE of [hem, dragons, bob] will usually win us the game. The problem is the people who agree with that POE. I’m really relieved to see Gera is open to yeeting HEM today, because we do need everyone to follow through on that POE. I think if there’s a disruptive force, it’s absolutely HEM.

El and I are committed to the POE. We’re also going to die the next two nights. Dragons & Bob are committed to the POE, but neither of them have asserted half as much sheer “I will win this game.”-energy dominance as HEM has. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that without disruption, HEM will be the last of these three to be eliminated.

The players who are not committed to eliminating the POE are:
- the last scum, if they’re in the POE.
- ckd (he’s v/la so fair enough).
- gera (hasn’t really said, and he’s a free spirit).

Assuming I’m correct and HEM is our final scum.

geraintm, humaneatingmonkey, the worst, bob3141, curiouskarmadog, Elements, save the dragons

D4: Final 7, we eliminate Save the Dragons.
N4: Final 6, scum shoots El/me.
D5: Final 5, we eliminate bob3141.
N5: Final 4, scum shoots last of El/me.
D6: Final 3, with humaneatingmonkey,geraintm and curiouskarmadog.

That is unambiguously the most chaotic final 3 possible. Our state of having a confident 3-person POE is suddenly a lot more tenuous than it seems right now. Gera & CKD aren’t at each other’s throats or anything, but there’s a significant divergence in their play styles. HEM is also clearly a player who can spin some shit. Despite the fact we think Gera and CKD are town now, all of that changes in final 3.

All I’m saying is that if HEM is scum, he is going to survive ‘til final 3 and I think he is capable of presenting a convincing enough case that I’m not *confident* HEM would be the f3 elimination. It takes one town member to dissent, and the game is loss. If scum don’t vote first, 2:1 vanilla final 3 is a 25% town winrate.

I’d much rather remove the most threatening part of the suspect pool, who also has massive scum equity, right now and we can all look back on this and laugh when the mod announces a town win tomorrow.

[the worst]

tl;dr: abstract in 2183. hem has a tonne of scum equity and is a scary person to leave alive until f3 just because he helped flip some scum. he's also big and spooky and scurry to eliminate so i get why it's not particularly appealing to go after him 1-2 phases before you need to.

i can give a dragons towncase, but it's a *lot* less interesting than my HEM scumcase. i'll write it up & post it to the mason chat if this hits green ig, or i can post it before EOD if people are super interested.


i can be wrong but i haven't felt like, this insanely confident in a very long time? if i'm wrong this will be so funny

[the worst]

i really hope this is a melodramatic loss speech and if it is it's golden

hem do u think it's just dragons? if you're town your case & broader read there are, like, flimsy and i'm not super motivated. i can totally go there. i just don't think this game is winnable while the WIFOM of you being here is a thing.

[the worst]

also sunk cost is literally my middle name if this game goes on, el & i will slay it overnight

[the worst]

dragons can be scum it's like. just very boring and a bit goofy.

[the worst]

just did, lovely monkey

[the worst]

like just for a treat, on day one i'm seeing --

162 - i liked klick picking semantic fights about their daisy reads at clidd after clidd townread him.
328 - furtive says klick has "some towny stuff" which is.. like.. bad distancing
500 - greeting asks furtive for reads on 4 players: self, el, klick, roden. in 520 - furtive asks "why those players?". in 597 greeting votes furtive for asking that. if... this includes the entire scumteam that feels like such a goofy way to fumble that conversation.
639 - if klick is scum, he has the entire scumteam in his null reads (gerain/greeting/furtive/hem null)
647 - furtive answers greeting's question, his read on klick is pretty jank (but all his reads are jank).
700 - greeting asks furtive to expand on his townread of klick. which is another really clumsy interaction if this is the entire scumteam. oopsie has also, at this point, asked people to explain why they like greeting.
711 - furtive says he's not annoyed, and questions the point of greeting asking all these questions about players he isn't scumreading which is.... also just such a clumsy fumble if this is the whole scumteam...
777 - klick's updated read have furtive as a townlean (no progression) and greeting in this like, null/poe area. it's just very bland if klick is the last scum.
788 - this is a side point: MT says klick is town, even with a boring scum pool. this take kinda resonated with me just a vibe.

this one is a weird perspective thing. in 874, klick calls roden's snap opinion change on hem hard to believe. this is a lim that you're already driving through, there's pretty limited value in him appearing just to dunk on it. in 877 klick calls for feedback on his own ckd towncase. trying to assume a level of responsibility for driving roden over ckd just... feels like scum!klick would be trying to expose himself...?

979 - MT asks Klick why he's so confident on El/CKD as town. Klick has left so never answers this, I'll concede it's not a great look.

1214 - greeting sets a scumpool which includes klick. honestly, this is probably the most incriminating thing against klick imo? hilariously, his scumpool is literally our remaining players without the masons and without you. he also says furtive is fine, but never comes back on why he asked for that list of 4 people for reads. again... this just feels like a bizarre way for greeting to fumble a distancing convo which includes the entire scumteam.


on day two, greeting/furtive aggressively crossbus and just.. do nothing with their last buddy?

in 1471 oopsie mentions a nullish scumread on klick & mentions partner equity with furive. suggests furtive/klick/hem scumteam here. that's a point against klick for sure.

one sec breaking this up in case shea sneaks in

[the worst]

1599 - if dragons is scum, once again he's put both of his scumbuddies next to each other in the null tier of his read list which is like.. so boring and counter-intuitive. it's happened across both slots? like maybe but i'm not vibing it?

1616 - dragons calls for hem reads, joins clidd wagon. doesn't address greeting townread, and ignores that wagon. that's like kind of a point against too but compared to the rate at which you did it,,, lol


1663 - context read: dragons doesn't care about snivy's survival at all. he's not bussing, and his team are cross-bussing without involving him. he's just acting like he doesn't care at all, despite kinda town-leaning greeting. he does not show any need to look good for this vote.

[the worst]

day three has very few notes because i was kinda committed to the null-townlean at this point

1800 - bingle: "I'm not really interested in voting StD. Has seemed fairly towny since arrival." like.. bingle is better than this, that would be such cheesy distancing...

he also continued to iso dive & solve during the mason claim debacle which, as i've said, was an awkward phase for scum to solve through.

his slot's been inactive through all the juicy parts of this game so i'm probably never going to feel confident on this read. but if dragons is the last scum, it's so like... bland? i'm not beyond boring answers but i think we should always eliminate the more obvious ones first. (sorry hem)

[the worst]

for the record, please evaluate and consider everyone who isnt a mason. like even karmadog. dont sheep my elim order, sheepy advice: absolutely dont tunnel and cool off when you're filled with emotions

good advice. i'm filled with fervour & relief, is that an emotion?

[the worst]

i'm sorry, you're really funny and fun so i assume this is a bit. if you're town can you have a look at my notes about dragon? my temptation would be to basically go silent tomorrow until dragon solves w/o tunnelling you being viable, then reevaluate all my reads

[the worst]

it's so counter-intuitive though i find it so hard to consider obvious

[the worst]

is anyone?

like idk. he can be scum, he's just not intuitive scum. when i evaluate you as scum it makes a lot of sense as someone who's trying to win the game. when i look at dragons as scum i'm like "... meh? i guess this slot isn't cleared"

[the worst]

i can't envision a towncase which outweighs your scum equity
i'm pretty null on dragons but i can see him as town
bob & gera are kinda equal to me i can see them as town but i'd have a field day if i was scum (sorry ilu both)
yeah, ckd has a decent towncase

[the worst]

makes a lot of sense as someone who's trying to win the game.

bro if i was scum, i literally just lost the game. i wouldn't really play to reach this gamestate if i was scum.

pretty low chance you were seeing this happening in f9 i'm ngl you've been arguing for your not being eliminated for ages

honestly though i think this is a bit, i'm just tryna jam with you for a bit like ~just in case~

[the worst]

aw man i just gave what i've got on town!dragons. if you're town this is kinda the issue. like i'm down to go deeper but your scumread on him kinda feels unsubstantiated and i don't think you're interested in hearing me out.

[the worst]

whole thing was things that struck me as either unnatural for klick/dragons to do as scum, or things which were unnatural for flipped scum to do if klick/dragons was one of them. what else is a town case?

[the worst]

i won't be able to write like an expansive town case on dragons for a few more hours (i'll do it in the mason chat before d5 i guess). i gave you the post numbers that struck me as potentially anti-aligned when i was doing my catchup. i guess i was hoping you'd expand on if there's more you're seeing, or if you think greeting/furtive spent the whole game bussing but just did nothing with their third member & botched a prolonged s/s interaction talking about the third scum member.

if you think that's all just meh and your scumcase on dragons stands, that's like, fine. i'm just hoping you have something a bit more insightful about what dragons/klick have done that's actually scum-aligned

[the worst]

so what if they talked about 4 players? absolutely one of them could be scum, there's no reason not to include a scum name there. again, so what if it is goofy? it's not not indicative.

because it's scum a asking scum b about their read on two townies, scum a themselves, and scum c. it's such a weird way to distance particularly when the rest of the conversation is like. not convincing at all. they don't seem to be going as hard as you need to go to sell that kind of cross-distancing.

[the worst]

647 is a point against dragons agreed

i don't think you're looking for the nuance in what i'm seeing ugh i'll write this up overnight if you're town

pedit: there's, like, the entire scumteam + 2 names.
how did they go hard the conversation literally fizzles out

[the worst]

i'm kinda checking out of this convo i've got other stuff to do w my friday night

if you're scum having fun at my expense respect

if not this isn't, like, helping at all i'm really sorry. i'll obviously re-evaluate overnight. you're kind of just giving me "nuh-uh"s to all of my points without offering anything you're seeing as scum indicative from dragons, or particularly insightful about any of the other slots. you missed the point of why that group of 4 is peculiar so you're like...not reading this closely

idk i got nothing i hope someone else pops in to chat w you before you flip

[the worst]

hey just waiting for dragons' & ckd's reevaluations. I have no regrets.

I'll be back to solve after!

[the worst]

Gera do you still like dragons?

[the worst]

just a terminology thing, curiouskarmadog - we don't use the word "lynch" anymore. standard replacement term is "eliminate".

the thing that's bouncing around in my head the most for gera is that he was actually invested enough to case furtive (flipped scum).
below is the most visible effort i think i've ever noticed from gera

So, im going to go through Furtive's posts now and show why i thought they were plucking reads from nothing

I don't like that votecount at all.

Clidd, Greeting or geraint wagons anyone?

vague post just wanting to push at 3 random people

I don't like that votecount at all.

Clidd, Greeting or geraint wagons anyone?

Clearly not
Join something that's actually going to happen

I'll vote CKD over Roden if I have to

now willing to vote Curious, but i don't know why. - they follow this with a vote for Curious

I genuinely think Roden's townier. I don't have to agree with the perceived consensus...

an opinion on Roden, but zero to explain why

Ok I think ckd's recent posting has been towny. Especially interactions with Greeting.

no explanation why Curious is townie now. Also doesnt unvote

Next Day

That said, the individual I'd like to talk to at this point is Furtive.

Other than the suspicion expressed about me, there haven't been any other *expressive* instances to check out his perspective on the game.

VOTE: furtiveglance

What are your current impressions? (apart from my slot, of course).

You and Greeting remain my biggest scumreads. I'll go back and look at what Takutai was saying, I feel like they weren't really a UTR so maybe killed for their reads.

Saying CLidd and Greeting remain top of their scum reads, they hadnt mentioned them for a long time. ive been dropped . still unsure why on Day 2 they are top of their list

1378 - actually gives a reason on why GReeting is Scum - stiff, lifeless and push on them is calculated.
then votes Greeting

It's interesting to see how fast that Greeting wagon took off compared to my push on clidd yesterday.

I'm gonna vote clidd and see what happens.

VOTE: Clidd

wait... they unvote because they dont like the wagon?

{side note, if Greeting comes back green i will immediately vote Furtive just for this}

@furtive if you're so set on clidd, who are the other scum?

Greeting, Geraint, maybe Emperor

I'm not sure

next post, just starts pushing more people, still with no reasoning.


So, that is why i said there is an attempt at content, but they have basically been plucking names from the air and have zero to back it up

people happier with why i didn't like Furtive now?

[the worst]

cards on the table - evaluating overnight, gera is probably the person i wanted to vote out the least. breaking character to case furtive is just so odd.

i'm still working through reads i'll report back

[the worst]

i feel clearer for hem having been eliminated unfortunately

i'm so happy i scum cased the absolute hell out of town, that brings me life

[the worst]

i'm still working through reads i'll report back

so yesterday, it seemed like it was just you and HEM talking.

I feel like everyone else will just wait in the background until we do a thing (maybe not bob?)

I dont want this day to go by and not get firm stances from STD and Gera

yeah i intend to kinda prod dodge this phase until dragons re-evaluates & we hear from gera again.

just a terminology thing, curiouskarmadog - we don't use the word "lynch" anymore. standard replacement term is "eliminate".

crap crap crap, I know that....just forgot...sorry all.

Im old school, this and using the correct pronouns will be the hardest to fix I think. Not because I am trying to be a dick or anything, just I tend to type and hit submit and not proofread.

trying to be better

you're all good

[the worst]

bob i'm going to need your solve these posts aren't helping

[the worst]

bob, i'm going to need your solve.
these posts aren't helping.

^ with sloppy grammar, sorry, most of my posts are written in a frenzy!

[the worst]

i have made my decision, just waiting on gera

[the worst]

putting this out there again

also for WHOEVER, is it possible the role Bob is claiming be a mafia role?

I have no experience with a X-Finder. has anyone seen mafia have a Mason Finder before? So far no mafia PR has flipped.

would it be balanced to have 3 masons vs 1 mason finder?

ckd, i did a write-up on my immediate thoughts about the balance of that. i'm not, like, a setup wizard (and am definitely not wise in the ways of the normal), just some thoughts.

generally considered to be balanced

one thing i'll add is that a mason for either alignment is slightly +swing, it's decent utility for scum, mixed utility for town. so while i can see it as an approvable scum role, it also makes a lot of sense as a town role.

Spoiler: inside duck brain

at this point, low-key i think it's slightly more likely to be town?

if any part of this writeup isn't making sense, let me know and i can rewrite/expand.

[the worst]

where I dont want to be is 1v2 with Bob and gera.

Yeah. I'm very mindful of that.

If we don't flip Dragons today, he's absolutely going to be the lim in f3. Just had too much heat for too long, we wouldn't consider anyone else over him.

[the worst]

Hem was my solve that was it

I was wrong

I think Bob is sketchy but I would like to sit down and find out if Bob is the answer or if I think someone is worse

you're pretty likely to be flipped today, i don't think leaving you alive until f3 is feasible. would just appreciate your fresh perspective on that [bob, gera, ckd] f3 when you have the time; busyness is valid

[the worst]

hem was my solve too

[the worst]

we all agree I have the right to be wildly inconsistent right

[the worst]

... i tried kicking back it didn't help i've been drafting this post the whole phase ;(

dragons probably has to die for this game to be at rest and hey, he could be scum. he is not going for a passive win, i think if he's scum he hoped that his 1v1 with HEM would last longer. i think i need more insight from him he just feels checked out.

bob just feels like a puppy i feel weird about having a default null read there. every time i read emperor's iso i like it, every time i'm outside of emperor's iso i can't remember a damn thing he said. for bob's part, he's just been there. like he's doing vca and mechanical solving and making noises which i'd townread if we weren't just at the end of the game. he is trying, but he's also just kind of passive.

i've been townreading gera really hard bc he broke character to case furtive and the more i reflect on that the more i wonder if i just kind of like, want gera to be town because it makes solving easier. this is kind of all i've got.

ckd i'm settling on as town. i've reevaluated this read so many times because i'm very innately paranoid of scum theatre. i just don't think this is it. in the most fundamental way, i just don't think flipped scum have cared about ckd. on d1 he was an easy votepark, and someone they didn't really like, bother having opinions about. following his catchup it's kinda just felt like they've stayed out of his way. greeting + furtive's handling of ckd d1 doesn't feel like they're interacting with their third scum. if ckd is carrying the team exclusively through theatre at two scumbuddies who are just deadass ignoring him then i just don't think i'm going to solve this accurately. i'm sort of settling on this read.


i'm kind of settling on
{ckd}
{bob (up), gera (down)}
{dragons}

and dragons is just kinda floating to the bottom because i feel nothingish about his slot



i haven't really been sure how to evaluate the bob/gera duo. i townread gera, hate meta and need to get out of this groove, so i've been reading old gera games to try and get a sense of his scum meta. he considers himself very easy to read.


looked at
mini normal 2257 (january 2022, scum power role) - this was the baseline i used for his scumgame and i think it's a good illustration of his meta, like, i hope
mini normal 2267 (march 2022, town cop) - i found this one really illustrative
mini normal 2272 (may 2022, novice detective) - fine
mini normal 2273 (june 2022, scum roleblocker) - interesting interactions with scumbuddy elsa, otherwise a bit middling
large normal 240 (july 2022, scum power role) - this is his most meta-deviant scumgame i read
mini normal 2285 (november 2022, vanilla townie) - ctrl+f3 "pooky" and "skitter" (both scum) in gera's iso for an idea of the furthest pole of his towngame. he was eliminated on d1 so i don't think his d1 hatred counts for much.
mini normal 2288 (january 2023, town power role) - most meta-deviant towngame
mini normal 2294 (march 2023, scum power role) - fine
mini normal 2300 (april 2023, vanilla townie) - also found this really illustrative
mini normal 2302 (may 2023, town friendly neighbour)




town!gera is sassy and like, discontented, but also conversational and honestly surprisingly interesting, in a vacuum. he feels like some grizzled retired marine stereotype. he doesn't enjoy d1 and doesn't feel the need to play the way people want him to. but he *is* engaged. i stole a a quote of his about his towngame below which i found salient. his d1 reads actually tend to be somewhat better than random, and he tends to get into fights with scum quite often. he is usually very stubborn about his reads. it's not unheard of for him to compromise, but generally when he does, he does so asking that he later gets his way.

why is it weird? i do try and contribute snark Day 1, and i had time this morning to read and reply to a few bits.

he has reads that are interesting. he prefers mechanical play, but he's observably not above "we should flip this person for x reason" reads; he is not above considering other players' motivations. the opposite there - as town he has a strong tendency to do early vca (often d2) and evaluate people's motivations behind d1 votes. his reads tend to be better than random (especially scumreads), even on d1. town!gera has a tendency to snark and sass players for doing things which he disagrees with or doesn't understand - even though honestly, most of the time those things are just like, epically normal things people do in forum mafia games. he also doesn't really push people for these things. he's glacial with his votes.

he's able to be resigned when he's pushed incorrectly, but he's also very capable of introspection and engagement. i loved this bit from mini normal 2267 when he got some shade d2 (he was a town cop, sorry this was from march 2022 he doesn't play a like TONNE of games): "I have no idea what people expect from me. I said I'll be better day 2, and I tried." like, his towngame absolutely involves a level of trying. it's easy to look at gerain's game and be like "ah, a man who gives no fucks". but every time i read a game knowing he's town, i find it hard to believe in practice that he doesn't care. either he's putting in a little bit of effort and has deceptively strong intuition, or he's lowkey reading the game quite closely & thinking about it quite a bit. there is an observable astuteness.






scum!gera feels kind of directionless? like he's imitating his towngame and kinda looking for things to do. he'll sometimes clap back at things he finds weird & idiosyncratic, but he's much more likely to align himself to mechanical play. he complains about day one being boring ad nauseam. like, it's his entire basis for conversation. i haven't really found examples of him impactfully starting anything d1 he kind of just laments. he does not get into fights with scum - he takes a long time to acknowledge his scumbuddies. he doesn't seem above bussing, but he seems to strongly prefer distancing. he is quick to suss his scumbuddies, but very hesitant to vote them. if he does bus, he tends to case them, wait, drop a vote, without engaging (vs. town!gera who has a high tendency to articulate his scumreads and pick fights with them).

his reads as scum have a very different basis. he seems to veer back into that snark area, he is looking for reasons to clap back at players, but the way he follows through is different - he's much quicker to vote players for things he perceives as naughty. he's also much more liable to clamp down on things which look bad, rather than things which i actually really think gera's unique mind thinks are bad. he seems to have a hard time replicating his vca style. he can do vca (obviously) and find reasons to look at things, but he can't make himself look like he's looking for actual motivations behind votes. he is quick to abandon reads; he is able to pick up old reads later, but he can't emulate his stubbornness. there is a lack of those nuanced "we should do x because it'll be interesting to see y" reads.

when pressed, scum!gera seems to have a higher tendency to default to a generic "I'm limbait" situation. my favourite reaction from scum!him was being tripped up by a town fakeclaim gambit in mini normal 2257 (again, from jan 2022, i'm sorry, he doesn't play that much): "You come out with you have a guilty on someone, and I believe you (because I always believe claims - go and check my past games if you don't accept that) and now people are scum reading me because I followed you?" -- there isn't introspection here. it's a manipulative tendency to find objective reasons to poke holes in his pusher's reasoning, rather than explain why from his POV the reasoning is wrong.

scum!gera is a lot closer to our man who gives no fucks basically.

he does have a tendency to joke about being scum as scum (which i recognised from this game tbh). also his self-meta seems to be either very very accessible or absolutely confounding, seemingly without a pattern. :p




i'll go over his iso & relationships with flipped scum and see if this like, helps. honestly having written it out i don't actually like gera all that much anymore. i am going to drive 11th hour mislims on every town player i promise.

[the worst]

i wish i'd spent more time on gera and less time on hem yesterday because if i've got his meta then he's clearly scum in this game.

i need to do this iso thing later so i don't just tunnel again. i want to vote gera symbolically of my REBELLION but i do think dragons is a better default elim today and i'm wary of rocking the boat and just sending the game into a [bob, dragons, ckd] f3 where nothing happens and dragons just dies anyway

[the worst]

y'all gera played a very gera-scum-game-ey game and is only efforting after being called out on it

i'm also wary he just deadass hasn't cared about this game regardless of alignment


i agree bob is like :shrug:. i think broadly speaking i like him better than gera atp, emperor i'm like just exactly in the middle on
will be voting dragons today because i think he makes for a less exciting f3, tomorrow i'd probably vote gera over bob

[the worst]

Thought

I rank them std and Bob as most town
Curious most likely scum.
Curious feels like the one who is trying to drifted by and get into a weird end game where I make the mistake

I think this is a take which Gera thinks is towny, but it's kind of come out of nowhere without any of his usual snark or interesting nuanced reactionary reads and I'm not sure I really buy it? If anything it's hoping to throw enough chaos into the gamestate to look like he's not scum cruising to victory but it kinda rings shallow


I'll hammer dragons sometime on a whim before deadline

[the worst]

Thought

I rank them std and Bob as most town
Curious most likely scum.
Curious feels like the one who is trying to drifted by and get into a weird end game where I make the mistake

I think this is a take which Gera thinks is towny, but it's kind of come out of nowhere without any of his usual snark or interesting nuanced reactionary reads and I'm not sure I really buy it? If anything it's hoping to throw enough chaos into the gamestate to look like he's not scum cruising to victory but it kinda rings shallow


I'll hammer dragons sometime on a whim before deadline

this is why I dont want to go 1v2 is STD is not scum

if bob IS scum, we are done.

and I dont know between Bob and Gera, leaning Gera...but I just feel like it will be a up hill battle.

We're on pretty much the same page. Similarly, but different, to why I still think HEM needed to go. If anyone goes to solve a f3 with either hem or dragons in it, they're just too hard to satisfactorily townread and there's just too high a chance of voting there rather than evaluating gera/bob evenly.

also, like, it's super super possible that dragons is just scum. lol. i just overthink a lot.

[the worst]

VOTE: dragons

praying

i don't think there's much more work i'm motivated to do here. i think this looks more like gera's scum meta, i hope dragons is scum like most of the town thought but i don't really like... feel it in me soul... if this runs into f3 i'd probably vote gera. dragons is sus of bob.

good luck, hopefully i'll see y'all at the town win party with that piña colada real soon

[the worst]

MT's final read in mason pt was wanting bob dead.

El's final read in mason pt was agreeing HEM needed to go, seemed pretty confident on Dragons.

just for what that adds.

[the worst]

like, bob can be scum i have no idea what his alignment is
i'm really sorry to whoever has to decide this f3

[the worst]

sheeping everyone else & never trusting my own instincts or logic again

gg everyone, was a fun one, thanks for picking this up shea!

[the worst]

don't feel all that sunk-costy, i feel pretty justified! you had an insanely unlucky towngame, would never have looked all that towny on a reread and would've made yourself a lot harder to lim the closer to f3 we got. actually i did a tonne of work on the last phase as well i just felt less compelled to be like, extremely convincing.

hi i reviewed this very thrilling and complex setup

what was the motivation behind the town mason finder?
it's a neat variation to an already riveting setup so not implying criticism just super curious

[the worst]

don't feel all that sunk-costy, i feel pretty justified! you had an insanely unlucky towngame, would never have looked all that towny on a reread and would've made yourself a lot harder to lim the closer to f3 we got. actually i did a tonne of work on the last phase as well i just felt less compelled to be like, extremely convincing.

hi i reviewed this very thrilling and complex setup

what was the motivation behind the town mason finder?
it's a neat variation to an already riveting setup so not implying criticism just super curious

that was datisi, i was find passing as is with triple mason shrug.

it was a flexible slot to have a scummy lookng role, and the assumption that scum will actually claim a PR

makes sense, thanks!

[the worst]

would've made yourself a lot harder to lim the closer to f3 we got

would have never went to f3 with dragons dead!

i think you're miscalibrated right now. maybe you've played too much with clever people. the reasons to scumread dragons became your reasons to townread him. it was a straightforward game and there should be a measure inside you to understand gamestate, and not just read individual players.

hmm if i flip my reasons around, i think i still need you flipped before i'm comfortable dying & seeing the game approach its end. especially with 3 flips left. i talked about it a bit in the last part of my case, if we lived in another universe where it went bob=>gera=>f3 of [you, dragons, ckd] for example i think that's almost impossible to solve.

[the worst]

if you were scum, town wouldn't have kept momentum!

fair though, i'm glad we got this one before f3

[the worst]

Hmm I scumread HEM because he looked aligned with scum. I felt the need to give him very little space because he has a good scumgame. Being hesitant to townread people because they have a good scumgame is pretty fallacious, I hope I'm above that. I've been policied before for being perceived as being good at scum (i hope dkkoba is still watching to find this funny) and it's like, beyond a vibe kill.

Ah well I've explained my HEM read. It was wrong, and I wish I'd allocated my time more widely, but I don't regret it.

Congratulations to town! Sadly, I had to replace out due to work-related issues.

Hope you're doing okay.

Also cool to see more Australian scummers, I wasn't aware!

[the worst]

hi i reviewed this very thrilling and complex setup

what was the motivation behind the town mason finder?
it's a neat variation to an already riveting setup so not implying criticism just super curious

the laws of the mafiascum universe say "friends and enemies is a balanced open setup but a scumsided closed setup"

i felt that the mason finder is a role that didn't give any hard EV points for town, but it could potentially help town, while not actually being confirmable and sounding kinda like a scummy claim too

makes sense, I quite like that a well-intended town mason finder can accidentally increase scum's ev via dayplay (like, for example, what happened here )

[the worst]

metaphorically speaking, i will slap and splash water on your face right now and shake the living hell out of your rigid body and slap your face some more if i can.

i got a mod warning for this and id like to clarify that i do not wish to impose physical harm on any of the players especially the worst

ilu monkey.

[the worst]

can't risk a monkey sweep

[the worst]

just read thru the dead pt i think the best thing i can say is, like, i know i have a loud clear voice but i'm also just one voice out of 5-7 there. i didn't really ~get~ scum!dragons but it wasn't lost on me that i was in a vacuum where i was looking at other scum first, and others very much were not. probably broadly agree that scum's best shot would have been utilising that to try and swing that one last mislim. that said i don't think making the decision to bring a mason into f3 is feasible (two reasons - wisdom says "vote ur townread for free win", and if you're dragged into f3 as cleared town, u should probably value flipped VT reads higher than your own anyway). i kind of assumed whoever had the decision would just lim dragons anyway. but yeah i would have been fine doing gera, dying, then dragons almost certainly happening in f3. dragons eventually dying was like, 97% going to happen, i don't think i had the willpower to throw this one.

just kind of clarifying my mindset though, i don't think anyone like needs me to defend myself..... as a rule i think mafia is simultaneously intense and hilarious. i absolutely love that i wrote a small thesis on why a member of the town was aligned with the mafia and pleaded for his immediate elimination. this hobby is bizarre and masochistic and i love it. i fully intend to -ev my towngames by having bad reads i believe for the rest of time.