Open 887: Coalition of Frogs (Game Over)

[Bellaphant]

Also,.implo, you think the hero wagon was all town? Was it just because it was rushed?

[Merlyn]

This is a fucking weird elo: I was coming in ready to vote for Ari. For me, either I've been wrong the whole game, or it's just mer. I am back from my really intense tine with the kids tho, so please don't rush this elo.

Bella, when you say 'wrong this whole game' or it's me, do you mean Ari or something else?

[Merlyn]

Bella, would you say you tend to lurk more as scum?

[implosion]

Also,.implo, you think the hero wagon was all town? Was it just because it was rushed?

I mean, that wagon being all town is synonymous with you being scum so it’s sort of a loaded analysis in that way. But I don’t think wagon analysis is super meaningful at 5p with 1 scum alive, there’s no one potentially trying to bus or distance or save their partner and there were at least 2 town on the wagon and at most 1 scum so it’s not like it was meaningfully scum driven.

[Bellaphant]

Anyone else got points for me?

I know you gave a sort of rundown of your reads a couple pages ago but I don't feel like I have a good idea of where your head is actually at right now, mostly because that rundown doesn't actually explain who you're feeling like you'd like to lim or not lim today and partially because it feels like you've sort of been playing your game in a way that's not enmeshed in the rest of the game. E.g., what did you think about the bop shot debacle? How are you feeling about like, Hero's waffling or Ari's ultimately going back to Hero?

Who specifically is your preferred lim(s) and why?

Let's start here. Im not sure why you are confused as you are about my reads: I think I've been really clear about who I definitely wouldn't lim, and who's an option. Hero and Ari both held similar places for me: they slid between my reads a bit, but hero was town and Ari had the potential to be scum. With you, I've basically never even thought of sr-ing you before the end of last phase, whereas I've never had mer as 'town'. This is what I'm saying about being wrong, potentially.

[Bellaphant]

As for the rest of the post, I'm just not emeshes for a few reasons: I think I've had different takes than a few people, but I also feel I've been a bit more definite about some things than some people, especially last day phase when it seemed noone had a clue. I'm also jasy not here as much as I'd like, and when I am here my timezone seems to mean noone else is, which I really struggle with. Anyway, back to reading

[Bellaphant]

VOTE: Hero at Heart I've gone back and forth on this a lot but 1143 solidified something for me. If Hero is right that I'm doomed then I don't really want Hero in the last day. If he's town he's a real wild card- sorry, Hero!- and if he's scum he's setting up an end of day where he can vote against me bc of his intense confidence I should have gone down, and he's also indicated a preference for Bella to live who has expressed a lot of doubt against me.

I don't see what you see in 1143. Can you explain this more?

[Bellaphant]

Also, I re-read the last four pages and it's just Ari and hero yelling. I think both of y'all's positions around hero af that poiny to be weird, but the situation was strange.

My two questions are: implo, hero talked a lot ablut your read change on him being smooth: can you tell me about it?

Mer, I have found it impossible to get on your wavelength all game, but I'm now concerned that it's mainly a me issue. I'd really love you to throw some questions at me, about my iso, or anything, so we can chat.

[Merlyn]

Anyone else got points for me?

I know you gave a sort of rundown of your reads a couple pages ago but I don't feel like I have a good idea of where your head is actually at right now, mostly because that rundown doesn't actually explain who you're feeling like you'd like to lim or not lim today and partially because it feels like you've sort of been playing your game in a way that's not enmeshed in the rest of the game. E.g., what did you think about the bop shot debacle? How are you feeling about like, Hero's waffling or Ari's ultimately going back to Hero?

Who specifically is your preferred lim(s) and why?

Let's start here. Im not sure why you are confused as you are about my reads: I think I've been really clear about who I definitely wouldn't lim, and who's an option. Hero and Ari both held similar places for me: they slid between my reads a bit, but hero was town and Ari had the potential to be scum. With you, I've basically never even thought of sr-ing you before the end of last phase, whereas I've never had mer as 'town'. This is what I'm saying about being wrong, potentially.

What do you mean you've never had me as town? You had me as prob town all this day:

Ok, merlyn is probably town, which helps narrow stuff down a bit.

I don't see the implosion push at all? I think in this game more than most toy need to be really confident with your trs and this is weak sauce.

Rh9 replacing in and immediately defending std just looks too scummy to be...both scum? Ugh, I thought for a sec that rh had replaced std and was defending his own slot, that's how hard their post made me double take.

I don't have any hard conclusions though.

[Merlyn]

As for the rest of the post, I'm just not emeshes for a few reasons: I think I've had different takes than a few people, but I also feel I've been a bit more definite about some things than some people, especially last day phase when it seemed noone had a clue. I'm also jasy not here as much as I'd like, and when I am here my timezone seems to mean noone else is, which I really struggle with. Anyway, back to reading

Hey, what's your timezone btw? I don't think you post overnight for me, I could try and be more around to interact

[Merlyn]

Mer, I have found it impossible to get on your wavelength all game, but I'm now concerned that it's mainly a me issue. I'd really love you to throw some questions at me, about my iso, or anything, so we can chat.

I have two questions out for you right now on this page if you want to start there, and I'll go answer the one you just asked me in 1231

[Merlyn]

VOTE: Hero at Heart I've gone back and forth on this a lot but 1143 solidified something for me. If Hero is right that I'm doomed then I don't really want Hero in the last day. If he's town he's a real wild card- sorry, Hero!- and if he's scum he's setting up an end of day where he can vote against me bc of his intense confidence I should have gone down, and he's also indicated a preference for Bella to live who has expressed a lot of doubt against me.

I don't see what you see in 1143. Can you explain this more?

Hero said this

think town never wins a 3p with me, ari and implo so i want to kill one of us.

and I thought that if Hero and Ari were both town, town won't win. Ari had Hero down as scum from coalition phase, and if he made it to the end she would need to hear a pretty compelling case on the third (non hero) person to not vote Hero. And Hero is a very emotional player, his reads are all over the place because they change with how he's feeling. For whatever reason that meant he was unwilling to just sit down and case someone in 1143 If he was town I couldn't see him convincing Ari who scum was. So in this scenario scum wins.

If Ari was scum, Hero was already saying he wouldn't vote for her, so Hero and Ari going to the end means scum wins.

If Hero was scum- I thought the whole thing where spent a lot of time saying why I was about to die was really unhelpful as town and potentially an excuse for him as scum to stop saying he'd never vote for me and set me up for the lim.

[Merlyn]

@Implo- how would you describe your scum game?

[Merlyn]

Another one for Implo- what's your best guess as to why you didn't get NK'ed after the STD lim?

[implosion]

I'm flying back tomorrow and expect to have some time in the airport to start looking more closely at things, and will continue to either when I get home tomorrow, or more likely Tuesday at some point.

Let's start here. Im not sure why you are confused as you are about my reads: I think I've been really clear about who I definitely wouldn't lim, and who's an option.

I see. I think the confusion comes down to me not thinking the phrasing in 1090 was especially clear, but I can see it just being a misunderstanding. You listed Mer as "see above" to Ari so I wasn't sure how you felt between the two of them and you listed Hero as "see above but with more obvious mistakes" to me, and I wasn't sure if "playing a fantastic scum game??" meant you were townreading me or that you felt like I was actually likely/viably scum but playing well. Also the phrasing of effectively two people being "still /could/ be scum" and two people being "playing a fantastic scumgame?" made it sound like you had no actual scumreads. It makes more sense with the clarification.

My two questions are: implo, hero talked a lot ablut your read change on him being smooth: can you tell me about it?

I explained it a little here. I think what Hero was seeing was that my read sort of flowed from "hero is obvious town" to "hero is the best lim" in response to the game state of Titus flipping + Ari's reasoning, and that I was continuing to feel that way even as Ari iirc slowed down a bit on it. Part of it is just that I didn't really have a good bead on things when Titus flipped town. I was more or less expecting to die after that and the Drew kill threw me for a loop a bit (as it did everyone seemingly) and I generally feel like it's hard to read into kills at that point.The other part of it is that the way I often approach games is to maintain townreads and periodically audit them, and I went back at reasons I had for townreading you and Hero and at that time I felt like the reasons that I had felt especially good about townreading Hero for could actually be more personality than alignment, if hero is the kind of player that approaches scum play in a particular way. And then the day kind of blurred by a bit tbh.

@Implo- how would you describe your scum game?

I usually conceptualize my scum play to myself as trying somewhat straightforwardly to mimic my town game as best as I can but in practice it's been so long since I've been scum in forum mafia that it's hard to really give an answer that's likely to be accurate to how I'd play scum now. It'd probably still largely be that though.

Another one for Implo- what's your best guess as to why you didn't get NK'ed after the STD lim?

This is maybe easier to answer now that we have a smaller pool. Looking at THS's ISO, if Bella is scum then it's possibly just that THS had indicated some suspicion of Bella, he said he wanted to lim RH9 next if STD flipped scum but bella or hero next if STD flipped town. Granted this isn't actually all that meaningful because the Bella/Hero read is just saying those are the two other people he found scummiest in the coalition potentially but it's possible she was just getting rid of a slot that had latent suspicion of her that she thought might eventually haunt her. The last sentiment I'd expressed about her before the hammer was thinking that her annoyance at something was town and it was pretty clear I wanted RH9 next so it's possible I was left alive just to secure that mislim. That doesn't explain why I didn't get NK'd the next night though, Bella shooting Drew would be interesting since she was hard townreading him. This is part of what I want to dig in to soon

If you're scum, THS was townreading you maybe even earlier than other people were so it'd be a weird shot. I was also townreading you which can explain not-shooting me but doesn't explain shooting THS. Well, I was townreading everyone but RH at that point I think at least to some degree already so like, it's possible that the explanation is as simple as whichever one of you is scum thinking I was going to tunnel a townie the next day (correctly). Which means it will also be elucidating to think about the Drew kill since that was after RH/Titus was dead.

Alas I need to sleep now. Really like 30 minutes ago. I've kind of been posting at arbitrary times throughout the day but once I'm back home I'm happy to be online concurrently with either/both of you at some point, based on timestamps on this page it shouldn't be *too* hard.

[implosion]

I'm at the airport but without a ton of time before plane boards and gosh i am just very tired so probably not gonna spend a ton of time today on this

But let's just lim RH, then if they do flip town we can discuss who should be next instead of just nuking Bella or Ari right away(or maybe you lol).

This is the closest/most recent thing in Drew's ISO to reads that I see that isn't just saying he thinks it's Titus. I think at that point I really am not sure why I wasn't shot over drew, I don't think I had really given much away about my feelings on the game beyond thinking Titus was scum except maybe calling Hero town which would be more reason to shoot me. Maybe bella as scum left me alive until yesterday because she thought she'd be able to keep me townreading her for some reason? I kind of feel like I'm grasping at straws for actual good reasons on this and it's probably more fruitful to just examine play directly than NK speculate at this point

[implosion]

Bella had an interesting early townread of Datisi circa 357 where she thought he would normally have done something to give himself away as scum at that point. I think I can see this coming from either alignment, like if she's scum and drew scum with Datisi then it'd make sense for her to try to conceptualize her play toward him around another game she'd played with him where he was scum and to give some read on him that way, but it can certainly be a basis for a read as town as well. This is probably not especially useful but it's interesting

[implosion]

I don't think it's Hero. All of this stuff, including yesterdays vote waffling, would have to be a performance. If I'm throwing away the game here I'll congratulate him at the end and also be slightly scared of him.

I'm asking this question from a perspective of having felt similar: how exactly did your internal thought process evolve from this to voting for Hero?

[implosion]

Part of what I want to know from Bella is, if you had been able to post more in the last ~48 hours of yesterday, would you have been hard defending hero and pushing for a different lim? I feel like that would have been useful to see and asking what you think you'd have done is obviously less useful but given that you asked me about the hero wagon being all town I want to know if you're saying you think it was "obviously" a bad wagon to the point that you'd have tried to dismantle it.

[Bellaphant]

Starting with mer:

Even then, it was 'prob town'. I don't know why but I feel like I'm being really clear about my reads and it's not gelling - my town was implo and drew, with most likely hero. Page 25 and 26 I really felt like I vibed with what you were saying, whereas I haven't /felt/ much from your slot: weirdly the time I got the most feeling from you was the discussion with hero, where as I read it I couldn't see why you had the take you did and it felt a little scummy, although I understand more now, especially as hero saying he'll never vote ari made 3p impossible from your pov

I'm UK time.

[Bellaphant]

Implo, I guess that was my reads list, in scum to not scum. The thing with you and hero is that I read your posts (before the end of last day phase) and just agree with them, so I think they are more likely to come from town. I also didn't have any red flags from you. With Ari, I had a bunch of times I could see a scum agenda. My issue with mer is that I just feel a bit blank about them, but that could mean I'm not seeing a massive agenda.

But then hero often felt like he had an agenda, which was what gave me pause.

[Bellaphant]

Implo, I feel like the ths nk was weirder than the drew nk: I asked earlier int he game why if scum wanted a low info kill, that it wasn't mer, and I think hero responded saying they'd never lim ths after the std flip (or something): what are everyone's thoughts on this?

Also in regards to your 48 hours question, at the time and at the start of day I was a bit like 'wtf is this lim', which I would have expressed, but actually a) I'd probably have gunned for an Ari lim, which would've been equally wrong and probably worse for town, as I don't think hero gets nk, and b) I can now see more of mers point about a 3p lylo. It's a shit lim to get info from, in hindsight.

[Bellaphant]

I'm re&reading your games, mer. Any you think stand out?

[Bellaphant]

If we look at the nks by looking at elos, I feel implo benefits slightly more from this elo, as he knows I don't hard tr mer and my activity dropped off massively, so am an easy push.

Mer would have to convince implo to vote me, which...mid, because again, activity. I hadn't posted that implo was making me feel some sort of way, because I hadn't read before the night phase, so from her pov getting me to vote implo would be a hard sell.

[Bellaphant]

Maybe I'm naive but i don't think hero pushes me in this elo? Liek mer said, hero mer Bella hero votes mer, probably.

Hero implo Bella is a cluster fuck for me.

Hmmm