Stop comparing him to yogsloth when the game Tom is playing here is lightyears away from Yog's typical game. If the name of the game is charisma, then you want to be likeable and you want to be able to get along with a large subsection of the game; can you explain to me why his spider roleplay was something he expected to be taken well in the context of the invitational of one of the most content-heavy metas period?
*shakes head* The intent is the same, you're focusing on the execution, which is trivial for our purposes. He does want to be likable. He was trying to be cute. And he kind of was, actually ,and in many of his games, he often is. For obvious reasons, being merely cute wasn't satisfactory for this context; and I've already alluded to why I think he wasn't able to empathize with the town's position on this.
But the key to the comparison is understanding that he feels his strength is charisma. That tells you something about Tom, and about his philosophy of play, as both town and scum. People who feel they're strong on charisma, whether they are or not, that isn't important for our purposes, but people who feel that way will try to lean heavily on those skills as scum. They try to speak to people's guts instead of their brains. They downplay their capabilities as town. And they spend a good proportion of their time trying to amuse people, instead of hunting. Believing that you have charisma means a belief in your ability to manage other people's perceptions of you, to control and to manipulate your image as you see fit. If Tom is someone who was trying to control his image, what do you think his objective in doing so, truly was? It certainly wasn't to please other people. So either it was to amuse himself, or it was to manipulate others' perceptions of him and cloak his mindset.
Maybe I'm the wrong type to understand how holding to the gimmick in the face of this much opposition would ever be sufficiently amusing to justify it. Maybe that's just a personality fault of mine, and I'm too different from Tom to grasp that. But when I see someone who is holding that tightly to his gimmick, in spite of multiple heated criticisms, I see someone who has a strong counter-vailing reason to maintain that gimmick that overrides the importance of those requests. And I find it tough to believe that self-amusement is what that strong counter-vailing reason really was.
I would like to note Az just because I am not as active as I used to be it doesn't make me senile. I actually haven't been a huge fan of your play so far, I don't think a lot of your scum reads have been very good and they seem to have an underlying emotional need to them rather than cold logic.
I think Tom is just a bit touched in the head.
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Reading tom as it is can be annoying, but unlike other players I have played with, at least you can decipher his reads. Even if it can be a bit over the top.
@Nacho: I am more curious at how you got to a Seppel vote.
I feel like Seppel is really falling through the cracks here.
I'll climb out soon enough.
My issue with this game is such:
I want to lynch Cyan and Eco.
Iso wants to lynch Cyan and Eco.
I don't trust Iso at all. He could have handled the mason reveal a lot more subtly. The only reason to be so obvious to EVERYONE is to alert his buddies to not attack Az or Chris. Even something like "I have no reason to suspect Az or Chris, and they know why." would be puzzling enough for the rest of the players, but obvious to Az and Chris without spilling info and opportunities to see some genuine scumtell from people attacking Az or Chris.
So it's like, I have to guess which of Iso's reads is the truest scum.
"Oh I'm under fire with no chance of survival, let's find something inconsequential to replace out for, and hope that my replacement will do better than me."
1. Iso - Scum. Outed the masons in an attempt to alert his buddies.
2. Gentleman Johnny - Town. A poor soul caught in the crossfire of... Yeah I got nothing.
3. tomsloger - Scum. "Seppel is Seppel"
4. Vaimes - Scum. Is this the game where I said Vaimes isn't doing anything memorable? He still isn't.
5. Voxxicus - Scum. Buried himself and is waiting for a new body to dig out.
6. Sir Chris - Town. Kind of sucks when your two biggest townread turn out to be masons.
7. Ecophagy - Scum. If there's something I've learned, it's that my initial reads are usually the most accurate.
8. Azrael - Town.
9. Newcomb - Town for all the reasons Az doesn't want me to townread him for.
10. Cyan - Scum. More disengaged than me.
11. Nachomamma8 r. mallorean_thug - Unknown. I don't remember a thing Mal said.
I don't buy Sir Chris' town-clear on Eco, at all. His response to pressure, his repeated pocket attempts, his unoriginality. When people post as much as he does and are under the microscope as much as I've put him, I almost always get an accurate town-ping if it's justified, and I'm not from him. I'm willing to stack my town-read skills up against Sir Chris's, here. I've got too many reliable town-pings elsewhere to anticipate a mistake on this slot, particularly with the scum-tells I'm seeing.
For God's sake Az. What pocketing? What unoriginality? What about my response to pressure? I get that you're super paranoid and would really like to be right, but if a guy drops three independent analysis posts that line up well with your internal thinking then maybe he's more likely to be Town on your wavelength than some sort of mind reading wizard looking to pocket you.
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I am willing to bet the game on Eco being town tbh.
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I have not been presented with one credible thing against Eco by anyone thinking he is scum.
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"Iso outed the Masons so his buddies would leave them alone" is hm.
I think if I were scum and somehow roleread the Masons and wanted to tell my buddies to back off, I'd probably...not say "hey player a and b, you're Masons." I'd probably just find BS reasons to strongly townread them and try to shift attention elsewhere, directly telling my buddies to back off if they asked why or kept prodding.
Scum Iso didn't say we were masons to be clever, scum Iso does it there to relieve pressure from himself.
Not it matters we should be killing GJ who is scum due to my outlined reasons.
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*shakes head* The intent is the same, you're focusing on the execution, which is trivial for our purposes. He does want to be likable. He was trying to be cute. And he kind of was, actually ,and in many of his games, he often is. For obvious reasons, being merely cute wasn't satisfactory for this context; and I've already alluded to why I think he wasn't able to empathize with the town's position on this.
But the key to the comparison is understanding that he feels his strength is charisma. That tells you something about Tom, and about his philosophy of play, as both town and scum. People who feel they're strong on charisma, whether they are or not, that isn't important for our purposes, but people who feel that way will try to lean heavily on those skills as scum. They try to speak to people's guts instead of their brains. They downplay their capabilities as town. And they spend a good proportion of their time trying to amuse people, instead of hunting. Believing that you have charisma means a belief in your ability to manage other people's perceptions of you, to control and to manipulate your image as you see fit. If Tom is someone who was trying to control his image, what do you think his objective in doing so, truly was? It certainly wasn't to please other people. So either it was to amuse himself, or it was to manipulate others' perceptions of him and cloak his mindset.
Maybe I'm the wrong type to understand how holding to the gimmick in the face of this much opposition would ever be sufficiently amusing to justify it. Maybe that's just a personality fault of mine, and I'm too different from Tom to grasp that. But when I see someone who is holding that tightly to his gimmick, in spite of multiple heated criticisms, I see someone who has a strong counter-vailing reason to maintain that gimmick that overrides the importance of those requests. And I find it tough to believe that self-amusement is what that strong counter-vailing reason really was.
Am I misunderstanding you here? The crux of your argument here seems to be that people who feel that their strength is their charisma will try to "amuse others" when scum to the exclusion of everything else, but then you jump to an argument where Tom is trying to control his image regardless of alignment (where did that assumption come in) and that somehow it makes more sense for him to be manipulating others' perceptions of him by pretending to be spiderman and not using words than it does for him to be doing it to amuse himself (as he usually does when he gimmicks, as do most people). Your last paragraph I can maybe buy because of having a different mindset, so fine. Sometimes you start out doing something that amuses you and isn't all that crazy and people freak out pretty harshly and that makes you want to dig your heels in and be stubborn and sometimes that leads to bad places; it's happened to me before, it got out of hand much quicker than I thought it would.
As for the rest, though... Separating intent (disadvantages and advantages of a particular move, what a player intends to accomplish with a particular move) with execution (what a player is actually doing) is a basic mistake that terrible players from all walks of life make. The argument that your making claims that Tom's goal here is to be likeable, amusing, cute, and use that as a replacement for doing any sort of meaningful scumhunting. The piece you are missing is who Tom is playing against and who his gimmick would appeal to. Do you think that he thinks players such as you, Voxxicus, Cyan, would see his playstyle and do anything except recoil in disgust? Probably not. Is it likely to appeal to the players who know him a little better and are touched by his silly antics? Again, probably not. That is a huge, huge sign of "this guy is just ******* around to have fun". Compare this with his approaches as scum in other games; in the MTGS/Org invitational, Tom was dealing with a number of people who didn't know him and didn't know what to expect, and he was doing the gimmick in an environment where he hadn't gimmicked as scum before (only as town), so people who knew him would be more likely to read him as town. When he played in Newcomb's hydra game, he didn't gimmick; he worked to get townread by making pushes with conviction and feeling and by being a constant presence in a fairly inactive game.
These generalizations that you make about people who "feel charisma is a strength" aren't really generalizations that I've seen proven in my experience; if people are unable to fake scumhunting as a part of their style, they are bad players. In addition, I don't really think that it's fair to say that Tom hasn't been scumhunting, and I've only really read his "explanation post"; you can tell me you don't like his pushes and reads because of reasons X, Y, and Z, but sitting here and telling me he's doing nothing because he's too busy being charismatic seems fairly disingenuous to me.
@Eco - I'd be less concerned by your mimicking my scum reads if you had not done similar moves with other players, or if could present a more thought-provoking and original basis for them.
I would like to note Az just because I am not as active as I used to be it doesn't make me senile. I actually haven't been a huge fan of your play so far, I don't think a lot of your scum reads have been very good and they seem to have an underlying emotional need to them rather than cold logic.
I think Tom is just a bit touched in the head.
*eyebrow* I'm a pretty cold fish, Chris. If you're reading my attacks on players as emotionally driven, you're misreading me, as well.
As ever, until someone convinces me my town-reads are wrong, I'm going to ruthlessly cull the herd in my uncleared slots. There are only about four of those, at the moment, though I'm considering some additions. They do not fit neatly into other people's expectations, and I am fine with that. I will simply continue to work as I always work. Check and re-check my reads. Identify probable scum mentalities and lines of play among the uncleared. Kill the worst of the bunch.
Nobody's scum reads are going to catch fire this game very easily, because the quality of player in this game is high. You are going to see scum narratives and plays like what Tom is doing, where the evidence of their guilt is as much, or more, in what they are failing to accomplish, than in what they are actually posting. It's going to create difficulty in arriving at a consensus, and we're not going to feel as confident about the cases we do decide are our best choices. That's just the breaks in a game like this. So be it.
"Iso outed the Masons so his buddies would leave them alone" is hm.
I think if I were scum and somehow roleread the Masons and wanted to tell my buddies to back off, I'd probably...not say "hey player a and b, you're Masons." I'd probably just find BS reasons to strongly townread them and try to shift attention elsewhere, directly telling my buddies to back off if they asked why or kept prodding.
That's too obvious. Just out them. Buddies stay hidden.
Scum Iso didn't say we were masons to be clever, scum Iso does it there to relieve pressure from himself.
This is silly.
I don't think that many people would actually believe that outing a pair of masons would "relieve pressure" from themselves.
Look at how perceptive I am, I figured out the masons
note: Iso is silly
@ Az - Not driven. Never driven. But your Eco read and your Tom read do not read as 100% cold logic to me. Masons shouldn't fight.
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Ok. So here's the take I'm getting off your GJ wagon Chris, tell me where I'm wrong.
You seem to start off wanting to find common-ground with Iso, so that everyone can hold hands and lynch a scum. That's a nice story, but per your account it's at least partially leaning on Iso's acknowledged scum-hunting prowess, which is something I'm not comfortable putting much stock in, so long as he's in the uncleared pile. My reasons for leaving him there I've covered, lmk if you need them again. Your alternate/additional reasons are that Iso might be attempting to bus GJ, which you suggest is evident from the way he preferred mentioning Cyan (who we both nominally town-read, easily), over GJ. Cyan, who we both totally agree on, is someone who we each feel doesn't have a good rationale in favor of killing. He could be scum, sure, but I feel we're both on board with the statement that there is no legitimate case for killing Cyan today on the evidence that's before us. There's just nothing remarkable there.
At any rate, I don't much care for lynching Cyan or for his preference for Cyan over GJ either, but I'm not sold that we should read that as a negative against GJ. There's certainly no guarantee that Iso's chosen to bus, he's not pushing those wagons, he's just letting them hang out there and declaring that he won't do much in the way of further analysis work until we cave to his demands. Which effectively leaves him free to derp around and not exhibit much in the way of tells or positions in the meantime. But regardless, I don't feel that GJ's performance this game has been terribly different from Cyan's. It's primarily just low-energy, uninspired. A lurker wagon. It might be on-target, but I'd prefer a much more convincing scum line of play.
Other rationales you/others have presented in favor of GJ are (per Iso) that he somehow reacted violently to being pointed out as scum. I have no idea what post that is supposed to have happened in, it just isn't evident to me in anything I've read.
About the only other thing you seem to have said about GJ recently in the way of suspicion is that you disliked that he disagreed with your Vaimes read. Which is quite weak. Especially if, as I and others do, we disagree with you on Vaimes being scummy.
Bottom line, it feels like you're leaning too much on Iso, Iso's case doesn't check out on examination, and it's basically just a dressed-up lurker wagon + you disagree with his reads. These are not valid bases for a case.
If there's more I'm missing, enlighten me, but I'd much rather ignore the emotional signals Iso is throwing around, hoping for bites, and make a judgment call based on Iso's fundamental artificiality.
You did miss the fact that I am voting GJ under the assumption that Vaimes is town <_<.
I know we are masons but did you read my post or skim.
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Basically, to sum it up briefly, I read the back and forth in between Iso and GJ as scum-scum upon a re-read and it really irked me how Newcomb came to the opposite conclusion, and upon reflection I feel as if that note of mine is more viable than my grand attempt at murdering Vaimes is at catching scum.
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Am I misunderstanding you here? The crux of your argument here seems to be that people who feel that their strength is their charisma will try to "amuse others" when scum to the exclusion of everything else, but then you jump to an argument where Tom is trying to control his image regardless of alignment (where did that assumption come in) and that somehow it makes more sense for him to be manipulating others' perceptions of him by pretending to be spiderman and not using words than it does for him to be doing it to amuse himself (as he usually does when he gimmicks, as do most people). Your last paragraph I can maybe buy because of having a different mindset, so fine. Sometimes you start out doing something that amuses you and isn't all that crazy and people freak out pretty harshly and that makes you want to dig your heels in and be stubborn and sometimes that leads to bad places; it's happened to me before, it got out of hand much quicker than I thought it would.
As for the rest, though... Separating intent (disadvantages and advantages of a particular move, what a player intends to accomplish with a particular move) with execution (what a player is actually doing) is a basic mistake that terrible players from all walks of life make. The argument that your making claims that Tom's goal here is to be likeable, amusing, cute, and use that as a replacement for doing any sort of meaningful scumhunting. The piece you are missing is who Tom is playing against and who his gimmick would appeal to. Do you think that he thinks players such as you, Voxxicus, Cyan, would see his playstyle and do anything except recoil in disgust? Probably not. Is it likely to appeal to the players who know him a little better and are touched by his silly antics? Again, probably not. That is a huge, huge sign of "this guy is just ******* around to have fun". Compare this with his approaches as scum in other games; in the MTGS/Org invitational, Tom was dealing with a number of people who didn't know him and didn't know what to expect, and he was doing the gimmick in an environment where he hadn't gimmicked as scum before (only as town), so people who knew him would be more likely to read him as town. When he played in Newcomb's hydra game, he didn't gimmick; he worked to get townread by making pushes with conviction and feeling and by being a constant presence in a fairly inactive game.
These generalizations that you make about people who "feel charisma is a strength" aren't really generalizations that I've seen proven in my experience; if people are unable to fake scumhunting as a part of their style, they are bad players. In addition, I don't really think that it's fair to say that Tom hasn't been scumhunting, and I've only really read his "explanation post"; you can tell me you don't like his pushes and reads because of reasons X, Y, and Z, but sitting here and telling me he's doing nothing because he's too busy being charismatic seems fairly disingenuous to me.
You're slightly misreading what I believe his intent to be, based on your original interpretation of how you think I'm wrong from the first post.
I am not saying that Tom's primary objective is to be amusing. If that were his objective, he could have done a far better job.
Being amusing is what Tom is trying to present his goal to be, and/or a secondary objective. Tom's primary objective, what he believes he is capable of accomplishing as someone with charisma, with the ability to control his image, is to present himself as someone who is trying to be amusing, while denying the town the ability to read him. The latter, the information denial, is his true primary objective. And it's why he continued that line of play, even in the face of heated protests from Vox and Newcomb.
As far as Tom concerned, it's a legitimate scum tactic, not outlawed by the rules, and if that makes life hard on the town, those are the breaks. Read between the lines of how he defended his actions. He doesn't understand how it's wrong.
So, either he's amusing himself at the expense of everyone else's enjoyment, or he has an agenda that this style of posting allows him to accomplish. I feel like I'm being charitable and reasonable in my assessment of Tom, in thinking that he's doing this for strategic reasons, not because he's a dick who doesn't care if other people fail to enjoy his antics.
I could be wrong. But he's in my uncleared pile, and this line of play is very, very attractive for scum, as I know very well from having executed similar tactics in the past. As someone who's done almost the exact same thing as a one-off, and had a great deal of fun doing it, I'm hardly inclined to be angry at Tom for trying it. I see the advantages. I just think he's making a mistake to do it repeatedly, and I see the strategic reasons for doing it as more persuasive than "'cause it was fun". Nothing about bringing that kind of heat down on your head and pissing off fellow players like that strikes me as fun. So if not fun, then strategy, and if strategy, then scum.
And I'm not saying he's completely failed to scum-hunt. That would be terribly, terribly obvious. I'm saying that's not where he's concentrating his efforts and prioritizing his concern.
And that it's easier to hide that, when you're pretending to be a spider.
Tom and Voxx are not aligned and Scum Tom has absolutely no reason to stop a pissed off Town Voxx from rage quitting. But even beyond that I think you are assigning way too malice to Tom's spider thing. I read it in the slant he is explaining it right now from the start, and I tend to believe that was true.
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What if Az and Chris are scum who decided to act like masons in pregame?
Has MTGS reached that level yet?
I would totally do this btw. Be very wary of me, there is nothing I wouldn't do to win as scum.
*Checks oven for 2015 Thanksgiving Turkey*
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Basically, to sum it up briefly, I read the back and forth in between Iso and GJ as scum-scum upon a re-read and it really irked me how Newcomb came to the opposite conclusion, and upon reflection I feel as if that note of mine is more viable than my grand attempt at murdering Vaimes is at catching scum.
I don't have a terribly firm grip on other people's reasons for their cases, it's been in one ear and out the other. I look at your arguments as I read the case, do my independent verification and reads, and if it doesn't make much of a dent in me at the time, it doesn't stick around in my brain for very long, I'm afraid.
And again, this would be the type of things I classify as a "possible tell". Something that might make GJ scum, IF Iso is scum. But in that event, if those two's interactions are what you're looking at, I'd argue that Iso is the far scummier player, between the two of them.
Tom and Voxx are not aligned and Scum Tom has absolutely no reason to stop a pissed off Town Voxx from rage quitting. But even beyond that I think you are assigning way too malice to Tom's spider thing. I read it in the slant he is explaining it right now from the start, and I tend to believe that was true.
They're not scum together, no. But I can certainly envision scum Tom being a good enough person to feel bad about how things have gone down, while failing to understand why it was so controversial.
I mean, that's 100% what's actually going on here, under either alignment. Tom feels bad out of game, not in-game, so of course he would feel bad about having made Vox replace out, under any alignment.
Tom and Voxx are not aligned and Scum Tom has absolutely no reason to stop a pissed off Town Voxx from rage quitting. But even beyond that I think you are assigning way too malice to Tom's spider thing. I read it in the slant he is explaining it right now from the start, and I tend to believe that was true.
Also, as a similarly malicious and conniving person, I don't find it much of a stretch at all. I've done it, and I've seen other people brag about doing it. It's a thing that happens, particularly in highly competitive games.
@Eco - I'd be less concerned by your mimicking my scum reads if you had not done similar moves with other players, or if could present a more thought-provoking and original basis for them.
I would like to note Az just because I am not as active as I used to be it doesn't make me senile. I actually haven't been a huge fan of your play so far, I don't think a lot of your scum reads have been very good and they seem to have an underlying emotional need to them rather than cold logic.
I think Tom is just a bit touched in the head.
*eyebrow* I'm a pretty cold fish, Chris. If you're reading my attacks on players as emotionally driven, you're misreading me, as well.
As ever, until someone convinces me my town-reads are wrong, I'm going to ruthlessly cull the herd in my uncleared slots. There are only about four of those, at the moment, though I'm considering some additions. They do not fit neatly into other people's expectations, and I am fine with that. I will simply continue to work as I always work. Check and re-check my reads. Identify probable scum mentalities and lines of play among the uncleared. Kill the worst of the bunch.
Nobody's scum reads are going to catch fire this game very easily, because the quality of player in this game is high. You are going to see scum narratives and plays like what Tom is doing, where the evidence of their guilt is as much, or more, in what they are failing to accomplish, than in what they are actually posting. It's going to create difficulty in arriving at a consensus, and we're not going to feel as confident about the cases we do decide are our best choices. That's just the breaks in a game like this. So be it.
Vote Iso.
Based on this and your responses to Nacho and Chris, I...don't think you're actually reading the game any more.
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Tom, could you try explaining why people voting you into the invitational led to you being a spider again? It could be fatigue talking but I don't really understand the point you're making despite reading through it a couple of times.
Based on this and your responses to Nacho and Chris, I...don't think you're actually reading the game any more.
I never stop reading and reconsidering. But at present, nobody is engaging me with reads that seem more attractive or well-thought out than what I'm working with already. Soon as that happens, I'll happily change my tune. As always.
Tom and Voxx are not aligned and Scum Tom has absolutely no reason to stop a pissed off Town Voxx from rage quitting. But even beyond that I think you are assigning way too malice to Tom's spider thing. I read it in the slant he is explaining it right now from the start, and I tend to believe that was true.
Also, as a similarly malicious and conniving person, I don't find it much of a stretch at all. I've done it, and I've seen other people brag about doing it. It's a thing that happens, particularly in highly competitive games.
Okay, real talk. Let's have some super, super real talk here.
I've never met a more manipulative mafia player than myself. Not saying skilled, or intelligent, or intelligent, but manipulative. I manipulate people and toss them aside as if they aren't actually people to the point where I have to send flowers to the death of their emotional well being when I am done with them sometimes. So it's not as if I don't understand how to be cruel in mafia, I've gone to that well very often. It isn't as if such evilness is beyond me. It's just not what is happening here.
Seriously Az for someone I know is town you are like, really trying to deny my credibility people. Basically saying because I am not hyper active my reads are wrong, acting as if I don't have experience with this type of stuff, completely not reading large portions of my posts.
Like man, what the hell Az.
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Based on this and your responses to Nacho and Chris, I...don't think you're actually reading the game any more.
I never stop reading and reconsidering. But at present, nobody is engaging me with reads that seem more attractive or well-thought out than what I'm working with already. Soon as that happens, I'll happily change my tune. As always.
No Az your post to me was you literally not reading my posts.
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Okay, real talk. Let's have some super, super real talk here.
I've never met a more manipulative mafia player than myself. Not saying skilled, or intelligent, or intelligent, but manipulative. I manipulate people and toss them aside as if they aren't actually people to the point where I have to send flowers to the death of their emotional well being when I am done with them sometimes. So it's not as if I don't understand how to be cruel in mafia, I've gone to that well very often. It isn't as if such evilness is beyond me. It's just not what is happening here.
Seriously Az for someone I know is town you are like, really trying to deny my credibility people. Basically saying because I am not hyper active my reads are wrong, acting as if I don't have experience with this type of stuff, completely not reading large portions of my posts.
Like man, what the hell Az.
Of course you're that devious.
But why is it such a stretch to believe that Tom is that devious, also?
I am not saying "Tom could never be that devious" I am saying "I do not believe this is what is going on here."
The stretch is I read his posts and don't see the scum perspective on this play. Not that it could never be, just that it isn't here.
I am not trying to say "what a silly thought, let's not be paranoid" and more "I am pretty paranoid, but I don't think Tom is coming from a scum place."
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Based on this and your responses to Nacho and Chris, I...don't think you're actually reading the game any more.
I never stop reading and reconsidering. But at present, nobody is engaging me with reads that seem more attractive or well-thought out than what I'm working with already. Soon as that happens, I'll happily change my tune. As always.
You're giving me the ultimatum of "conjure a long-winded post that will take several hours to complete or I will vote town until the end of the Day." No. I'm not playing this game that way. Explain why my reads are unconvincing to you and we'll dance but I'm not going to make this game a miserable slog for myself by putting forth the effort to hand-hold everyone else to the correct conclusion by being the singularity of effort, here. That is the easiest way to get me to check out of a game and I am not interested, because it will literally go the way of Stargate (except maybe minus the scum gambit to get me mislynched) and ZDS's Normal. I'll have solved the game and I won't want to engage with ANYONE at length after that because my effort meter will be fully expended after that. I refuse to inconvenience myself based upon your preconceived notions of how townIso should play based on how townIso HAS played, simply because those are the methods I've used before to the best results. And as Newcomb said before, that's just a blowout and no fun for anybody else.
So, I'm not breaking this entire game down just to explain my worldview. If you want me to try to convince you, you need to attack the ideas I've expressed based on the evidence in this thread - not dismiss them on meta reads that have quite frankly never been effective in reading experienced players such as myself or Eco.
Please feel free to engage me in discourse on my stated arguments. Thanks!
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*shakes head* The intent is the same, you're focusing on the execution, which is trivial for our purposes. He does want to be likable. He was trying to be cute. And he kind of was, actually ,and in many of his games, he often is. For obvious reasons, being merely cute wasn't satisfactory for this context; and I've already alluded to why I think he wasn't able to empathize with the town's position on this.
But the key to the comparison is understanding that he feels his strength is charisma. That tells you something about Tom, and about his philosophy of play, as both town and scum. People who feel they're strong on charisma, whether they are or not, that isn't important for our purposes, but people who feel that way will try to lean heavily on those skills as scum. They try to speak to people's guts instead of their brains. They downplay their capabilities as town. And they spend a good proportion of their time trying to amuse people, instead of hunting. Believing that you have charisma means a belief in your ability to manage other people's perceptions of you, to control and to manipulate your image as you see fit. If Tom is someone who was trying to control his image, what do you think his objective in doing so, truly was? It certainly wasn't to please other people. So either it was to amuse himself, or it was to manipulate others' perceptions of him and cloak his mindset.
Maybe I'm the wrong type to understand how holding to the gimmick in the face of this much opposition would ever be sufficiently amusing to justify it. Maybe that's just a personality fault of mine, and I'm too different from Tom to grasp that. But when I see someone who is holding that tightly to his gimmick, in spite of multiple heated criticisms, I see someone who has a strong counter-vailing reason to maintain that gimmick that overrides the importance of those requests. And I find it tough to believe that self-amusement is what that strong counter-vailing reason really was.
I think Tom is just a bit touched in the head.
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@Nacho: I am more curious at how you got to a Seppel vote.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
I'll climb out soon enough.
My issue with this game is such:
I want to lynch Cyan and Eco.
Iso wants to lynch Cyan and Eco.
I don't trust Iso at all. He could have handled the mason reveal a lot more subtly. The only reason to be so obvious to EVERYONE is to alert his buddies to not attack Az or Chris. Even something like "I have no reason to suspect Az or Chris, and they know why." would be puzzling enough for the rest of the players, but obvious to Az and Chris without spilling info and opportunities to see some genuine scumtell from people attacking Az or Chris.
So it's like, I have to guess which of Iso's reads is the truest scum.
Why not just vote Iso?
Unvote, vote Iso
Why not.
Scumtell.
"Oh I'm under fire with no chance of survival, let's find something inconsequential to replace out for, and hope that my replacement will do better than me."
sensiblechuckle.gif
2. Gentleman Johnny - Town. A poor soul caught in the crossfire of... Yeah I got nothing.
3. tomsloger - Scum. "Seppel is Seppel"
4. Vaimes - Scum. Is this the game where I said Vaimes isn't doing anything memorable? He still isn't.
5. Voxxicus - Scum. Buried himself and is waiting for a new body to dig out.
6. Sir Chris - Town. Kind of sucks when your two biggest townread turn out to be masons.
7. Ecophagy - Scum. If there's something I've learned, it's that my initial reads are usually the most accurate.
8. Azrael - Town.
9. Newcomb - Town for all the reasons Az doesn't want me to townread him for.
10. Cyan - Scum. More disengaged than me.
11. Nachomamma8 r. mallorean_thug - Unknown. I don't remember a thing Mal said.
Welp looks like scum have majority, we lose.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
WE gonna tennis match this game too?
The GJ way path to no lynching:
I don't really want to let Voxx off the hook, but we at least need to resolve the "will he/won't he replace" situation.
For God's sake Az. What pocketing? What unoriginality? What about my response to pressure? I get that you're super paranoid and would really like to be right, but if a guy drops three independent analysis posts that line up well with your internal thinking then maybe he's more likely to be Town on your wavelength than some sort of mind reading wizard looking to pocket you.
I'm soooooo surprised by this development.
Let's not waste any more time on this crap.
Renounce Darkness, VT.
Now can we lynch the scum, please.
I'm running out of patience for asking nicely.
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I think if I were scum and somehow roleread the Masons and wanted to tell my buddies to back off, I'd probably...not say "hey player a and b, you're Masons." I'd probably just find BS reasons to strongly townread them and try to shift attention elsewhere, directly telling my buddies to back off if they asked why or kept prodding.
Not it matters we should be killing GJ who is scum due to my outlined reasons.
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Well, you know me.
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I literally just gave you a reason - HIS HOP ON THE ISO WAGON.
But I guess we can ignore reality, if you want. By the way, I'm an Unkillable Unlynchable Miller Vigilante.
No, scumIso makes it a point not to come under scrutiny for bad meta reasons and just tells his buddies about the Masons in scum chatz
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I think Iso is radiating his town annoyance here. It wouldn't be the end of the world to take a few steps down that road.
My secret ulterior motive for being on your wagon is that I'd like to see you lynched. Who'd have thunk?
This is silly.
I don't think that many people would actually believe that outing a pair of masons would "relieve pressure" from themselves.
Am I misunderstanding you here? The crux of your argument here seems to be that people who feel that their strength is their charisma will try to "amuse others" when scum to the exclusion of everything else, but then you jump to an argument where Tom is trying to control his image regardless of alignment (where did that assumption come in) and that somehow it makes more sense for him to be manipulating others' perceptions of him by pretending to be spiderman and not using words than it does for him to be doing it to amuse himself (as he usually does when he gimmicks, as do most people). Your last paragraph I can maybe buy because of having a different mindset, so fine. Sometimes you start out doing something that amuses you and isn't all that crazy and people freak out pretty harshly and that makes you want to dig your heels in and be stubborn and sometimes that leads to bad places; it's happened to me before, it got out of hand much quicker than I thought it would.
As for the rest, though... Separating intent (disadvantages and advantages of a particular move, what a player intends to accomplish with a particular move) with execution (what a player is actually doing) is a basic mistake that terrible players from all walks of life make. The argument that your making claims that Tom's goal here is to be likeable, amusing, cute, and use that as a replacement for doing any sort of meaningful scumhunting. The piece you are missing is who Tom is playing against and who his gimmick would appeal to. Do you think that he thinks players such as you, Voxxicus, Cyan, would see his playstyle and do anything except recoil in disgust? Probably not. Is it likely to appeal to the players who know him a little better and are touched by his silly antics? Again, probably not. That is a huge, huge sign of "this guy is just ******* around to have fun". Compare this with his approaches as scum in other games; in the MTGS/Org invitational, Tom was dealing with a number of people who didn't know him and didn't know what to expect, and he was doing the gimmick in an environment where he hadn't gimmicked as scum before (only as town), so people who knew him would be more likely to read him as town. When he played in Newcomb's hydra game, he didn't gimmick; he worked to get townread by making pushes with conviction and feeling and by being a constant presence in a fairly inactive game.
These generalizations that you make about people who "feel charisma is a strength" aren't really generalizations that I've seen proven in my experience; if people are unable to fake scumhunting as a part of their style, they are bad players. In addition, I don't really think that it's fair to say that Tom hasn't been scumhunting, and I've only really read his "explanation post"; you can tell me you don't like his pushes and reads because of reasons X, Y, and Z, but sitting here and telling me he's doing nothing because he's too busy being charismatic seems fairly disingenuous to me.
*eyebrow* I'm a pretty cold fish, Chris. If you're reading my attacks on players as emotionally driven, you're misreading me, as well.
As ever, until someone convinces me my town-reads are wrong, I'm going to ruthlessly cull the herd in my uncleared slots. There are only about four of those, at the moment, though I'm considering some additions. They do not fit neatly into other people's expectations, and I am fine with that. I will simply continue to work as I always work. Check and re-check my reads. Identify probable scum mentalities and lines of play among the uncleared. Kill the worst of the bunch.
Nobody's scum reads are going to catch fire this game very easily, because the quality of player in this game is high. You are going to see scum narratives and plays like what Tom is doing, where the evidence of their guilt is as much, or more, in what they are failing to accomplish, than in what they are actually posting. It's going to create difficulty in arriving at a consensus, and we're not going to feel as confident about the cases we do decide are our best choices. That's just the breaks in a game like this. So be it.
Vote Iso.
DO SOMETHING
FAKE READ
FAKE READ
FAKE READ
Unvote, vote vaimes
Look at how perceptive I am, I figured out the masons
note: Iso is silly
@ Az - Not driven. Never driven. But your Eco read and your Tom read do not read as 100% cold logic to me. Masons shouldn't fight.
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Ok. So here's the take I'm getting off your GJ wagon Chris, tell me where I'm wrong.
You seem to start off wanting to find common-ground with Iso, so that everyone can hold hands and lynch a scum. That's a nice story, but per your account it's at least partially leaning on Iso's acknowledged scum-hunting prowess, which is something I'm not comfortable putting much stock in, so long as he's in the uncleared pile. My reasons for leaving him there I've covered, lmk if you need them again. Your alternate/additional reasons are that Iso might be attempting to bus GJ, which you suggest is evident from the way he preferred mentioning Cyan (who we both nominally town-read, easily), over GJ. Cyan, who we both totally agree on, is someone who we each feel doesn't have a good rationale in favor of killing. He could be scum, sure, but I feel we're both on board with the statement that there is no legitimate case for killing Cyan today on the evidence that's before us. There's just nothing remarkable there.
At any rate, I don't much care for lynching Cyan or for his preference for Cyan over GJ either, but I'm not sold that we should read that as a negative against GJ. There's certainly no guarantee that Iso's chosen to bus, he's not pushing those wagons, he's just letting them hang out there and declaring that he won't do much in the way of further analysis work until we cave to his demands. Which effectively leaves him free to derp around and not exhibit much in the way of tells or positions in the meantime. But regardless, I don't feel that GJ's performance this game has been terribly different from Cyan's. It's primarily just low-energy, uninspired. A lurker wagon. It might be on-target, but I'd prefer a much more convincing scum line of play.
Other rationales you/others have presented in favor of GJ are (per Iso) that he somehow reacted violently to being pointed out as scum. I have no idea what post that is supposed to have happened in, it just isn't evident to me in anything I've read.
About the only other thing you seem to have said about GJ recently in the way of suspicion is that you disliked that he disagreed with your Vaimes read. Which is quite weak. Especially if, as I and others do, we disagree with you on Vaimes being scummy.
Bottom line, it feels like you're leaning too much on Iso, Iso's case doesn't check out on examination, and it's basically just a dressed-up lurker wagon + you disagree with his reads. These are not valid bases for a case.
If there's more I'm missing, enlighten me, but I'd much rather ignore the emotional signals Iso is throwing around, hoping for bites, and make a judgment call based on Iso's fundamental artificiality.
I know we are masons but did you read my post or skim.
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You're slightly misreading what I believe his intent to be, based on your original interpretation of how you think I'm wrong from the first post.
I am not saying that Tom's primary objective is to be amusing. If that were his objective, he could have done a far better job.
Being amusing is what Tom is trying to present his goal to be, and/or a secondary objective. Tom's primary objective, what he believes he is capable of accomplishing as someone with charisma, with the ability to control his image, is to present himself as someone who is trying to be amusing, while denying the town the ability to read him. The latter, the information denial, is his true primary objective. And it's why he continued that line of play, even in the face of heated protests from Vox and Newcomb.
As far as Tom concerned, it's a legitimate scum tactic, not outlawed by the rules, and if that makes life hard on the town, those are the breaks. Read between the lines of how he defended his actions. He doesn't understand how it's wrong.
So, either he's amusing himself at the expense of everyone else's enjoyment, or he has an agenda that this style of posting allows him to accomplish. I feel like I'm being charitable and reasonable in my assessment of Tom, in thinking that he's doing this for strategic reasons, not because he's a dick who doesn't care if other people fail to enjoy his antics.
I could be wrong. But he's in my uncleared pile, and this line of play is very, very attractive for scum, as I know very well from having executed similar tactics in the past. As someone who's done almost the exact same thing as a one-off, and had a great deal of fun doing it, I'm hardly inclined to be angry at Tom for trying it. I see the advantages. I just think he's making a mistake to do it repeatedly, and I see the strategic reasons for doing it as more persuasive than "'cause it was fun". Nothing about bringing that kind of heat down on your head and pissing off fellow players like that strikes me as fun. So if not fun, then strategy, and if strategy, then scum.
Has MTGS reached that level yet?
And that it's easier to hide that, when you're pretending to be a spider.
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I would totally do this btw. Be very wary of me, there is nothing I wouldn't do to win as scum.
*Checks oven for 2015 Thanksgiving Turkey*
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I don't have a terribly firm grip on other people's reasons for their cases, it's been in one ear and out the other. I look at your arguments as I read the case, do my independent verification and reads, and if it doesn't make much of a dent in me at the time, it doesn't stick around in my brain for very long, I'm afraid.
And again, this would be the type of things I classify as a "possible tell". Something that might make GJ scum, IF Iso is scum. But in that event, if those two's interactions are what you're looking at, I'd argue that Iso is the far scummier player, between the two of them.
That level is backwards about 12 years from where we're at.
They're not scum together, no. But I can certainly envision scum Tom being a good enough person to feel bad about how things have gone down, while failing to understand why it was so controversial.
I mean, that's 100% what's actually going on here, under either alignment. Tom feels bad out of game, not in-game, so of course he would feel bad about having made Vox replace out, under any alignment.
Also, as a similarly malicious and conniving person, I don't find it much of a stretch at all. I've done it, and I've seen other people brag about doing it. It's a thing that happens, particularly in highly competitive games.
Golly gee, is that why you voted me? I am utterly floored by this revelation! I had assumed it was because you wanted me to survive.
This is a cute deflection from your motive to see me lynched, though.
Everyone in this game knows that a vote on VT Iso is a vote on town. Pretending otherwise is a bad look for you.
Based on this and your responses to Nacho and Chris, I...don't think you're actually reading the game any more.
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I never stop reading and reconsidering. But at present, nobody is engaging me with reads that seem more attractive or well-thought out than what I'm working with already. Soon as that happens, I'll happily change my tune. As always.
Okay, real talk. Let's have some super, super real talk here.
I've never met a more manipulative mafia player than myself. Not saying skilled, or intelligent, or intelligent, but manipulative. I manipulate people and toss them aside as if they aren't actually people to the point where I have to send flowers to the death of their emotional well being when I am done with them sometimes. So it's not as if I don't understand how to be cruel in mafia, I've gone to that well very often. It isn't as if such evilness is beyond me. It's just not what is happening here.
Seriously Az for someone I know is town you are like, really trying to deny my credibility people. Basically saying because I am not hyper active my reads are wrong, acting as if I don't have experience with this type of stuff, completely not reading large portions of my posts.
Like man, what the hell Az.
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No Az your post to me was you literally not reading my posts.
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Of course you're that devious.
But why is it such a stretch to believe that Tom is that devious, also?
My point was never to say you weren't that devious, it was that the bar to being that devious is really quite low, actually.
The stretch is I read his posts and don't see the scum perspective on this play. Not that it could never be, just that it isn't here.
I am not trying to say "what a silly thought, let's not be paranoid" and more "I am pretty paranoid, but I don't think Tom is coming from a scum place."
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2015 - Best Mafia Player
2015 - Best Overall Player
You're giving me the ultimatum of "conjure a long-winded post that will take several hours to complete or I will vote town until the end of the Day." No. I'm not playing this game that way. Explain why my reads are unconvincing to you and we'll dance but I'm not going to make this game a miserable slog for myself by putting forth the effort to hand-hold everyone else to the correct conclusion by being the singularity of effort, here. That is the easiest way to get me to check out of a game and I am not interested, because it will literally go the way of Stargate (except maybe minus the scum gambit to get me mislynched) and ZDS's Normal. I'll have solved the game and I won't want to engage with ANYONE at length after that because my effort meter will be fully expended after that. I refuse to inconvenience myself based upon your preconceived notions of how townIso should play based on how townIso HAS played, simply because those are the methods I've used before to the best results. And as Newcomb said before, that's just a blowout and no fun for anybody else.
So, I'm not breaking this entire game down just to explain my worldview. If you want me to try to convince you, you need to attack the ideas I've expressed based on the evidence in this thread - not dismiss them on meta reads that have quite frankly never been effective in reading experienced players such as myself or Eco.
Please feel free to engage me in discourse on my stated arguments. Thanks!
no he is not but you would know that if you were reading the game, yourself
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player