MTG Salvation

Quote from GJ »

I....literally don't know how you can say with a straight face I had zero interaction with WG day 1. I had TONS of it, but the difference was that I was reading him and defending him as town, going after Sir Chris. I had TONS of interaction with WG, and my dynamic towards him did switch to reading him more scum, just as my read on Sir Chris started leaning more towards town. I can't point to a single post where that switch happened, but day 2, I just started to inch farther and farther away from a scum Sir Chris and a town WG.

Please point out where you had interactions with Wheat Day 1. I did a quick skim of your posts and the only place where you interacted with Wheat are these questions:

Quote from GJ »

So you think all 3 of us have just been giving each other reach-arounds, and everyone else is town this game?

Quote from GJ »

@Wheat: I see it is likely a town read. You are really flip floppy in your reads as town, and did the same 180 on Iso in XKCD mafia where you were town reading him day 1, scum reading him days 2/3. From what I have seen in your scum games, you tend to be pretty static in your town reads, and seldom seemed to switch, like you were in Star Trek. I can't remember true name, but I believe there was a similar pattern as well.

I'll try to get to the Seppel read through tonight and then I'll cast my vote.

Alright, let's do this.

Summary of Seppel:
Starts off with the "I can read Azrael better than anyone else" statement which we all know this game disproves that theory. Has the activity comment which I thought sounded genuine on Day 1, but we had relatively little to go on at that stage, so I'm treating it as a null tell right now. Something I noticed now that I'm looking through his ISO is that Seppel had a pretty consistent track record of starting/joining wagons then rapidly hopping off them, which is what he did with Cythare, GJ, and then me. Note that he starts off scumreading GJ then shifts it later to "anti town but not indicative of scum".

Something that strikes me as odd is that sometimes it appears that Seppel has scintillating reads on Wheat, which I am not sure if they were buddies that Seppel would do that. First, Seppel goes:

Quote from Seppel »

Wheat reminded me that Proph is scum.

He then labels Wheat as scum with me and Cythare, then he says "I have a townread on Wheat" all without reasoning. Trying to think if scum!Seppel would bounce a read back and forth like that.

And man Seppel shifts votes like crazy. Bunch of times onto ZDS and Iso.

Quote from Seppel »

(ง'̀-'́)ง fite me

It's annoying that nobody is scumreading me and just a few people are being suspicious of me and DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT.

This posts does ring true though. Don't think Seppel would invite pressure on him as scum?

Hard-lines against ZDS here and was a key component of getting him lynched.

DAY 2

His posts here indicate that he thought that ZDS flipped town, which I still have no idea how he came to that conclusion but his posts are consistent with that fact.

How does Seppel vote Wheat here after exclaiming for most of Day 1 that Wheat was town? GJ and Seppel, they both hopped onto the Wheat wagon despite them saying positive things about Wheat D1. This I feel like confirms either one of them as scum (not that we didn't know that already!) since I think it's a very logical scum thought process to make when you see your buddy be the counterwagon to the town lynch.

He calls Chris scum ("scumChris tilt!") but doesn't actually follow up on it? Then we start on the rereads which I actually really like, even on a reread. The Cythare one mindmelded with my Jobie/Cythare reread I did earlier, but assuming the scum knew that Wheat was going down anyways I'm not awarding it to him. I'm also unsure if Seppel/GJ were scum if Seppel would put a big "I DON'T KNOW" on his buddy like that.

Still like the "I think I just caught you" language from Seppel. Same thing with regards to Az as well. Has this post:

Quote from Seppel »

HEY CYAN

If Rhand comes in to hammer me, the game's in your hands. I absolve myself of any trainwreck that happens after my lynch. I've already posted everything that needs to be posted to find the scum.

Final recap:

Cyan
DCIII/Taredas
Sir Chris

Prophylaxis
Rhand
Gentleman Johnny
Cythare
Azrael
Wheat_Grinder

GJ goes up to leaning town because he's still participating and his posts are (dare I say it) good.

Cythare goes down to gray for doing uck all nothing.

======================================================

Here's how the rest of the game should go:

N2: Rhand dies while protecting Cyan (or they block Cyan + kill Rhand)
D3: Lynch Wheat
N3: Cyan dies (or Rhand if still alive)
D4: Lynch Azrael
N4: Taredas dies

We endgame with:

1. Sir Chris
2. Prophylaxis
3. Cythare
4. Gentleman Johnny

NL if you want Proph or Chris to pointlessly die.

Cythare and GJ duke it out. GJ probably wins due to posting more. We find out if we've won.

Which is still pretty townie though I don't know if Seppel can fake it. Pushing GJ to townie is though.

Then we get to Day 3/Day 4, where the content level of Seppel noticeably drops. The thing that bothers me is that he kept proclaiming Az as scum throughout Day 2 but never actually votes him Day 3, and the way that he tries to use that as a defense early on in Day 4 was pretty terrible. It feels like Seppel is trying to vie for Jobie as a mislynch and trying to protect his buddy GJ here, if they are both scum.


Voting pattern:
Sir Chris (RVS), Cythare (D1), GJ (d1), Prophylaxis (D1) Cyan (D1), ZDS (D1), Iso (D1)
Cyan (D2), Wheat (D2)

Conclusion: Seppel was strongest to me during Day 2, and having a look back on his posts during that time frame reminded me why I thought Seppel was town. Seppel's Day 1 was questionable and his interactions with Wheat are subpar at best. Also, him fitting on a team with GJ and Wheat makes sense, but I just want to know if he's capable of faking his Day 2 stuff. Like, if Tar's point about the SQUEEZE PLAY is true, then why has Seppel been angling for a Jobie lynch all this time? If they were scum together, then wouldn't it be smarter for them to aggressively bus (unless they need to keep Jobie as someone under suspicion or something?)

So yeah. This is what I'm working with right now. Would value input from Chris/Tar on Seppel.

Seppel has had a track record of mixing up things. I still struggle to imagine how he missed ZDS's flip.

Maybe I'm WIFOMing myself out, with the way Seppel has approached Today?

No objections on the vote; I don't think that I can get enough people to lynch GJ Today (you're townreading him, Jobie is, and Seppel is ambivalent) so I'm fine lynching Seppel and lynching GJ Tomorrow.

Vote Seppel

Ooooh my god this game.

I was thinking about putting in notes about my reactions to some stuff and posting it to the post game later, but I got lazy and never followed up on it.

When I got my role PM and in the first.. couple of weeks of Day 1 I thought we were toast. The town seemed to be firing in all cylinders and my scum game was underperforming - every post I made just sounded artificial. All I wanted to do was to make it up for my team and actually put some real effort in, which led to the dreadnought that somehow got me out of the lynch. My mindset going into it was "well, even if this gets me lynched, I know I put in the most effort possible to prevent it, so I could say that I participated this game. If it gets me out of alive, then.. yay!"

That post really gave me a "level up" in that I could post without constantly worrying if I goofed up or something. I thought my posts from there to.. nearly end of the game (where I just wanted to get the game over with) were decent, even if obviously crafted.

After that and Day 1, I was just pretty much headbanging at how the town constantly devoured itself. It was probably better play to lynch Seppel during Day 2 and get Wheat Day 3, but I thought I needed to dig in my heels and actually commit to lynching the person that I argued for, hence me whiteknighting Seppel and ensuring the Wheat lynch. I was a bit spooked at Cyan calling me scum D2, but I knew that once he saw the Wheat flip then he would massively re-evaluate.

I was also a bit spooked coming into Day 3 with Jobie and Az gunning for me but I had massive town cred at that point, and all I needed to do was try and find a way to attack Azrael genuinely.

Day 4 I wanted to imitate the endgame of Famous Historical Figures (the ideal way an endgame SHOULD be played, IMO) so I spent a bunch of time rereading the game and "letting the posts dictate my reads". I was kind of blatantly scummy with how I completely erased my town reads of GJ and Seppel, but hey - if you're a townie then it's on you to re-evaluate and re-examine your previous townreads. I was kind of phoning it in at that point but our victory was certain, so it didn't matter.

I'm pretty sure I have more thoughts about this game that I'll post when I get to them but this was a immensely enjoyable game, despite me hating rolling scum. I think that this game was really a level up moment for me for my scum play. I don't know if it'll work again in the future, though, since this game has huge meta issues for me. I still wouldn't like to roll scum again, though - deceiving other players was painful and caused me to think "oh my god why is this town so bad".

My scum game also makes me a bit scared as town, as well, since I pulled a bunch of tricks that I highly doubt my town game will figure out. Given that my town game is kind of in a state of flux after Final Fantasy, this is probably one of my last games where I'll use my old tools. I'll probably need to examine my scumhunting strategies to better cope with the tricks scum can do currently.

I would welcome any feedback/suggestions on my scum game. It's something that I do want to improve, since I felt like I was mostly coasting on Chris + using dirty bussing tricks to get through.

@Cyan: I think at the end, one of the big problems (and most of the town in particular) was that everyone seemed to be townreading and scumreading different people, with absolutely no coordination. I think you suspected Cythare/Jobie, GJ, me, Seppel, Chris, ZDS, Iso, Wheat, and Azrael (with some Tar in there) at different points through the game. That's 9 people! Literally the only person you trusted off the bat and never wavered on was Rhand.

It was probably difficult since, as you said, everyone's games being good makes it hard to fully trust anyone. If the town tried to form a townbloc/cluster of townreads sometime during Day 2 or something, then I think the game would be much harder for us to win.

I think you did a great job being transparently town, and that's honestly 50% of what a townie needs to do. It was unfortunate that you townread both of us, but generally you can count on your other fellow townies to pick up your pieces. Mafia is a team game, after all - it's very rare for one person to be universally townread as well as immediately catch all the scum.

Quote from Chris »

I think wagon and interaction analysis would have been very brutal in trying to catch me this game. I bussed Wheat so hard even Wheat thought I was being spiteful. Hard to come back from that if you're town.

This is true. I tried to look at vote counts and interactions and it was so easy to incriminate a fellow townie using them (Az, Seppel, GJ all had mediocre Wheat interactions).

This is something to keep in mind though for my future town games, since seeing how easy it is to manipulate one of my most favorite tools is concerning.

Mmhm, I'm hoping to restructure my town game since I relied on a bunch of interaction analysis to get me through Final Fantasy and that method of analysis was shot there. This game made me see vote analysis shot as well, the only difference is that WE were doing the manipulating.

Would love to hear your thoughts on scum philosophy! There were many areas in this game that I could have done better.