I skimmed through Eco's towncase on me in bed, I'll try to get a more coherent response to it in a little bit.
Will start really diving into this game in a couple of hours.
The thing that's been on my mind for the past couple of days is: Is Grape scum, and has his push on me been largely agenda-driven throughout the entirety of the game? Or is he town, the team is exactly Eco/KJ, and we need to find each other as town for us to win this game? I'd normally default towards the former, but his posts have been.. quite tonally town, and I am not sure if Grape has the scum range to continuously push me like this.
If he's scum here he's played an excellent game for making me doubt myself, even though he's been pushing me pretty statically for most of the game.
Eco: Have you done anything this game realistically that you can point to and say "this is out of my scum range"?
All of your posts have been legitimately /good/ and coherent. However, my concern still is that I think your scum game is the scariest out of everyone's here, and I am not sure if you have actually done anything that would be unfakeable for you as scum. I do think that the approach you've taken to xylo (clearing me and Last) is pretty damn risky, but in that world there is still a victory path for you - which is convincing us to mislunch the townie in the (Eco/GF/KJ) group.
Eco: Have you done anything this game realistically that you can point to and say "this is out of my scum range"?
Honestly? I don't think so. Maybe I wouldn't bother to go as in depth on Last's meta as scum, but I can't know for sure. But as arrogant as it sounds, I feel like my scum range is (or at least was) virtually infinite. You know the right way to read me is to try and look behind my posts and work out if I'm truly trying to work things out or not.
Eco: Have you done anything this game realistically that you can point to and say "this is out of my scum range"?
Honestly? I don't think so. Maybe I wouldn't bother to go as in depth on Last's meta as scum, but I can't know for sure. But as arrogant as it sounds, I feel like my scum range is (or at least was) virtually infinite. You know the right way to read me is to try and look behind my posts and work out if I'm truly trying to work things out or not.
i mean going through the motions is fine, but u somehow failed to see the circumstances of grapes eod vote, and then found other reasons to make him look bad.
I did have a quick look at KJ/GF interactions. There's not really a lot, but the progressions are:
Grapefruit on KJ: Null/can't recall until a light town read in #768, lists KJ as wolf in #775, scumish reading in #996, votes KJ in #1062, and D3 has been on Proph/KJ team pretty consistently.
KJ on Grapefruit: null untill townish in #941, town in #990, then listed as possible scum/PoE in #1086 and #1117
There have been a minimal direct questions between the two (#947 is the main example), so I can't see any real attempt to figure the other out by either; just listed as null and falling down into the PoE. This makes Grape voting KJ and listing him as top scum D3 really the only notable interaction between the two. It's a bit of a weird thing to do to your buddy, but I can easily see them both reluctant to make a hard read either way then Grape deciding KJ is dead wood at this stage and going for the bus. There's certainly no cohesive pattern that rules out a KJ/Grape team in my mind.
I do think that a lazy (and idk, maybe it will work) approach for me to try and solve this game is to figure out who can't be aligned between KJ/Eco, KJ/Grape, and Eco/Grape. I'm not gonna do it now before I finish these ISOs because I am not very sure on the accuracy of this type of scumhunting method, but I will try to do that sometime tomorrow and see what I can dig up.
Goal of this ISO is to figure out if he's town and just wrongfully tunneling me, or if he's scum and pushing me in bad faith. Let's get this bread
On a scale of RVS to Final 3 how serious is this vote?
@Wisp have you been playing off site games recently? When did you last finish a game.
@Proph You seem eager to get out of RVS, is this a new thing for you or am I misremembering your MO.
The question to me is a little intriguing because he got out of Snow White Mafia with me like.. nearly a year ago? Where I was mafia, and I also had a very reckless entrance. He said this that game:
Overly performative excitement? Must be scum!Proph.
But seriously if this is our swan song this is a great player list.
Proph was aware that I'm in australia at some point. So lumping me with low posters for posting twice before going to bed sure is a thing. Probably a meaningless thing but sure is a thing. Active lurking definitely is the thing. Proph never was great at just floating.
Vote: DK
If we're going to do bad mafia tells we should definitely use the third person on an pseudoRVS wagon tell.
@Vaimes Hi, glad you think my RVS is that bad! You should know it isn't my RVS that's bad at scum, it's my late day one that's a train wreck as scum.
Really weak, but I feel like me trying to end RVS early (again) should have maybe incited more of a reaction from him? Unsure.
I am assuming that means with really great partners, I know GOAT as slang but not used that way before, correct me if that is wrong.
It's way too small of a sample size but I can't help but town read engaged relaxed Wisp. He has so much trouble replicating his breezy style as a wolf and I think it would have been easier if he'd been coming back from a hiatus and just bursting with excitement to play again.
@Crossbell while protecting your identity would you say you've played with most of the people posting so far before?
I questioned this beforehand since I was scumreading Wisp at the time for.. not being engaged/relaxed. Little strange that we came to the opposite conclusions at the time, but I was pretty wrong there.
Says that his Crossbell vote has become serious. The question I keep coming back to is - does scum in this game just let this wagon stall out? Four townies on a townie? I mean, I guess they would be under flak for hammering if KJ/Cantrip is the scumteam and they just Didn't Play, but.. yeah.
I wouldn't say it's developed so much as my initial impression has been negative. Didn't like the mafia slip question towards you at all (looked like asking for permission to push) and the town read on you seemed flimsy. I also find their presence to be a bit jaggedy and uneven. A weird mixture of relaxation and discomfort that I can't quite figure out. Knowing they're familiar with everyone here makes me lean towards the discomfort I'm picking up on be from rolling scum but it's a minor thing.
TLDR a couple reads that feel like they skipped a step and weird tone stuff I'm putting way too much stock into.
This read is fine. Didn't really quote anything, but this tonal based read I can buy.
I'm not sure. The line about me explaining it better feels particularly bad because I know my rambling made no sense and that's why I TLDR'd it, but like it's also the sort of stream of consciousness stuff that if he keeps it up he has a hard time faking. As a once off it's fakable but not all game long.
Anyway hang in there Pacific NW people. It's absolutely brutal to not have AC in that sort of heat and I know there isn't widespread home AC up there.
Little self aware here with him saying that his own "rambling made no sense". Will have to check and see if that's something he does as scum or town more.
He's annoyed but there is no undercurrent of fear or being uncomfortable. He's peeved (which is normal for wisp) without being on edge.
@Dota Welcome to the right side of history. Can you talk about the KJ distancing read though. I'm really confused what you think the significance of it is. KJ is more likely to be town because he pointed out an interaction could be distancing? Are you an MTG player? Because Axel is right that Time Walk and Ancestral really do massively overshadow Timetwister to a massive degree. So if anything I'd put KJ making a point of it more likely to KJ trying to generate an interaction than anything to do with Axel. Now I'm not going to scum read him over it because that would be ridiculous, but I think I'd put it as a tiny unaligned between KJ and Axel if KJ were to flip scum. Think it's entirely meaningless from Axel's side though. His flip would mean nothing towards KJs.
@Cantrip I don't get your town read on crossbell at all. You only added two details beyond engaged and solvey=town. The first was the Proph roleplay was a factor in other people (DV and myself notably) scum reading the wall post and you having a guess to the identity and projecting that to the town meta. I have a hard time seeing how that equals a top town read.
Good prodding on DoTA with the KJ distancing read question, and good prodding as well on the Cantrip question. Like how he engaged with Cantrip here because he saw that Cantrip was townreading his top scum read and wanted to ask him why specifically he was doing so.
First off I know that the game is young but you pushing a scum read off of something as minor as a change in RVS behavior feels very out of character for you. Second Wisp is notoriously inconsistent and I know for a fact has expressed disdain for RVS in the past. No clue if it's recent. I also find it unlikely that you really believe that Wisp would have a pattern of RVS'ing as town but not mafia. Very unlikely. Puts me in mind of what DV was just describing about finding a technicality to nitpick as scum. Going to have to reevaluate Crossbell now because I think you two are very probably unaligned.
This read on me is fine for the most part I think - I thought that at the time Wisp had a pattern of RVSing as town but not mafia, but that was before I checked his earlier MTGS games. I still like how he had an unaligned read on Osie and I and says that he will have to re-evaluate him based on his new scumread of me. It still feels fairly organic.
Can confirm it was Osie and he was absolutely raked over the coals for it before other things happened that combusted. And now I'm doubting myself because I remember hard defending that on the argument it was town indicative for Osie specifically but I think it might just not be as indicative as I thought it was in general to be scummy.
Going to reread crossbell when I have time which is a lot of posts.
@DV how did you arrive your two groups? How much of it just scum reads versus partner worldbuilding? Your stance on me seems to have worsened on basically nothing as far as I can see.
Seems fine here. Thiiink I like himself saying that he is doubting himself?
Back at you compadre. Still not liking the cut of your jib. But I ended up not reading anything last night. Was cubing instead (speaking of people should join us next time we cube in the MTGS discord! It's fun!) and ran out of time.
Mentioning this bc I know I need to get my games in, but I'd like to do so when this game is over.
Convinced but filled with crippling self doubt is my confidence level. Ohhh wait, that's just my default state of mind.
More self-deprecation. Again, something I'd like to check for.
And there go my good feelings from the Wisp pivot. The pivot itself is definitely town indicative but where is the reevaluation of the rest of the game. It's just a complete upheaval in how he's viewing the game but the only change in prospective is to add wisp to the town block. Just feels off to me. Bleh.
Trying to figure out if scum Grape would have this sort of mid-post re-evaluation on his read of me. Again, it feels organic, and I have a slight suspicion that scum Grape's read on me would be more static here, rather than kind of free-flowy and tied to Osie's alignment.
And the rainbow wall is still just rubbing me the wrong way. Like the read on me for example chooses to harp on the second vote when it seems obvious my vote was determined before the game by the cards. But then there does seem to be a reasonable thought process on reacting to my posts. Interestingly though is that it's very staccato. Could be a playstyle thing but each point about my posts is disconnected from the last. For example mentions my question to Wisp looks like busy work but then likes my explanation in #66 with some reservations. Or the emphasis on 69 being unexplained and abrupt before sort of liking my 73 where it's explained. It feels performative but I am not sure if I'm mistaking different style for scummy. To me it feels like busywork because I'd never do an ISO that way and I'd weave back to the earlier posts in my analysis and how the subsequent posts change my opinions of them. The only reason I might is if I was scum just trying to get something to stick to the wall and was writing up every post without thinking about it.
Again, I still like the mindset and how nuanced this read gets. It feels like they are real thoughts coming from Grape.
The Axel Meta analysis doesn't give me great vibes. It's very arbitrary with the 100 post cut off and fact that in particular 80s feelgood was similarly joking. I get that it was about the switch flipping to serious but it doesn't go into the context of the game at all. The comparison to Feel Good 80s in particular is pinging me. That game was so comparably jokey that I think it completely undermines their point. And I think Crossbell knows it too throwing my quote in at the end talking about how the joking is a character break. Definitely agenda vibes here.
The team sort in 155 is just incomprehensible to me. I have no clue how any Cantrip teams were eliminated at that point. Cantrip had 1 post at that point. 1.
I think this might be confirmation bias because I've been scum reading Cross through this ISO but the friendly meme'ing with Proph and DV feels like if not a pocket attempt and attempt to get in their good graces.
198 is sort of what I mean. It's a kind of pointless post other than to agree with Proph. He doesn't really use that distinction to push Wisp or Axel. He's pushing Axel but that is never really his point.
The pivot to Dota has a whiff of OMGUS to it. Not in the traditional sense of a knee jerk reaction but in a wanting to build a wagon over the vote. The move off Axel and onto Dota just feels off to me. I can't point to any specific post but the way they beg DV to go with them and then follow Proph instead after DV votes with Cross is just more of the appeasement I was getting at.
ISO done.
So major thoughts are the intial tone felt off but that improved throughout the game. Probably was mostly early Roleplay missing for me. The readswall and team sort are agenda'y red flags to me. As is the intial Axel push. Then the buddying up to Proph and DV just doesn't feel like town core building to me (given the different handling of Wisp for example).
Again, most of this ISO feels very well done and his thoughts read as appropriately nuanced. Specifically the part where he says that the spamming with Wisp feels like a town thing to do (because I'd expect scum to be tunnelled and not consider the opposing viewpoint) and how he's nitpicking over Osie's use of the Feel Good 80s mafia game as a meta comparison. It's not unfakeable, no, but if he's scum constructing this post then he's done a pretty good job here.
So yeah, I do like his Osie push. Maybe the gamestate just ended up in a way where Osie put his foot into his mouth so hard, four townies jumped on him and then scum KJ and Cantrip were just lurking and couldn't really get their vote onto the wagon to hammer because it would attract negative attention. Idk.
Out of time for now but did a quick Axel ISO and I didn't take much away from it. Tonally I think he's jokier than my memory of Axel but Cross's meta dive reminded me of how much he leaned into fun in 80s mafia. So the tone shift really isn't meaningful at all probably. Outside of tone stuff there really isn't much only two posts caught my eye.
This seems not fully chased out to me. Crossbell's wall has been probably the most talked about event in this game and generated some strong opinions. I can see the process of it being town+ for Osie but I struggle to see the setting it aside part for anyone else. Or if he thinks it's not indicative not digging into other people's rather more zealous reactions down the line (like my own). That just doesn't happen and it just feels a bit isolated to me. Some points for a Cross/Axel unalignment though.
This on the other hand looks pretty solid to me. It's a reasonable call out on a difference in meta interpretation and that follow through interaction I felt was lacking in the previous post I highlighted. He's not just viewing in isolation here and you can see the effort to tug at people's opinions and sort things that was lacking.
Good analysis of Axel. The second paragraph here shows a fair amount of nuance that again, would be pretty tough for Grape to fake as scum. Him saying that it's a little weird that Axel didn't pursue that line of thought further is a decent observation. Third paragraph is also solid.
Quick post Cross being Osie weakens a bunch of my points against him. Definitely going to need to reevaluate and see how much of my case still makes sense with that meta.
Unvote
Then here he unvotes because Osie revealed himself to be Osie. Grape has mentioned multiple times that if Crossbell was actually Osie then that would weaken his case quite a bit, so he's acting consistent here.
The body mostly talks about his own mindset in interacting with Osie and barely mentions reasons for actively town reading him. The first 3 paragraphs end with a negative view! And they are the most in depth. After that Proph just mostly points to his older posts as explanations for his reads and uses the line about missing maliciousness.
The big problem I have with this post is that he's presenting it as a long promised explanation about his Osie read but he doesn't really do that. It's a sublte difference but it's more a justification for his read than it is a read of Osie.
This line in particular sticks out to me: "I keep interacting with Osie and I am using him sort of a sounding board to re-evaluate my own reads, like the one scumread I had on Wisp at the time:"
That does nothing to explain why he thought Osie was town but it does justify Proph's actions. This isn't someone trying to enlighten the game, it's someone trying to protect themselves from blowback. The TLDR provides a postitive case for Osie but it's also a weak case that doesn't really justify the strength proph was posting with or the repeated delays in explaining it. Activity, TWTBAW, and roleplay isn't this indepth case that is hard to explain. This definitely feels like covering tracks and retroactive justification more than it feels like a natural town case.
Vote: Proph
This is where he starts pressuring and voting me, and I was pretty skeeved out at the time. I have to admit something though. The reason why I feel more charitable about this post is that - yes, I did feel as though what I wrote out about Osie was more of a justification for my read on him rather than an organic town case. The reason for this is because I thought DV wanted an explanation on HOW I got to my townread on Osie, rather than reasoning as to why Osie was town. So I just stepped back and tried to walk him through my mindset, which does look like as though I was justifying my actions.
So I can understand how he got to this read, and I am looking at it more charitably now than in the past. And I can understand how he switched from Osie to me since his progression was literally "one of Osie/Proph must be scum".
Why is it weird? Osie is notorious for posting walls early that get him scum read. It's in his wolf range but it being overblown isn't something that deserves a tunnel like it would be for most people. The other thoughts still apply but the wall was the crux of the case at this point. The jaggedness of his tone early is worth very little at this stage and while the actual criticisms of the wall apply the urgency of delving into them is less because Osie is always going to force himself to give an explanation for everyone by post 100-150. Still side eyeing the slot over the actual content of the reads on you and me in particular but it's just less of a 5 alarm siren than it was before I knew it was Osie.
This is fine yes. Again, I think that quantifying his read on Crossbell with "if it's Osie then I'm gonna re-evaluate" is a weird approach for scum to take, and it would have to have been some excellent pre-planning if Grape was scum.
That's fair. I still think the slot has a decent chance to be scum. Less than I did before I knew the cross was Osie but still not zero. Especially since GJ's not scum with Proph and Proph's wall was howling.
And I still hate this post because it felt like he was trying to chain mislunches. He literally said that "it's less of a 5 alarm siren than it was before I knew it was Osie" and then he goes "I still think the slot has a decent chance to be scum" which.. I know those two terms are similar but from his unvote it felt that he was on track to completely re-evaluate Osie since I made him out who he was. Just kinda ehh. I kind sort of buy that he went from TOP SCUMREAD to something more of a neutral/nullread, I guess?
And my reads have been static if you just look at a list but I went from 60%Cross scum to 30% and you like 35% to 65%.
Yeah this makes sense.
So you're on town!GJ now?
If that's the case I'm just dead here. No other options are viable.
Legacy time.
This is the post that still gives me the heebie-jeebies. The way he just goes "If that's the case I'm just dead here. No other options are viable.
Legacy time" on a dime is super emotionless and abrupt, and I feel like town Grape would have expressed more emotion here rather than this flat post.
Sorry I only came back 50 minutes before the deadline after making a whole new case on a wolf yesterday. I'll make sure to town it up more next time.
Anyway time to so this I guess...
Vote: GJ
Proph is scum. Read my wall. Read his wall. It never comes from town him. His eod was better but still is scum.
Wisp is town. Anmoying he thinks I'm so much worse than Proph as town bit fair.
DV I think is town. If he's a wolf I think he tries to escalate that fight with Proph and use it to burst him. Unless they are exactly buddies but then why start his push in the first place.
DV votes me and I still die here.
I do like these posts. I get the feeling that he genuinely thought he was gonna die, given the spelling mistakes. The "Anmoying he thinks I'm so much worse than Proph as town bit fair" is also like a little quibble that I don't think manifests if he's scum.
He also listed a bunch of people as town rather than trying to shade people going out the door, which is sorta okay?
So Day 1 from Grape looks really good. He has plenty of nuanced thoughts, he has a logical progression that is mostly accounted for, and a solid EoD minus the emotionless "legacy time" post. If he's scum here, he played a really good Day 1.
Day 2 time.
I have also not read over night. So instead going to just talk through my EoD musings.
Proph felt pretty townie in terms of collaboration and energy but not enough to completely erase my doubts about him. The way the strength of his read on me went from 20 to 60 is a red flag but I have to give him credit he was assertive and strong which as DV pointed out doesn't match his scum meta. We'll see if he's able to sustain that energy I'm going to have to reevaluate, the Osie wall is still scummy but it's no longer the biggest thing he's done.
KJ's hammer is just one of those black boxes that I just can't evaluate. I can project anything into it and it's just not as indicative as I want it to be. I like his posting being in his own world just chasing his own leads and not worrying about the larger game state. Usually points to town!KJ.
Wisp had a super weird EoD. His progression on me was completely insrutable. Went from having me as untouchable and voting Proph to not wanting to vote Proph D1 because it would feel bad to be wrong, to completely sheeping Proph and being at my throat. Without showing his work. Wild swings are par for the course for Wisp. As is not showing work. But that was pretty abrupt even for him.
I think I mentioned this before, but I sorta like how he mentions Wisp here. Feels like most scum at this point would table off Wisp as a mislunch option given how he's played but him throwing him in here doesn't feel malicious exactly? It's more of like a "this is some stuff that concerned me". His thoughts on here are also decently nuanced.
What are you talking about?
It's hard to be proactive when you come back 45 minutes before a deadline and everyone has decided you are scum for the proactive case you made before you left the night before. And I was never not self pres'ing. Just waiting till the last minute to try and get the CFD onto my preferred target. I announced my intention to vote GJ if I couldn't get votes on proph, was just waiting till 5 minutes before the deadline because with plurality voting Proph was only 1.5 votes away from the lead.
I don't mind you voting me for being a wet noodle who barely posts, that's just who I am, I do mind you completely misrepresenting me when I do post.
And I did like how he cared about Wisp misrepresenting him. Also this is no. 3 for self deprecation.
I've talked about this before and it's beside the point of anything but this is a huge part of why our community hasn't adapted well to Champs games or playing elsewhere always. We have a lot of people who don't care about real time interaction at all and prefer to play a style similar to correspondence chess. Then we have the people who have adapted to a modern style and well the two styles don't mix well.
Anyway I went back and checked and I was less active for the first half of my deadline time than I realized. Still doesn't match Wisp's argument that I wasn't proactive but I can at least understand frozen wolf. If anything I was too focused on doing my own thing and pushing Proph when I should have realized the momentum wasn't there at all. I just posted less early on than I thought.
@Axelrod why would pushing over being too correct give you the heebie jeebies? Isn't that the basis of a lot of mafia tells based on TMI?
This reversal on the second paragraph also is fine to me and again not malicious.
I'm torn but yeah. His EoD is good but everything before it is howling.
And I'm not hedging on you anymore. I thought I was more active than I was. I can see how you reached frozen wolf now which is wrong but at least not insane anymore.
And if you think I'm scum vote for me. You don't have to not pursue other avenues while you're voting me. It makes for easier wagon analysis down the line.
I've been doing the whole "vote for me if you think I'm scum" thing a lot, so I think that's a decent look for GF.
Scum games have been a while. And my most recent wasn't complete.
Town: Shoushiling and Tarot
Scum: Modern and I replaced out of Matter mafia but you can check it out too for the short while I'm in it.
Out of curiosity, do you have any scum games on MU? Or did you roll town for all of the Champs games?
My recent scum games have been embarrassing but people still give me some respect as a scum player. If my town game was anywhere close to decent I'd have turned into the easiest read on this site. Instead I'm bad at both barring an occasional outlier like Tarot mafia where I was randomly a god.
Self deprecation no. 4.
Okay but that line of thought doesn't mesh with you finding Wisp to be a bit scummy. Because if Dota is being pushed as the fall guy then it isn't scum making that push. I guess Wisp is technically on Dota but he's much more interested in pushing you. Build a team for me. If someone in that pool isn't a high priority and there is a deep wolf what is happening? Just stating that idea and not chasing it down isn't a town thought. It's the appearance of trying to think holistically about the game without actually doing it.
Okay and how did they develop from there? What did you gain from monitoring his leads? Or what were you hoping to glean?
Good lines of questioning and thought. First paragraph is regarding KJ, second is regarding DoTA.
Okay Proph isn't happening today.
Vote: KJ
Definitely prefer this over Dota and I think I prefer it over Eco. Dota isn't buddied with Proph as I've said before. His reevaluation today doesn't mean as much because he's already been called out on it. As for Eco his heavy interactions with Proph don't strike me as W/W stuff. Feels like Eco is genuinely trying to figure Proph out despite having him as a town read. Time to actually read the walls and reply to stuff.
Charitable view of Eco here (which is based on him seeing me/KJ as a scumteam, but I still like it I think).
Look, I'm pretty tunnelled here. The only townie townie voting record thing I can point to on Proph was his effort to save GJ at the EoD but I happen to have insight that his CFD attempt was onto town and had it been successful it's extremely unlikely GJ would have been able to leave the PoE. He spent yesterday zero'd in on Dota from pretty much the start of day. And while there was cursory looks into other people his push on Dota never wavered. Proph historically has been even more prone to reevaluations than I am but that never really happened in a serious way here. Look at 1045 for example. He ISO's Dota first on the basis that he's been the main focus of the day. Dota has only been the main focus because of Proph. The only real negative post he cites is that he referred to GJ as providing the most information when he voted him again at EoD1, outside that it has some mildly positive reactions to the posts themselves particularly saying "I can see the progression on KJ". In 1046 he basically says that it's down to lack of content because he had a generally positive vibe from Dota.
In 1054 we have his PBPA on KJ. And to summarize a very long post Proph finishes with:
Which I'd say is much more negative than his overall Dota reaction but his very next post he states he's still on Dota and KJ is "town with heavy reservations".
Like the whole way through he's locked on Dota over KJ despite his words suggesting he should at least be equally interested, if not more interested in KJ. See for example: 1078, 1079, and 1084.
His over the top disbelief this SoD doesn't really match with his described read of Dota at all. In his wall and after he talks about how Dota is sort of fine but there isn't much there. How does that turn into "couldn't believe that Dota flipped town"? Each individual part is mostly fine but when you add this all up it pretty clearly indicates Proph's agenda here. He was just trying to get KJ through yesterday and then reevaluate the game toDay in F5. I'm not voting yet but the scum team is almost certainly KJ/Proph and I won't be voting anywhere else today. Definitely prefer Proph first but I'm pretty convinced at this point.
This post is a long list of pre-flipping me and KJ as a team. I think I addressed this in an earlier post? But basically I was giving KJ room because of Axel's townread on him plus the fact that he was actually posting, while DoTA was just not at all. In addition I saw some micro-town tells from KJ which made me hesitant to lunch him. Now, I'm not so sure - I have a sneaking suspicion that you are the last townie I need to find, and KJ/Eco may be the team. But we'll see as I keep traversing through these ISOs.
More than a little shade sent my way. Scum love to make these sort of second degree pushes. KJ is normally the type to question whatever catches his fancy but this one raises my eyebrow. Because he didn't really flag my RVS vote on his own only to suggest that Crossie should maybe suspect me for it.
326, 331, and 333 for what starts off as a probing question but fizzles into a meaty softball of "you're not scummy but why aren't you playing better?" I realize this is heavy confirmation bias from me but it definitely is a point in favor them being buddies.
475 is a readswall and again I mostly think it works for a buddy with Proph world. His town read of Proph is very ethereal compared to his other town read on Axel and his scum reads are in line with what I'd expect for a him/Proph world. The DV read in particular makes sense. Chainsawing a read on his buddy and agreeing with Proph's early read on Wisp. If his reads are that aligned with Proph then I'm surprised that it didn't factor into the town read.
Just got to the body pillow post and I have A no clue why Proph thinks it should have been AI and B no clue why Wisp thought KJ was robotic all game.
523 and 524 is a progression that is ummmmmm forced? If 523 is a a preview after doing the ISO it doesn't really match the tone of 524 and if it was excitement that lead to the ISO then why is the ISO so tepid and KJ not really disappointed at not finding his smoking gun?
The end of day is inscrutable. I want to read into it but it's not worth doing.
Good ISO of killjoy.
523/524 is an especially good catch/something I want KJ to expand upon. 523 he says "Cross might be scum" but then 524 he goes "All in all he feels like he's just kinda trying to yeet someone that he doesn't actually naturally scumread" which sure seems like it should merit a stronger scumread than "MIGHT be scum" which is.. very non-commital.
First post that feels worth diving into is his ISO on Cantrip. And it's solid. It's reasonably in depth and internally coherent. So far it's the strongest point in favor of town!KJ I've seen.
820 isn't alignment indicative at all but I disagree with it on a theory basis. Funny that he's focusing on town clearing Proph now but probably not AI. Despite my confirmation bias screaming that it is.
Then we have the game flow 1 active wolf 1 lurking wolf stuff. Which still just feels agenda based to me. The lack of explanation of why the game didn't feel dominated (lack of consensus) that didn't match up with reality (there has been a ton of consensus this game) just is utterly bizarre. So bizarre it's hard to paint as purely scummy but the use of it to push at Wisp before eventually backing down after heavy pushback is a red flag.
1063 is another red flag on the 1 high/1 low thing because he mentions he's focusing on it because it's the higher win% for mafia. It means it's not really an attempt to solve because as town you are just trying to figure out what you think is happening not trying to guess what the mafia's optimal path is and basing your solve upon that. Really highlights the lack of a solving mindset.
A bit later in the day we see the start of his pivot away from suspecting Proph before this revelation that lead to the forthcoming ISO. It's first noticable when he muses me/Wisp/Dota were scum pushing him. Then he muses that 1085 never comes from scum.
And from there it's just statement of intent to clear Proph and his one bigger post answering questions. I found nothing at all that convinced me he can't be scum. Saw nothing that makes me think he and Proph are unaligned. Saw a decent amount of scummy stuff. I am still pretty convinced it's exactly Proph/KJ.
Good analysis on Day 2 as well. I think in the KJ/Eco world, I can see where KJ analyzes Cantrip but never follows up or votes Eco as a distancing attempt.
And that's the end of his ISO. Okay, I'm really glad I did this. I was really unsure about the gamesolve before this, but as of right now I feel more comfortable with my potential gamesolve.
Day 1 Summary:
- Pushes Osie along with three other people for his poor posts - however, he has a massive caveat where he thinks that most points are weakened if he is actually Osie. Once Osie reveals himself, he switches to me since I was a brooding scumread of his for a while. Unless he planned this in scumchat, it is difficult to see that re-evaluation come from scum. Certainly possible but I feel like scum Grape would just barrel past that reveal.
- Poked at a lot of people during Day 1. Had a good Axel analysis. Solid evaluation of Crossbell/Osie. Probed DoTA/Cantrip a bit. Scumread me.
- Outside of the flat "legacy time", generally had a good EoD. Had spelling mistakes which is kinda NAI but indicates that he was concerned about getting his reads out there. Scum Grape may have just been frozen at EoD.
Day 2 Summary:
- Kind of floating for most of Day 2, but eventually refocused to me after some questioning. Had a good re-evaluation of Wisp where he admitted fault, which I think is slightly townie.
- Some more light questioning on KJ and DoTA.
Day 3 Summary:
- Good analysis/interrogation of KJ, really honing in on the Proph/KJ team.
- Working with Wisp on trying to solve. I can understand his reasoning for suspecting me and for thinking that I might be buddies with KJ, but he's wrong. I've said this numerous times already, but I know that I've been more charitable towards KJ than Cantrip/DoTA. But that was because of Axel's post + the fact that KJ had some micro towntells + he was more active than the two before Cantrip got replaced.
Meta Comparison: I looked at his posts in Matter Mafia and.. it might be confirmation bias speaking, but I find his posts to be markedly different. He's way more casual in that game and has shorter posts on average. Nothing really approaching the level of detail I'm seeing in this game wrt his Osie ISO or his case on me. He displays occasional nuanced reads in the Matter Mafia game but he displays a lot more nuance in this game.
Conclusion: Not as strong as Wisp, but after evaluating his posts, I think he is likely to be our final townie. Again, I find his push on me nerve-wracking, but upon thinking about it multiple times in my head, I don't think that he has the fortitude to scumread and push me like this if he knows that I'm town and hyperposting. He has displayed a genuine interest in solving and figuring out the game (asking multiple people detailed questions) and again, I keep coming back to this, but his nuance, level of thought, and progression I feel like is something that would be quite difficult for him to fake as scum. If he's scum, then he's played a very strong game and I think deserves to win as well. (He'll also get to use his one chance)
Then I think I'm pretty convinced that scum team is Cantrip/KJ.
Somebody would have to do some work to convince me on Grape.
I *think* I am convinced that Wisp and Grape are my two fellow townies, and that the scum team is Eco/KJ. But I will do my due diligence and do two more ISOs. Will try to get the KJ ISO out later today and maybe the Eco one Friday, and then we can talk about it for the last 48 hours or so of the game Day.
If anyone has any problems with my process then go ahead. I haven't seen any quibbles about my Wisp ISO so I assume everyone's okay with that (or is just too lazy to read my posts KEKW).
I think so. (FTR, my pet scum team I mentioned earlier was GF/Eco, but that was before I reread/did any ISOing)
I'll do my due diligence and ISO KJ/Eco tonight, but my stance is this: if you or Grape are scum, then you both have played strong games and deserve the W. I don't think Eco or KJ do.
Eco/KJ make the most sense from an Occam's Razor perspective, and TRUST IN OUR LORD AND SAVIOR DV
Its interesting, if the team is exactly Killjoy/Eco
Killjoy is defending you
Eco is defending you and me
cause from my PoV, I am never voting Grapefruit
Killjoy is never getting a vote off on me, nor is he ever getting a vote off on grape
so they are pretty much setting each other up, to cross vote each other
Why can't this be easy..... Time to re-reevaluate Proph. Him not thunderdoming me here is such an insane play to make here if he's scum that I don't believe it. Now I just want to vote KJ here I think and figure out Eco/Proph tomorrow. Still planning to read Eco today but man......
And to answer your question I never rolled scum on MU. Both my champs games were town. As was my The Thing and Tarot games.
@Eco
Btw u saying that Grape not re-evaluating makes him a wolf, is wrong. Go look at his MU game where he buried my partner. I tried hard to get this dude off my partner with his crazy reachy case, to no avail. If he thinks you are a wolf, he will re-evaluate when he thinks it needs to happen, not when you think he should.
@Proph if you're scum here that is the craziest play I have ever seen. I know you're still working on your ISO's but what do you make of KJ spending all day promising to try and clear you? I guess getting consumed by TMI like you said but that is an approach to try to avoid losing not to try and win.
If you're town here both KJ and Eco defending you when Wisp and I were working up to a vote is just wild stuff.
@Killjoy
Btw once u drop that case on why Proph is town, u need to tell me how you plan go get anyone else in this game voted out, except for Eco maybe
Well, KJ literally said that I was town at EoD2, and he tried to paint me as scum when he did the "one wolf in the high posters, one wolf in the low posters" thing but I got onto him real quick for that. So it would be kind of weird for him for him to reverse his read. Let's see what he posts though.
And I keep saying this, but scum make unconventional/non-optimal plays all the time. I know that it didn't work out when DoTA tried using that as an argument, but sometimes, scum are still wolves even if they play erratically.
Him getting ganked N1 makes a lot more sense if he was dead on the money with his scumteam. I know that listening to dead players isn't really an optimal strat, but I think it will work out here.
And to answer your question I never rolled scum on MU. Both my champs games were town. As was my The Thing and Tarot games.
OK, just wondering. Based on what I saw from you in Matter Mafia, your scum game would have had to seriously level up in a span of a year, and.. I would be very impressed if you did that tbh.
I try to listen to dead townies, I completely forgot to go read DVs post though, but I certainly wasn't changing my read of Grape, especially after me and axel came to the same conclusion
OK, just wondering. Based on what I saw from you in Matter Mafia, your scum game would have had to seriously level up in a span of a year, and.. I would be very impressed if you did that tbh.
I would like to think that Matter isn't representative of my scum game but the only scum game I'm proud of is Pirates and that is like 3 or 4 years ago now.
@Wisp Okay let's talk KJ. He's now suddenly become my most confident read, are you still town reading his emotional outburst?
No, I think I was right, to call him irrelevant. I don't do well with AtE, and I won't argue he is doing it maliciously, and he probably believes he is doing something in some kind of bubble. But like he's not, he has made no attempt to affect the account of this game. So when I call his play useless, that's what I mean. He is doing things, but are those things doing anything? And the answer is obviously no. The only things he has done, his vote two town at EoD. And that is most certainly a fact.
If he thinks that is personal, so be it, but I'm trying to solve the game. I said it before, axel was using his time efficiently, you are using your time efficiently, Proph is using his time efficiently, eco is using his time efficiently (even tho this slot is probably a wolf)
But Killjoy is not, and I don't care what he thinks, maybe that makes me toxic, maybe it doesn't.
@Grape
Idk who is going to be alive tomorrow if we hit a wolf
But if we hit killjoy and he is a wolf, he is not a wolf with Proph, specifically pointing to how he and Proph handled each other towards the end of day 2.
Eco's walls on Proph and me are fine. I just don't have the time to dig into them right now but like I can't point to any massive red flags at a glance. And his little back and forth with Wisp about my EoD1 feels natural-ish, but like he kind of has to be scum here I think. I'll try to get back into this a bit more in depth but today is a bit busy and with Proph now looking like he might actually be town the game kind of feels easy. Wisp is never scum so if Proph is legit then it's solved.
Eco's walls on Proph and me are fine. I just don't have the time to dig into them right now but like I can't point to any massive red flags at a glance. And his little back and forth with Wisp about my EoD1 feels natural-ish, but like he kind of has to be scum here I think. I'll try to get back into this a bit more in depth but today is a bit busy and with Proph now looking like he might actually be town the game kind of feels easy. Wisp is never scum so if Proph is legit then it's solved.
I mean I know Proph knows how to write good town posts as a wolf, and from what Proph is saying, Eco knows how to talk as a wolf as well. Personally I think Eco's wall skips a chunk of Proph's iso, and focuses on too little
and in terms of you, he talks about your vote on Osie, and if he had actually tried to read EoD, he would see it was self-preservation. Not to mention calling you out for not re-evaluating after Proph was right about Osie, which makes 0 sense to me.
but overall, yes, he does know how to write his thoughts and even respond to posts about them, if he is a wolf here
Wisp, can you read through Grape one more time just to make sure I'm correct here? I know you're unsure of my alignment but the way Grape just kind of stopped tunneling me after I wrote the big wall has me a tinge paranoid.
Also should be getting the wall out at around midnight my time, evening was busier than usual.
Biggest enigma in this game by a decent margin. Let's do it. (No formatting because MTGS broke it when I c+p'd from MafiaUniverse)
Ok lets do with without Previews then.
There's a fake Crossbell in this game! And he has a Curse Premium subscription! Obvious scum! [b]Vote Prophylaxis[/b]
[b]@Crossbell:[/b] Is placing a second vote on someone (hypothetically town) who hasn't come in yet really a thing? On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the worst) how scummy do you find it?
I think Axel not including Timetwister kinda reads to me as "less likely aligned" than "criminal mastermind obviously avoiding his buddy" especially since that would be optimal distancing time.
[b]@DotA]/b] What you did was being Timetwister, obviously.
[b]@Proph[/b] Yeah this can't wait anymore.
[b]Unvote[/b]
Maybe it's just bias, but I can't help but think that the whole "place a fake RVS vote, reply, and then unvote" is a little too on the nose/a little too staged. Like "oh hey I'm participating in RVS" thing. Very weak but I feel compelled to mention it regardless.
Also I got this Curse Premium sub thing after I resigned from moderatorship, it's pretty useless lol
Hey DV, I'd like to know why you think Crossbell potentially has inside info for what is obviously a reaction to Proph's play? That post is obviously "Proph is town [based on something unsaid as of yet] but you jumped straight to inside info/discrediting. What gives there?
@Dota: "There is some engagement around page 4/5 between Axel and Crossbell but are they trying to figure each other out or just posting for the sake of having spoken to one another. I don't know if this makes them W/W or T/W but I have a gut feeling that it's not T/T." If one of the possibilities is 'trying to figure each other out, wouldn't T/T be possible there? What specifically makes you lean that they are not [both] doing that which would specifically make it a not t/t interaction?
Fine questions here, and he does follow up on them, which is good.
Actually, have you considered it seriously? This game size is 3/4 of the usual size. From a theory standpoint, is the second vote on a hypothetical town player in RVS actually be more significant than not?
It might actually be.
And here's the whole "shading Grape very indirectly" thing which I know Grape and Wisp both did not like. I think this is a very mild unaligned pair for KJ and Grape - because I don't really see why KJ would even try to damage Grape's credibility during this part of the game.
Proph: How rusty are you feeling this game?
When I'm reading your posts, I see a lot of myself in them. Old me who asked a lot of questions that perhaps I didn't think about in too much depth first. It's unlike you.
Like when you compare Axel calling himself town in the first post and Cross doing it. The intent is very different I think. Cross meant it to be more subtle. Axel was very open with it. It's not the same.
Again, I initially liked this, but reading it again I did prod him to respond to this, and yeah. Not as clearing as I thought the first time (which again could just be me confirmation biasing but shrugze)
Last game I recall was... Winterfell? I tunnelled you like crazy and I think Seppel had to talk me down.
Bear in mind I'm not saying you're scum for seeming rusty. I just noticed your questions are not as good as they usually are.
Still like, trying to wrap my head around that second sentence. Is this KJ just being afraid that he may have touched the hornet's nest and he wants to make sure that there's not some sort of misunderstanding?
Sorry I haven't been as present a lot. Work has been stressful.
Anyway, I think Axel might be town. Early game he got a fair amount of hate for his typical playstyle (in which he doesn't usually start Doing Things until not early game) and that makes me feel like he was a target for scum. I'm confident enough in this at least to put him in the Not Yeeting Today pile.
Proph as I said earlier reminds me of me when I'm trying to get info, and a rusty Proph who isn't used to needing to solve as town probably fits that criteria.
I don't really have a specific opinion on Cantrip as of now. He's one of the Tricksy Hobbits and uses a lot of words. I think I'd prefer overNight to try to figure him out.
I had no good opinion on Osiebell. Osie being Proph is not Osie enough for me to judge him outright. His posts were... fine I guess?
DotA had some decent posts but has not a lot of content, so he's not out of the PoE I suppose but he's not on my chopping block right now.
I need to reread Grape honestly because I just straight up don't remember things from him.
The two people I think currently are scum are DV and Wisp. DV has aggressively jumped on at least Proph for minutia and has also been hedgy in a bad way. Wisp I specifically think is scum for his progression on me. He keeps maintaining (353, 417, 432) that I've been really null. I feel like it's not just an opinion of his, he's trying to convince others of it, possibly to counteract the townleans people seem to have developed on me. He's not scumreading me as of now, so why is he pushing so hard that other's should not be townreading me? I think he knows I'm town and misyeetable so he's trying to preserve that.
Vote Wisp
I'm also fine with an extesion, espceially so GJ can catch up fully etc.
This is the post where he gets a lot of flak for having a null read on Osie. This post is fine but again not really anything that's clearing. I still think it's weird that he townreads Axel here for "getting a fair amount of hate for his typical playsyle and that makes me feel as though he was a target for scum" but then he scumreads DV and Wisp, both of whom which were NOT scumreading Axel at the time IIRC. He nullreads Osie who WAS the primary pusher of Axel. That was weird to me.
Townreads me for asking a lot of questions, nullreads Cantrip, nullreads Osie, fencesits on DoTA, nullreads Grape. A lot of nullreads.
This post. I hated it even you made it. I hate it now.
And you just did the same thing to me right now. You jumped straight to hyper defense mode even I accused you of attacking proph. I keep feeling that you want to get the yeet without caring why people are doing things.
There's a tonal dissonance where KJ just goes "I HATE THIS" in response to an early game post DV made. A little strange given how the reads post was pretty milquetoast. (Thanks, ZDS)
I'm not gonna touch on the huge body pillow post because I've beaten it to death already.
It would be hilarious if in the last game on MTGS, I actually catch scum.
I know these types of posts are comically easy to fake, but I thought it was natural in isolation. Looking back on it in context, it is a little weird that he says this when talking to Wisp. Like, who is exactly the scum KJ is trying to catch here?
Also Cross might be scum btw.
So, Crossbell.
A lot of his posts, when read individually didn't do much for me. Tone was fine, I guess. For the most part.
There were a few things that were off though when I ISO'd him just now.
Firstly, in 98, he had a lot of words for why DV was scum, but still had Axel as biggest scum for some reason.
I also don't think he and Wisp are scum together for the back and forth between them following this being very awkward.
But the biggest problem for me ends up being his progression onto his scumreads. As of 197, he was scumreading DV and Axel still as far as I could tell, but he offers to vote DotA with DV (who I don't think he'd said anyone about at that point) which... really makes no sense to me.
By 256 his reads don't seem to really have any substance, he's on Axel and DotA now, and he still really hasn't said too much about DotA yet.
By 360 he's flipped on me out of nowhere, now I'm suddenly a possibility and he's seriously entertaining me being scum despite continuously saying he thought I was town for various reasons.
All in all he feels like he's just kinda trying to yeet someone that he doesn't actually naturally scumread.
So that's what I got from his ISO. TBH I didn't really try really hard to read him before because I'm always so bad at it, and was gonna put it off till over Night/Tomorrow just because I didn't want to deal with it. So, er, sorry about that?
Grape did mention the weird progression here of "Cross might be scum" to "here's a list of reasons why I think Cross is off" and I'd love an explanation for that.
@Proph: Can you go a little more into why you think Osieslot is town? His progression was really weird about people.
I don't think Proph can be scum with anyone but GJ for that post, perhaps? Like, why does Proph hard defend the de facto easy town yeet there?
The second post here kind of smacks of TMI a little bit, but again conf bias again tunneling. The question to me in the first post is fine - he's noticing something weird about Osie and wants me to explain.
I'm not sure he's being malicious.
Just irrationally emotionally driven maybe.
I actually don't think DV is scum rn.
Wait doesn't the Day end Tuesday? That's tomorrow
I'm willing to go GJ or Last right now I think.
Vote GJ
Screw it. I thought I had more time.
EoD progression. Makes sense if he thinks that EoD was tomorrow instead of today. Also random ass readswap on DV right before DV dies. I legitimately don't know how to evaluate that. It's so bizarre.
He has some more EoD one liners where he says "calm down Wisp, don't direct all the hate at me" but mostly meh.
Day 2.
I don't think I could leave so simple an answer for this.
Kinda +town here because I'm pretty sure as scum you just answer the question over say something deliberate like this.
I need to reexamine the GJ wagon first.
Sure, that's fine. Note that he just doesn't end up doing this I'm pretty sure.
I'm just gonna blatantly copy Axel and ISO Cantrip first because 12 posts.
Cantrip seems at first glance to not be putting as much thought into his reads as I'm used to. 151 is obviously fairly shallow. Particularly his scumlean of DV. He says he hates reading DV, which I interpret as he thought a lot/everything DV was doing was scummy... but there's no specifics. Cantrip is the type of player who would have specific reasons for disliking someone generally, and his choice not to specify those reasons in his list here doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense to me. Actually there's a second possible meaning to "I hate reading DV" and that's that he just dislikes trying to discern his alignment... but then the Scumlean comes out of nowhere and still has no stated reasons. Note: He says of DotA: Townlean for insight into my play.
In 241 is progression on his DotA read. It's notable because it's kinda just a reaction to DotA's vote on Cross, but contradicts Proph's read on the same vote. Cantrip seems to come down on it being a townie post from DotA.
In 245, he says "It's not the content, it's the sharpness of the insight. Iirc, the feeling I often get from scum!KJ is sort of a meandering lost. He can't have sharp insights because he feels there's nothing to solve. He's honing in on something that he doesn't understand and applying focused scrutiny. I think that comes from town!KJ."
@Cantrip: What games have I been scum against you? I can't remember.
It's entirely possible this read is actually fake in order to placate Proph here. This kinda makes me think that Proph and Cantrip are unaligned, because Cantrip probably doesn't make a potentially demonstrably false statement like this to placate his buddy during theatre.
Note: he (possibly jokingly) claims that DV might be town for, I assume, a natural sounding post 178.
In 265: "That is...a weird way to conclude your statement. Your suspicion of Cross is apparent, so I get that you think they're either W/W or T/W, but why say it this way instead of just pondering whether Axel is a buddy or not? That doesn't seem to jive with your "are they trying to figure each other out" possibility, either, as that would only happen with T/T." This feels nitpicky, His point wrt DotA is that is doesn't mesh with DotA's assertion that Axel and Crossbell potentially weren't actually trying to figure each other out (which implies that they are buddies performing theatre) but Cantrip has issues with the way DotA worded his argument, acting as if DotA contradicted himself when he really didn't. I'm not sure there's a remarkable difference between asking if Axel and Cross were buddies and saying DotA didn't think it's T/T, or even a difference between asking if it's T/W or W/W.
In conclusion: I'm actually thinking he might be a wolf here, because I'm not seeing the extensive probing I'm used to, and specfically I'm not seeing thoughtful Cantrip I'm used to seeing. I don't think this is time constraints, I think it's just Cantrip acting abnormal.
Coloring added to seperate quotes from my thoughts.
Here's KJ's ISO on Cantrip. I think Grape said something along the lines of he just never follows up on this after he posts this. I'll check for that. This post is overall good but if he never probes or votes Eco then that's an issue.
So I'm reading through DoTa and have a couple questions: First can you draw me a line from your slight townread on Cross to your scumread on GJ? How much did you consider the previous read when evaluating GJ and why was GJ's posting so bad?
And, you asked Wisp "Why ask Cross and Proph instead of me?" in response to his asking Cross and Proph if you're usually abrupt with your votes... but the conversation seems to end there in your ISO. Did you get a satisfactory answer to that question, and what about his asking not you do you have opinions about?
If you did not get a satisfactory answer, why did that line of questioning end there?
Fine questioning of DoTA.
K so I think based on gameflow, perhaps the scum build of this game is one low poster/one high poster. This game doesn't feel overly dominated by scum (there's not like a couple townreads dominating the game that were somehow not nightkilled N1 or something like that) so not exactly Wisp/Proph.
I feel like Axel is being really passive to be the lead scum. He's making a lot of big opinion posts, but isn't pushing really. Axel hasn't really been too proactive either, so he could be scum.
Grape has 4 wolf reads in the GTHH in 775, which is unusual for scum to do. Also his progression on his reads feel natural.
Between Wisp and Proph, in the event that I'm right here and there's one in the top posters... I think Proph is less liekly to be scum there.
Axel or DotA + Wisp for scum? The scum don't really have another really good leader, and I feel like they have one.
And here's the random-ass "high poster town low poster scum" read. His Axel read as I mentioned at the time was bizarre. At the time I thought it was just KJ being KJ and his weird theorizing made him likely town, but now that I look at it again it seems kind of like a way to pivot off of his Cantrip read that he did a couple posts ago. It's worth noting that Axel did NOT like this from KJ near EoD.
His progression is weird because he just goes
Axel or DotA + Wisp for scum? The scum don't really have another really good leader, and I feel like they have one.
Eco is down there too obviously. I didn't include him because I already made a post on him.
You/Eco makes sense as well.
It could be a middling player with a lower player if you're not scum I suppose.
Axel isn't eliminated as a wolf, but it's unlikely.
Why is it BS?
Like he's literally calling people wolves at random based on this theory lmao. It's so on-the-nose scummy.
How am I sahding you and proph? I'm literally saying "I think there's scum in X and Y". Do you dispute my reasoning? Doi you not think theres a scum in the high posters and low posters? Why not? I've presented why I think this, feel free to talk about why that's wrong.
And no I'm not trying to see you as town. That's now how I'm playing the game. Sorry if that method doesn't mesh with how you would like others to play mafia.
I'm not seeing why you think I should see you as e facto town and why Axel should be completely eliminated from the PoE. I never fully eliminate people from the PoE unless there's mechanics involved because nonmechanical stuff is highly subjective.
He's saying that he never fully eliminates people from the PoE.. but here he is trying to remove me from the PoE right now....
:clown_emoji:
I actually don't hate Wisps response to me though. Maybe my read is wrong
I'm not backing down because conflict, I'm backing down because I've played with Wisp a fair bit and his jumping on me for not townreading him and Proph isn't something scum Wisp tends to do. He's not the type to think that he's being the paragon of towniness as scum, nor would he start a fight to try to change my opinion like that.
And I've just been wondering if this gamesize will produce good VCA honestly. It's what I normally gravitate to but this game is really small and has much less info.
I'll still try it, but I'm wondering if it won't produce much.
I have to say that this read change does feel kind of real? Turning on a dime randomly is kind of par for the course I guess.
I guess Proph wolf, wisp town, grape town, axel town, dota town eco scum.
And again just a progression with no explanation other than it matches his theory of one scum in the high posters, one scum in the low. Just bizarre honestly.
Eco I'm trying to play the game on a few fronts.
Day ends tomorrow right?
If Eco/KJ are the team then this response is also kinda weird coming from KJ.
The options I was looking at was" 2 high posters/1 high 1 low/ 2 middling/ 1 low 1 middling/ 1 middling 1 high/ 2 low.
Now, it's not 2 high posters because this game doesn't feel like the game isn't being dominated by scum.
I guess it could be two low posters, if that's the case, it's likely just DotA/Eco. I don't recall Cantrip or DotA really getting much flak D1 so there's a possiblilty for them to potentially coast through the first day, but now the new Day brought DotA being under fire, with Cantripslot kinda getting some today as well.
A similar case can be made for 1 middle 1 low, with the middling player not really being a driving force for scum. In this case Axel or Grape would be the middle player with Eco or DotA being the low.
1 middle 1 high would feel pretty similar to 2 high, but just not as much. I do not think this is the case.
2 middle would mean that Grape and Axel are scum together, and if that's the case, they are kinda just having the luckiest game ever. Their gameplan is kinda just "act townie and hope we don't get yeeted" which... would be working I suppose. Would scumGrape+scum!Axel do that? I think at the very least Axel would be doing more to increase their win percentage, as just hoping not to be yeeted doesn't usually work out very well.
1 high 1 low would have one person doing all the work with the other just kinda trying to survive, although if Eco is the low player he's made quite an effort to catch up and do things so maybe it would feel different in cases with scum!Eco. I think D1 there was a drive to yeet town from somewhere, and that might have come from scum.
So it's most likely 1 high 1 low or 2 low posters and town is going crazy. I'm leaning the former because it has the higher win percentage usually, as opposed to both scum lurking and town being crazy.
This is an explanation for him doing the "high/low posters" thing, and I guess it's mostly fine? He's explaining his mindset behind it and it seems wholly fine to me. It's very different than how I would ever approach this game but I can sorta see where he's coming from.
Cantripslot/Eco is a low poster, you are a high poster, so that fits. I have misgivings about Cantrip, and tbh I'm still undecided which of the two of you are the scum highposter if my theory is correct.I mostly said that because I was doubting that Wisp was scum.
TBH I'd never laid out all the possibilities in one place before and didn't realize that the 2 low postser possibility was so similar to the 1 high 1 low possibility. So it's entirely possible that neither you or wisp are scum... I'm looking over votecounts now to see what that tells me.
@Axel: Yes. It's a theory based quite a bit on less tangible things like gameflow and such. Do you not think that has any bearing here?
Here's KJ running with his theory and trying to solve with it. Again this is more of "KJ is operating in his own world" which is kinda townie-ish? Just completely approaching the game from a different perspective than anyone else. Idk.
I actually don't actively think you are rn. I also don't actively think you're not.
I'm kinda at the point where "Proph has a lot of effort, it's probably townie effort, but I'm not gonna remove him from the PoE without more info."
And then this is the fencesittiest read on me ever made.
I think that it's probable that one of the people actively pushing me (DotA, Wisp, with a side of Grape possibly) are scum. DotA's pretty all in on that, Wisp keeps coming back to it, Grape is pushing me over two scummier slots. I'm in a good position for scum here, being the townie that other townies would like to yeet. I'm scummy enough to get a good wagon on me but not so much that there's too much consensus there. So DotA, Wisp, Grape. Looking into them now.
Self-implying himself as town is noted. He's trying to do this but this is like... literally an hour before the deadline? So again he's operating not only on a different time scale than everyone else, but he's also just doing his own thing with a fair amount of disregard for the actual gamestate.
Hammers both DoTA and GJ.
Day 3.
Alright, so.
Grape/Proph/Wisp/Eco.
I continue to think Proph isn't scum.
Grape/Wisp/Eco.
I'll look into that.
Bog standard PoE post. What's noteworthy is that he just doesn't make any sort of grand gamestate review, no emotional post, no whatever to indicate that we are currently LOSING. Just "here's my PoE, I'll look into that". So heartless.
I'm gonna try to clear Prophy I think. Removing him from the PoE is likely a good idea at this point.
I'm not seeing why you think I should see you as e facto town and why Axel should be completely eliminated from the PoE. I never fully eliminate people from the PoE unless there's mechanics involved because nonmechanical stuff is highly subjective.
:clown_emoji:
@Wisp: The answer to your question is in the long post I'm making.
Quick question though: Do you actually think I'm scum? Because I keep seeing references to how badly I'm playing and that you'd feel least guilty yeeting me.
@Proph It's not so much RVS, but that post that was optimal distancing time. Adding in Timetwister didn't cost anything, and would have felt completely normal to do. In an Axel-DotA world, having DotA in there, or rather not specifically excluding him, wouldn't have felt weird at all.
As to entrance based reads, it was KIND OF a joke question, but kind of serious as well. One game, a long time ago, Wisp said he was really good at reading people based on entrances. (I think that) every game sincs, I've asked that question. This is actually the first game that I've gotten an affirmative answer (which I've kind of been holding that in the back of my head as a possible reason he might be scum, that that answer was false and he made up the reads.) Entrance based reads are being able to make decisions on alignment based on first posts.
Per DV: I think you're referring to when I was reading DV's initial aggressiveness as malice, but then I recontextualized it as just DV being emotional? I'm not sure? Can you quote where you're referring to here?
Literally the reason you're a wolf there is because I was doubting Wisp being scum at that point and you being scum with Eco fit my "one high one low" theory I was actively looking at. That's it.
@Eco: Why does Grape/Proph not make sense? What about Grape Wisp? Or Wisp Proph? Why am I scum?
His responses to my questions read as.. honest, at least. Not exactly sure what that means for him alignment wise though. I can believe what he's putting down with this post I guess?
Ok Wisp. you really need to stop. I need to stop seeing posts from you about me being so personal. You keep saying things like "He's a literal robot. he's wrong about EVERYTHING, he's playing so horribly omg, HE'S SHADING ME WITH HIS ACCUSATIONS OMG" and they are literally like... personal attacks, not actually analyzing my play. Like, honestly, glass houses and the like.
I already said this one, and this is the last time I'll be polite about it.
I'm continuing my post about Proph now.
And here's the post where he gets mad. I don't really want to read into this since it's kinda gross.
@Proph:I went from townreading you for reminding me of town!me to concluding you need to be scum (mostly because I wasn't feeling Wisp as much at that point) to an actual behavioral townread on you, yes.
At least he's honest here?
Day 1 Summary:
- Pops in mid-late D1, says that Wisp and DV are scum. Votes Wisp. Says Osie is null and gets a lot of flak for that post.
- Re-evalutates Osie, thinks Osie might be scum. Says that DV might be town. Hammers Osie.
Day 2 Summary:
- Makes the ISO on Cantrip, says Cantrip could be scum. Never pushes for this or really interrogates/prods Eco.
- Gets distracted by the "one scum in high posters, one in low" theory and makes a bunch of scintillating reads based on this. Lots of conflicting reads with very little to no progression all to fit this theory. HIs mindset when explaining why he thought it was okay, but he still hasn't made any sort of real impact on the gamestate.
- Says that DOTA might be scum for pushing him, hammers DOTA.
Day 3 Summary:
- Answers my questions. Gets angry at Wisp about his personal attacks on him. Says that he will work to clear me from the PoE despite him saying earlier that he never clears anyone fully from the PoE.
Meta Comparison:
Not gonna do this yet, very tired and want to go to bed. Will do tomorrow hopefully.
Conclusion:
Honestly, I'm just so afraid of the world where we flip KJ and he turns out to be town and the game ends and it turns out the scum are just like, Wisp/Grape hyperposting pocketing me lmao. Anyways, if he's town here, I can't get there on him. He has occasional glimmers of posts where it looks like he is actively thinking about the game and has real, concrete thoughts, but there are so many posts from him which aren't really scummy or townie - they're just straight up bizarre.
For example, the random, umprompted reads reversals, and his "one scum in low posters, one scum in high" theory. While Grape is like, hyper consistent wrt his progression, KJ is the complete opposite. His theories and reads changes just come completely out of nowhere and it's very hard to keep track of his progression.
Overall, the thing that makes me want to lunch KJ despite seeing some glimmers of towniness in his micro (if I squint) is that his macro is extremely extremely poor. He has virtually no impact on the gamestate and hasn't even bothered to try and influence or control the game. He's just There. You could take him out of this game and nothing would really change. He hasn't really bothered to push his reads or be vocal or have a compelling stance about anything, and I think that outweighs his maybe good Real Thoughts in some of his posts.
@Proph: I realise I'm biased, but I just can't see the town read of Grape. Yeah he's been consistent, especially on you, but it's also meant he hasn't had to push real wagons. He's asked questions and looked like solving, but he also hasn't really changed his mind based on them - just continued to push Proph/X. I think you're just writing him off because you don't think his scum game is capable of constantly attacking you and letting that colour your read too much.
+++++
It is very telling that not only has KJ completely failed to do the one he promised to do toDay, but he has also stalled long enough that he has seen what everyone else thinks of Proph in detail first. It looks like he's just deliberately subsiding into Grape's planned bus.
Wisp, can you read through Grape one more time just to make sure I'm correct here? I know you're unsure of my alignment but the way Grape just kind of stopped tunneling me after I wrote the big wall has me a tinge paranoid.
Also should be getting the wall out at around midnight my time, evening was busier than usual.
@Eco - What are your thoughts on his nuanced posts on Day 1 then, where he had the whole Osie progression to me? I think he would have had to preplan a lot of things - specifically the Osie reveal stuff - in order to have that progression seem natural, and I don't thiiiiinnk that would happen after seeing what his performance was in his scum game in Matter a year prior.
I would like the vote order to go
Killjoy votes Eco
Eco votes Killjoy
GF votes Killjoy
Me and Wisp "confirm" ourselves by not voting, then either one of us can hammer KJ when the time is right
Honestly even if we lose this game, I think I am still fine with my process as a whole tbh.
Would aggressively take suggestions/pointers to improve postgame ofc but I've put in a lot of time and effort into the solve, and I'm happy about that.
I tried to play the game last night, but MTGS kept throwing error messages, so I gave up and went to bed.
Caught up, ready to rock, let's get this bread.
Crossbell: I know high interaction doesn't automatically equate to town, but I always lean that way. Some general game solving vibes, too. I don't really get the suspicion on Axel. 98 might be a little try-hard, but, as has been noted, the Proph roleplay may be a factor there. Maybe I've got them higher than I ought just because they correctly noted that my absence was because of the weekend. If I'm right in my suspicions of who they are, though, they're solidly in their town meta. Certainly don't see why they're L-2. Town.
@Cross: Can you point to differences in other games from Axel? I'm just getting standard Axel vibes so far.
Killjoy: Pretty light in content, but that last post (150) is pretty solidly town paranoid KJ. Townlean.
DoTArchon: Feels like he wants to solve, especially with his insight into KJ's mindset. Townlean.
Wisp: I think a telling point here is the carelessness. Scum Wisp likes to pretend that they're careless, but they rarely actually post things that garner serious attention beyond "Why is Wisp the way Wisp be?" I'm not getting faked carelessness here (other than the drunkposting, but drunkposting always feels fake to me.) Mild townlean.
Axel: Not much here, but certainly not getting the "awkward" vibes that Cross is concerned about. Still null.
Grape: Some mindmeld on the Easy Breezy Beautiful Whisper read, and I like the long version of 73, but the TLDR feels waffly. Of course, it's coming from the Hedgelord, so I'll take it with a grain of salt and wait and see. Null.
DV: I hate reading DV. Scumlean.
Proph: The energy and engagement give me generally good vibes, but the progression from 22, where he says he will easily be able to read Wisp, to 30, where he votes Wisp for "clumsy" posts feels weird, especially with Proph saying it's for Wisp's "early" posts.
@Proph: Can you show me Wisp being "clumsy", as you note in 30? In their "early" posts only, please.
Also, I don't understand this:
Quote from Prophylaxis »
Do you think Wisp right now is engaged and relaxed? I think his posting has been quite clumsy and.. unconfident, for lack of a better term. He seems to be annoyed with both how I and Crossbell are treating him, which is understandable.
You seem to be listing Wisp's annoyance with you and Cross as a point against them, but then you say it's understandable?
Vote: Prophylaxis
First Cantrip post and it's a lengthy one (just like most of his posts). This post is mostly fine and inoffensive, but there are a couple of things I'd like to point out. First was what Axel said about him townreading Osie, but never really going out of his way to defend him like I did. Though that can easily be explained by his intermittent activity. Secondly, I feel like his townreads on KJ/DoTA were a little too premature at the time compared to how much content they put out. Maybe it's just a difference on how Cantrip and I operate, but I'm always way more strict on who I townread versus who I scumread. So all in all a pretty inoffensive/townie post, but there are some things to nitpick.
Disagree. That quoted post with bolded emphasis feels like an aha moment, which is harder for scum to fake than town. Not impossible, but the conviction feels more likely town, too.
Defends DoTA here with solid reasoning that I accepted at the time.
It's not the content, it's the sharpness of the insight. Iirc, the feeling I often get from scum!KJ is sort of a meandering lost. He can't have sharp insights because he feels there's nothing to solve. He's honing in on something that he doesn't understand and applying focused scrutiny. I think that comes from town!KJ.
I think that KJ is feeling pretty lost rn, but shrugze. He's probably gonna show up later today.
Laughing Ok, you might be town.
Pretty snap re-evaluation of DV. Doesn't really explain the mindset or the reason why. His entire treatment of DV feels very curt and intentionally unexplained to me.
I want to +town DV for this. If this is scum!DV being offered a DoTa wagon and then joining Cross on Axel instead, that's some deep pocketing. Maybe less so if both Axel and DoTa flip town, but generally...yeah, I think this is more likely to come from town.
I've read past 200, but I'm falling asleep, so more posts in the morning. Good night.
Another instance here where he starts to explain his reasoning but I don't necessarily /follow/ it?
I don't know that it is, though. Feels very much like town pulling a thread (from his 137) and then seeing something significant in the details of your response and jumping on it. Although...he was putting you to L-2 and then peaced out for 24 hours, so I guess it could have been an attempt to start an elimination movement without looking like he was involved. Eh...I just feel like I want more from DoTA for now.
That is...a weird way to conclude your statement. Your suspicion of Cross is apparent, so I get that you think they're either W/W or T/W, but why say it this way instead of just pondering whether Axel is a buddy or not? That doesn't seem to jive with your "are they trying to figure each other out" possibility, either, as that would only happen with T/T.
This kind of feels like a way for Cantrip to somewhat opportunistically talk his way out of his DoTA townlean. It's weak but yea.
I feel like my question (in 265) was essentially what KJ asked in 267. Why did you give me this dismissive response while going into detail when responding to KJ?
Still trying to work DoTA down on his list of reads, I feel.
This is feeling more like town!Proph.
He says this, but doesn't unvote me or try to re-evaluate the gamestate with that revelation in mind (that I might be town). Also he just.. doesn't comment on the Osie wagon at all or the amount of heat he's getting throughout the entirety of Day 1 really; he just kinda focuses on his own things. I think if we want to look at what Cantrip is NOT posting (shoutout to KJ's signature), then that would be the biggest reason to scumread him.
I did some catching up during the Night but didn't really put my all into it and haven't quite finished D1. With another question mark eliminated, I'll go back and do some reading with intensity.
Could be nitpicking here, but he says "another question mark eliminated", but he thought Osie/GJ was town and was trending towards town on DV. I certainly wouldn't phrase a player who I thought was town flipping town as "another question mark eliminated", since no one from my PoE actually got removed. So again, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's /weird/ from a mindset perspective.
Ecophagy.
Top town reads are Proph and Axelrod. Proph picked up the most + points as I was reading, but in general I think his D1 progression was organic and didn't really fit a mafia mindset. He makes a lot of big calls (LW from mafia to town under zero pressure, Crossbell as Town, DV Mafia then Town) when it would have been easy to ride on any read (or at least shelve them rather than reverse when they didn't gain traction). I also think his defence of Crossbell was towny - he put effort into the analysis and heart into arguing with DV, and he tried a couple of alternative wagons where mafia would have found it easy to park a vote and just not try to actually stop the Crossbell execute. This is just beyond what I think mafia Proph would think to do, especially since he caught some heat on D1 and didn't back down or go conservative.
Axelrod's town read is largely based on effort. I don't truly know the limit's of Axel's scum range, but the analysis he has posted reads like he's figuring players out one by one, not working toward a grander strategy (which I think is also supported by the resulting reads being fuzzy/relative rather than hard). I'm going to need a break before I can sift through them and decide how much I agree with though. I also wrote down #206 - I liked the fact that Axel not only directly went against the easiest mafia read at the time, but also didn't give out town points he wanted to because Crossbell claimed to not be Osie.
DoTArchon is my top mafia read - This isn't really groundbreaking, but he's been very focused on small things to the exclusion of having to interact with the thread at large (e.g. #259). Stuff like in #137 he's asking Crossbell for a very specific clarification but then just drops the (very predetermined looking) vote in #139. I know Axel liked #263 but I don't: "not T/T" a big call, but DoTA doesn't follow it up or push it - especially now that one half of it flipped town! #437 is probably the most content-dense post, but pretty much every read is either very fencesitty or comes from paranoia - nothing solid.
Others:
- GF really does not have a lot of content. I liked #66 for an against the grain LW town read. Similarly in #543 GF votes Proph in contrast to many easier wagons (GJ, DoTA, KJ) and it was a doubling down of an existing slightly dangerous read. The major problem is that GF hasn't done much else D2 other than just chip at Proph and make some fencesitting reads without voting anywhere. So he's either Mafia who's just clinging to a vanity vote or town in a tunnel who need to look back at the macro game. I think #768 is the latter direction but that's only a first step
- KJ I can broadly see what Axel is getting at in #842. KJ doesn't have a lot but the nuggets he does have are OK. I'm less high on the early NKA calls because I think they are very easy to present as content while also being useless. Agree also that KJ could have easily voted Crossbell early (countered by KJ joining that wagon in #524 specifically as heat was building on KJ). KJ feels peripheral but more in a manner where he doing his own thing in his own way rather than deliberately avoiding interaction. I guess like GF I need to see more thoughts on the game as a whole rather than narrow focuses. Probably starting with the Vote count analysis KJ has been mentioning a lot but not actually done.
Proph I need your help here on LW. During my reread I was nodding along with your early mafia-read of him - I thought he was overly defensive, inconsistent, trying pretty hard to seem relaxed/detached, and spent a lot of time agreeing and voting with you despite reading you as mafia. I picked out #230 as a broad "let's look at the low posters" very soon after you cased him in #181. Even in D2 while there's been more engagement he's been holding back waiting for results of this "game" which I'm very unimpressed by because needing to wait for everyone to answer is a great way to stall out when you have lurkers.
But, Proph, you've switched your read to pretty much ride or die town and I need you to help me because I don't get it. I get that you read him from a town mindset and it fit, and I can see some positives like it sounds like he's talking without a filter, and I think that his voting would be less erratic (or at least more tactical) if he was mafia. But I also feel like his votes have been pretty safe and he's tried quite hard to make sure we all know he's having trouble nailing down reads. So, uh, help please?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Overall I'm not wild about coming to basically the same PoE gamestate as the thread at large because for some mysterious reason I am very reluctant to just speed execute the whole consensus PoE pool. So although I'm down to clown on DoTA, I'm really hoping KJ and GF can most moar so we can work out if they're townies who are underwhelming or lurking scum rather than just triple-barreling them. It is also important that we force Proph and Axelrod to keep up their engagement so they can't coast on early game effort posts.
Vote DoTArchon
Eco's first post with content, and it is fairly substantial.
Both townreads on me on Axel are pretty safe and ~somewhat consensus (think the townread on me is less so compared to thread narrative at the time). Scumread on DOTA is fine/acceptable given where I was at at the time. He never really fully fleshes out his read on Grape here, and tells KJ to finish his vote count analysis. Asks me for help on Wisp, which is reasonable because my progression there was largely unexplained. He basically positions himself to have a similar PoE to everyone else and not exactly rock the boat, which is my main concern about Eco. He has well-reasoned, well-thought out posts, but nothing that I can see that would expressly clear him since I know his scum range is quite large. In addition, I get a undercurrent feeling from his posts that he's pretty fine with how the gamestate is going and is good with the status quo. Let's see if my theory bores out as I read more of his posts.
I actually agreed that Osie's early read wall was a big red flag and I'd have pushed him for it if I'd been in the game. It is reasonable on the surface to retract to Osie read on reveal because the read wall a core component but Grape mentioned seeing Osie get "raked over the coals" for making one in another game. Grape did promise a reevaluation when he unvoted but it doesn't look like he ever did which is at best lazy. Moving over to his next scum read (you) is at least consistent.
I think it's slightly +town. The full reevalaution would have been much more so since without it the unvote could be tactical, but Grape had enough of a case in #290 that he could have easily stuck to his Osie vote as mafia if he'd wanted. Similarly the vote on Proph came at a time where both KJ and DoTA were softer wagons - I don't see why he would as mafia pick a fight with someone who agrees with him that Osie/GJ is not-mafia.
Says that he thinks Grape is slightly +town for picking a fight with me when there were easier options available (KJ, DoTA) and I am inclined to agree. Seems like a totally fine opinion to have.
I was kind of worried it was going to be like that. #660 is reasonable, but I really don't get the same sense of genunine engagement that you do - it feels more performative. I agree that if LW was mafia he could easily have reciprocated when you town read him, but his continuing changes of heart aren't really figuring you out, just reminding us that he hasn't nailed you down yet. Or could LW really Just Be Like That? If you could point me at some example games that illuminate the key meta behaviour you're leaning on that would help me get there.
When you first swapped to town LW, you said that you'd looked at his posts from a town mindset to see if they fit. Have you/would you like to do that with anyone else in the game? Or does it require a lot of meta familiarity? Do LW's posts fit if you try a scum mindset?
Trying to get into the weeds of why exactly I townread Wisp. I guess one question I have here is - why is he trying to engage me on Wisp as opposed to asking/interacting with Wisp himself? I can sorta understand it because I not only have a lot of experience with Wisp and am a good person to bounce reads off of, but generally I think my first source would be the primary source, right?
Speaking of KJ, I want to give #941 town points for looking at the game holistically and ending up with some...unusual reads. But the logic is really flimsy (as Grape has already pointed out) and it's missing the possible scenario that the mafia are all in the PoE and can't post enough to get out. Probably because the most likely team in that case is DoTA and KJ. So if KJ really believes that the game state means there's mafia in Proph/LW/Axelrod then I would really like to see some research to work out which one rather than picking softest option LW out of a hat. An option that KJ is immediately backing down from in the face of conflict.
I know we all gave KJ room to work with Yesterday but this feels kinda blatant in the world where Eco/KJ are scum. I hate to use the word "coaching", here, but it feels weird to me that Eco is basically giving the lines to KJ as to what he should be doing. Examples:
I guess like GF I need to see more thoughts on the game as a whole rather than narrow focuses. Probably starting with the Vote count analysis KJ has been mentioning a lot but not actually done.
So if KJ really believes that the game state means there's mafia in Proph/LW/Axelrod then I would really like to see some research to work out which one rather than picking softest option LW out of a hat.
---
Starting with the mafia game on Throne of Lies, the playstyle was pretty clear. LW's posts were really short (one-whole-sentence-at-best short). He made reads (some town, some mafia) but they were kind of just thrown out there with viurtually no reasoning. He voted very rarely (but did want a lot of votecounts), and when he did he made it seem like he was being forced to by others not voting correctly (possibly at deadlines? Game context is really hard to get on that site) rather than proactively. He made two big posts (3937 and 3941) which were both quote walls defending himself from attack - his tone in them was very relaxed and using rhetorical questions in defence rather than seeking conflict.
So that game makes for a pretty obvious scum meta right? Short sharp posts, hard reads with no reasons, rare and reluctant voting. Big posts in self-defence, but no real interest in conflict.
Compared to Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis and the difference is pretty stark. The posts are on average much longer and give a lot more insight into Wisp's thoughts - a lot more reasons and worldbuilding. No all that much voting, but the usage was more proactive. He also didn't get attacked that much, but when he did (by Gorta) he was much more confrontational and counter voted (it must be noted, incorrectly).
Coming then to this game, and LW's play is clearly much more like his town play. His posts are pretty meaty, he's got real reads, voting proactively, and he's leaning in to confrontation when challenged. In fact, I would say pretty much all of these traits are more amplified here - he's voting more, responding more aggressively to being suspected, thinking more about his reads out loud. If I squint, I can see scum!LW being aware of what his town meta is and really pushing to emulate it and ending up going over the top. But if that is truly the case then he's somehow able to play his town meta by removing even more of a filter and posting rawer thoughts and being more confrontational, which is basically the hardest thing for someone to do as scum, especially if their natural scum meta is to clam up.
Ultimately I get a lot more of what Proph was talking about now - scum LW would find it very difficult to be posting as much content about his internal process as he has been, even if I disagree with the conclusions or other actions. I think there's still someone to be gained by trying to look at the underlying mindset behind some of the reads (in particular contradictions or convenient/tactical reads) in case LW is somehow overcompensating their town act. But that probably requires some more flips, and the meta argument is definitely convincing enough that I don't see the need to dig deeper unless I actually have to.
Does the meta-dive on LW and actually comes out with a solid re-evaluation on him, which I think is +town. I'm a little gunshy on giving townpoints to Eco on this because I literally myself was scum and looked through some games of a fellow townie to meta them and I did basically the same thing Eco did here. But objectively speaking, reading new information and having that change your worldview is townie I feel, so I'm giving him the points here.
@KJ I don't really get why you've gone "here is a possible world based on game flow" then basically completely moved away from it when challenged/some counter evidence has been presented. And then you're not really doing anything about it. I'd expect you to be thinking more "here's my world view, let's check it against my reads and D1 VCA. Oh maybe I'm wrong about LW what does that mean for my world view?"
Your actions are all just disconnected and it's hard to not see them as doing Things To Look Town as opposed to trying to solve the game by using your tools together.
Again yada yada conf bias, This kinda looks to be yet another instance of Eco just trying to give the answer key to KJ. "Use your tools that you've mentioned previously!"
But, are you? Or rather, you have presnted a few fronts (early NKA pairs, proposed VCA, verifying Axel's Cantrip read, the recent "game flow"). But you've not tried to unify any of these tools - I would expect you to be trying to build one coherent world view, not one disconnected world view per front.
Here is it again!
Day 3.
@LW: I lumped KJ and GF together because if Proph is town, then it has to be exactly KJ and GF, so it doesn't really matter which is worse. But I totally agree that KJ is scummier, that's why I was asking him yesterDay about unifying his theories: because I felt that KJ had been using theory to create many possible worlds that had contradictions but hadn't been trying to unify them at all the way I would have expected town KJ to. I have been trying to give him some rope rather than just outright accuse him because KJ was much more likely to answer questions than DoTA was.
Okay, I guess Eco just admits here that he was trying to give KJ some rope/lead him on/give him the answer key here. I guess this makes me feel slightly better about his approach to KJ Yesterday?
Pretty bloody harsh to be called invisible for having a real life. I'm not going into details, but I've been dealing with some things more important than a mafia game.
Sorry Eco, I hope things are going okay for you.
Speaking of those alternative wagons, Proph called the team KJ and Grape in #501 and voted both of them before EoD, which is looking impressively prescient and a strong mark against him being buddies with either.
You know that my scum meta involves a lot of TMI and bussing buddies. Devil's advocate time - do you really think me gunning for my buddies at EoD is a strong unaligned mark for me and them?
Overall, D1 looks really good for Proph. I just can't see why he would make so many big calls or not seek safe/conservatives plays as scum when both are really against his natural desire when playing as Mafia. However, when I started this I basically wrote Proph off as obv town and was prepared to just go through the motions, but actually late D2 and the start of D3 has given me pause. D2 in particular was a lot lower energy, barning Axel, and voting for the softest team. I think I can see this from a town perspective of someone with a confident PoE (which #660 was) relaxing because no-one listened to them over Osie/GJ, and at least the start of D2 was good, but the main thing I'd be looking for in scum Proph is the energy levels dropoing off after the D1 he had. I don't think they have dropped as far as they could have, even in to D3 assuming these ISOs do come out and he has been engaged even if there hasn't been reams of content.
So yeah, I ultimately think Proph probably is town because I really struggle to see D1 coming from scum, and the bits I don't like are not impossible to have come from town with a confident PoE and irritation at having been ignored D1. Not as confident as I want to be after the D1, but enough that I think if scum-Proph really was pulling out all the stops and going against his natural scum game for the last MTGS game then he wouldn't be slowing down and trying to reevalute: he'd be trying to control the game and just hard push his PoE for the win.
I do have to say that these two paragraphs sound and feel very real - it's like Eco definitely tried to weigh my alignment in his mind multiple times. So props to him for that. I still don't think it's out of the realm of scum Eco since he himself admitted that his range is almost infinite, but I do like the mindset here.
Now looking at Grape's case on Proph, because at this stage he's either the town's last hope or scum pushing an unlikely execute. I couldn't find a single case post, so this is using #543, #768, #996, and #1143. The basic points seem to be:
Proph's read on Osie is too strong for/doesn't mesh with the presented evidence
An "undercurrent of agenda" around his focus. Working towards tactically useful ends (like DoTA and GF, as well as revealing Crossbell's identity and DV) rather than following genuine reads.
D2 Hyperfocus on DoTA beyond presented evidence and with no serious reevaluation - especially compared to KJ. Compounded by over the top reaction to DoTA's town flip.
On (1) I don't really agree. Obviously I can only read #499 with hindsight, but it seems like the read was Proph saying things Osie did weren't as scummy as they appeared - and that's pretty fine for D1. Especially since Proph got a headstart by correctly guessing Crossbell was Osie, and actually trying to out Crossbell's identity to support the town read with meta is a good look for Proph. If Proph had been mafia defending town-Osie, I would have expected Proph to come in D2 and start hunting via the wagon, but he didn't: suggesting it wasn't a tactical play.
I also don't think I fully agree with (2) - I: think Proph has mostly been pretty good at putting his reads out there and voting them as opposed to looking for wagons. I certainly find it hard to think of a scum agenda behind the Osie reveal and DV read. Where I do agree with Grape (and this bleeds into (3)) is the focus on DoTA specifically and the reaction to DoTA's flip - and the comparison between KJ and DoTA is actually very interesting (but could be explainable by Proph just choosing to sheep Axel over his own judgement on KJ).
So the case on Proph is not without merit, but I'm coming away with "is that it?". Yeah, Proph got sloppy over DoTA and I came to similar misgivings above. But Proph also has a very large body of work that Grape is overlooking malciously. All the D1 has been handwaved as "agenday" (and Grape never responded when I asked for clarification on D2) with focus put on individual events that look bad instead of within the wider context of Proph's ISO and the game. It doesn't help that if Proph is town, then GF has to be scum who has just been pushing this fringe case all game instead of having to engage with active wagons. Let's not forget that after Grape voted Osie and he flipped town, Grape's world view basically didn't change: he kept pushing Proph.
I do agree with him that Grape's scumread/tunnel on me is wrong, but I have to disagree slightly with the notion that Grape's worldview did not change. If you read his beginning of Day 2, I felt as though he was still scumreading me, but to his credit it took him a couple of IRL days to refocus. I think for the first couple of IRL days he was kinda float-y and not really pushing much of anything.
I also am wondering why Eco is focusing on Grape first in his hypothetical Grape/KJ team as opposed to focusing on the person everyone wants to lunch atm (KJ).
Honestly? I don't think so. Maybe I wouldn't bother to go as in depth on Last's meta as scum, but I can't know for sure. But as arrogant as it sounds, I feel like my scum range is (or at least was) virtually infinite. You know the right way to read me is to try and look behind my posts and work out if I'm truly trying to work things out or not.
I do think he's trying to work things out! Eco is certainly playing well. It's just that I don't know if there's anything in particular I can point to and say "Eco is town for X"
Day 1 Summary (Cantrip):
- Voted me, expressed a townread on Osie, but didn't really do anything about those two reads (IE, push them or convince others that he was correct). It was like he was off in his own world sorta and kinda ignored the wider gamestate/wagons. Kinda unfair given that he was obviously crunched for time but yeah.
Day 2 Summary (Ecophagy):
- Joined me on DoTA as soon as he replaced in. Did not think Wisp was town, but after some meta knowledge Grape and I passed onto him, he quickly reversed that read. Worth noting that he is not really reaching out to Wisp despite him being his top town read, which I assume is due to playstyles not meshing particularly well. He also did not ask or interrogate Wisp, mostly just asked me to help him. Not sure if that is AI or not as opposed to a "playstyles not meshing together well" thing.
- While scumreading DoTA, says that Grape and KJ might be +town. Gives KJ a ton of rope/answer keys with his questions which I thought was indicative of them being buddies, but Eco straight up admits to this on Day 3.
Day 3 Summary:
- Does a deep dive of me, concludes that I am likely town. Says that GF/KJ are the scumteam.
- Starts to preflip said GF/KJ team. Focuses more on Grape than KJ which is a little notable.
No meta comparison because that's a lot of work and Eco is slippery.
Conclusion: Cantrip was wholly fine, but my issue with this slot is that it's just so damn unreadable because of Cantrip's lurking. Day 1 was the most important Day for interactions and he essentially just skipped out on it because of the lurking and decentposting when he WAS around. I still don't like the fact that he townread Osie and scumread me, but never really bothered to push these convictions that he had. Eco is better, but it's still very hard to read him given that he replaced in Day 2 with.. mostly consensus viewpoints and he's made the effort to firm up his reads but it's hard to get past the fact that his slot was just never really around for Day 1. He's essentially boxed himself into one scumteam with the stated townreads on me and Wisp, and to his credit I think it would have been significantly easier for him to agree with GF/Wisp and started to push me if he was scum rather than double down on pocketing me here. So that's a point for him. Overall, I do think this slot is scum, but regardless of his alignment Eco has played really well because most of the stuff he's saying I can see an explanation for it coming from town him as well. It's just really hard to overcome the lurking Day 1 when other people this game have had actual progressions that Day.
This was honestly the same reason I called out Cuth in the MU game? He gave so much leeway to all the flipped wolves, and I pointed it out, but kept getting lost in real time, what's new lol. Obviously the circumstances aren't the same since we have no flipped wolves, but when you highlight all the times he has actually done it here, coupled with Cantrip, it just feels to much
Ok I know you guys know I'm pretty mercurial when it comes to reads. Scum know they need me dead, because I'm the best target for them.
2 of Proph/Eco/Grape/Wisp are working together. I need to figure out who those two are. I'm almost done with the Proph post so after that I'll, idk. I'll figure it out.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
@Eco - What are your thoughts on his nuanced posts on Day 1 then, where he had the whole Osie progression to me? I think he would have had to preplan a lot of things - specifically the Osie reveal stuff - in order to have that progression seem natural, and I don't thiiiiinnk that would happen after seeing what his performance was in his scum game in Matter a year prior.
I just don't really see how it requires pre-planning. He's got a scumread on Crossbell, couches it with "if it's Osie the case is weaker" because others bring up Osie, then when it turns out it is Osie he unvotes as the wagon falls apart and changes target. I don't think he would plan it in advance, he just has to make sure if Crossbell turns out to be Osie he reacts appropriately (and others in thread gave him a lead to follow). Maybe scum GF would be more keen to stick with his vote after the reveal, but the wagon fell apart anyway and he didn't want to be holding the bag.
I see your PBPA on me is basically "Cantrip lurked, Eco hasn't left scum range". These may both be true, but it's not exactly a slam dunk. I was trying to coax KJ into doing something town so I could see if his unified opinions made consistent sense - but he never even tried so giving him rope turned out to just be a waste of time. You're also totally correct that I didn't engage with LW because I just didn't think it would produce anything because of very obvious playstyle clash - I can't just ask him "LW is all this weird ***** you're doing town??" because he'd just say yes and call me a boomer. It was also a bit of a test for you, Proph, to see if my expressing doubt might cause you to tactically waver in your read.
It does sooth any remaining paranoia that your post is essentially a conf-biasy PoE read - if you'd produced loads of scum tells that would have looked way over-eager to bury me.
the best part is from your POV, this is literally the rest of the game, and you have done nothing to figure this out
and we have a little over 24 hours left
2 of Proph/Eco/Grape/Wisp are working together. I need to figure out who those two are. I'm almost done with the Proph post so after that I'll, idk. I'll figure it out.
No ***** sherlock. You said this five days ago and you have gone absolutely nowhere with it.
the best part is from your POV, this is literally the rest of the game, and you have done nothing to figure this out
and we have a little over 24 hours left
Yes it is. It's literally the game state. And like I said, I don't think it's Proph.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
2 of Proph/Eco/Grape/Wisp are working together. I need to figure out who those two are. I'm almost done with the Proph post so after that I'll, idk. I'll figure it out.
No ***** sherlock. You said this five days ago and you have gone absolutely nowhere with it.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
2 of Proph/Eco/Grape/Wisp are working together. I need to figure out who those two are. I'm almost done with the Proph post so after that I'll, idk. I'll figure it out.
No ***** sherlock. You said this five days ago and you have gone absolutely nowhere with it.
WORKING ON IT
i mean there isn't much to work on, proph isn't going to die today
in less than 24 hours, you are voting Eco, and Eco is voting you
if you deviate you die, it's quite simple
I skimmed through Eco's towncase on me in bed, I'll try to get a more coherent response to it in a little bit.
Will start really diving into this game in a couple of hours.
The thing that's been on my mind for the past couple of days is: Is Grape scum, and has his push on me been largely agenda-driven throughout the entirety of the game? Or is he town, the team is exactly Eco/KJ, and we need to find each other as town for us to win this game? I'd normally default towards the former, but his posts have been.. quite tonally town, and I am not sure if Grape has the scum range to continuously push me like this.
If he's scum here he's played an excellent game for making me doubt myself, even though he's been pushing me pretty statically for most of the game.
All of your posts have been legitimately /good/ and coherent. However, my concern still is that I think your scum game is the scariest out of everyone's here, and I am not sure if you have actually done anything that would be unfakeable for you as scum. I do think that the approach you've taken to xylo (clearing me and Last) is pretty damn risky, but in that world there is still a victory path for you - which is convincing us to mislunch the townie in the (Eco/GF/KJ) group.
Be back in an hour or two.
Honestly? I don't think so. Maybe I wouldn't bother to go as in depth on Last's meta as scum, but I can't know for sure. But as arrogant as it sounds, I feel like my scum range is (or at least was) virtually infinite. You know the right way to read me is to try and look behind my posts and work out if I'm truly trying to work things out or not.
Grapefruit on KJ: Null/can't recall until a light town read in #768, lists KJ as wolf in #775, scumish reading in #996, votes KJ in #1062, and D3 has been on Proph/KJ team pretty consistently.
KJ on Grapefruit: null untill townish in #941, town in #990, then listed as possible scum/PoE in #1086 and #1117
There have been a minimal direct questions between the two (#947 is the main example), so I can't see any real attempt to figure the other out by either; just listed as null and falling down into the PoE. This makes Grape voting KJ and listing him as top scum D3 really the only notable interaction between the two. It's a bit of a weird thing to do to your buddy, but I can easily see them both reluctant to make a hard read either way then Grape deciding KJ is dead wood at this stage and going for the bus. There's certainly no cohesive pattern that rules out a KJ/Grape team in my mind.
Also working on the Grape ISO now.
Goal of this ISO is to figure out if he's town and just wrongfully tunneling me, or if he's scum and pushing me in bad faith. Let's get this bread
The question to me is a little intriguing because he got out of Snow White Mafia with me like.. nearly a year ago? Where I was mafia, and I also had a very reckless entrance. He said this that game:
Really weak, but I feel like me trying to end RVS early (again) should have maybe incited more of a reaction from him? Unsure.
I questioned this beforehand since I was scumreading Wisp at the time for.. not being engaged/relaxed. Little strange that we came to the opposite conclusions at the time, but I was pretty wrong there.
Says that his Crossbell vote has become serious. The question I keep coming back to is - does scum in this game just let this wagon stall out? Four townies on a townie? I mean, I guess they would be under flak for hammering if KJ/Cantrip is the scumteam and they just Didn't Play, but.. yeah.
Crossbell - 4 (Grapefruit21, DOTArchon, Axelrod, DV)
This read is fine. Didn't really quote anything, but this tonal based read I can buy.
Little self aware here with him saying that his own "rambling made no sense". Will have to check and see if that's something he does as scum or town more.
Good prodding on DoTA with the KJ distancing read question, and good prodding as well on the Cantrip question. Like how he engaged with Cantrip here because he saw that Cantrip was townreading his top scum read and wanted to ask him why specifically he was doing so.
This read on me is fine for the most part I think - I thought that at the time Wisp had a pattern of RVSing as town but not mafia, but that was before I checked his earlier MTGS games. I still like how he had an unaligned read on Osie and I and says that he will have to re-evaluate him based on his new scumread of me. It still feels fairly organic.
Seems fine here. Thiiink I like himself saying that he is doubting himself?
Mentioning this bc I know I need to get my games in, but I'd like to do so when this game is over.
More self-deprecation. Again, something I'd like to check for.
Trying to figure out if scum Grape would have this sort of mid-post re-evaluation on his read of me. Again, it feels organic, and I have a slight suspicion that scum Grape's read on me would be more static here, rather than kind of free-flowy and tied to Osie's alignment.
Again, I still like the mindset and how nuanced this read gets. It feels like they are real thoughts coming from Grape.
Again, most of this ISO feels very well done and his thoughts read as appropriately nuanced. Specifically the part where he says that the spamming with Wisp feels like a town thing to do (because I'd expect scum to be tunnelled and not consider the opposing viewpoint) and how he's nitpicking over Osie's use of the Feel Good 80s mafia game as a meta comparison. It's not unfakeable, no, but if he's scum constructing this post then he's done a pretty good job here.
So yeah, I do like his Osie push. Maybe the gamestate just ended up in a way where Osie put his foot into his mouth so hard, four townies jumped on him and then scum KJ and Cantrip were just lurking and couldn't really get their vote onto the wagon to hammer because it would attract negative attention. Idk.
Good analysis of Axel. The second paragraph here shows a fair amount of nuance that again, would be pretty tough for Grape to fake as scum. Him saying that it's a little weird that Axel didn't pursue that line of thought further is a decent observation. Third paragraph is also solid.
Then here he unvotes because Osie revealed himself to be Osie. Grape has mentioned multiple times that if Crossbell was actually Osie then that would weaken his case quite a bit, so he's acting consistent here.
This is where he starts pressuring and voting me, and I was pretty skeeved out at the time. I have to admit something though. The reason why I feel more charitable about this post is that - yes, I did feel as though what I wrote out about Osie was more of a justification for my read on him rather than an organic town case. The reason for this is because I thought DV wanted an explanation on HOW I got to my townread on Osie, rather than reasoning as to why Osie was town. So I just stepped back and tried to walk him through my mindset, which does look like as though I was justifying my actions.
So I can understand how he got to this read, and I am looking at it more charitably now than in the past. And I can understand how he switched from Osie to me since his progression was literally "one of Osie/Proph must be scum".
This is fine yes. Again, I think that quantifying his read on Crossbell with "if it's Osie then I'm gonna re-evaluate" is a weird approach for scum to take, and it would have to have been some excellent pre-planning if Grape was scum.
And I still hate this post because it felt like he was trying to chain mislunches. He literally said that "it's less of a 5 alarm siren than it was before I knew it was Osie" and then he goes "I still think the slot has a decent chance to be scum" which.. I know those two terms are similar but from his unvote it felt that he was on track to completely re-evaluate Osie since I made him out who he was. Just kinda ehh. I kind sort of buy that he went from TOP SCUMREAD to something more of a neutral/nullread, I guess?
Yeah this makes sense.
This is the post that still gives me the heebie-jeebies. The way he just goes "If that's the case I'm just dead here. No other options are viable.
Legacy time" on a dime is super emotionless and abrupt, and I feel like town Grape would have expressed more emotion here rather than this flat post.
I do like these posts. I get the feeling that he genuinely thought he was gonna die, given the spelling mistakes. The "Anmoying he thinks I'm so much worse than Proph as town bit fair" is also like a little quibble that I don't think manifests if he's scum.
He also listed a bunch of people as town rather than trying to shade people going out the door, which is sorta okay?
So Day 1 from Grape looks really good. He has plenty of nuanced thoughts, he has a logical progression that is mostly accounted for, and a solid EoD minus the emotionless "legacy time" post. If he's scum here, he played a really good Day 1.
Day 2 time.
I think I mentioned this before, but I sorta like how he mentions Wisp here. Feels like most scum at this point would table off Wisp as a mislunch option given how he's played but him throwing him in here doesn't feel malicious exactly? It's more of like a "this is some stuff that concerned me". His thoughts on here are also decently nuanced.
And I did like how he cared about Wisp misrepresenting him. Also this is no. 3 for self deprecation.
This reversal on the second paragraph also is fine to me and again not malicious.
I've been doing the whole "vote for me if you think I'm scum" thing a lot, so I think that's a decent look for GF.
Out of curiosity, do you have any scum games on MU? Or did you roll town for all of the Champs games?
Self deprecation no. 4.
Good lines of questioning and thought. First paragraph is regarding KJ, second is regarding DoTA.
Charitable view of Eco here (which is based on him seeing me/KJ as a scumteam, but I still like it I think).
Day 3:
This post is a long list of pre-flipping me and KJ as a team. I think I addressed this in an earlier post? But basically I was giving KJ room because of Axel's townread on him plus the fact that he was actually posting, while DoTA was just not at all. In addition I saw some micro-town tells from KJ which made me hesitant to lunch him. Now, I'm not so sure - I have a sneaking suspicion that you are the last townie I need to find, and KJ/Eco may be the team. But we'll see as I keep traversing through these ISOs.
Good ISO of killjoy.
523/524 is an especially good catch/something I want KJ to expand upon. 523 he says "Cross might be scum" but then 524 he goes "All in all he feels like he's just kinda trying to yeet someone that he doesn't actually naturally scumread" which sure seems like it should merit a stronger scumread than "MIGHT be scum" which is.. very non-commital.
Good analysis on Day 2 as well. I think in the KJ/Eco world, I can see where KJ analyzes Cantrip but never follows up or votes Eco as a distancing attempt.
And that's the end of his ISO. Okay, I'm really glad I did this. I was really unsure about the gamesolve before this, but as of right now I feel more comfortable with my potential gamesolve.
Day 1 Summary:
- Pushes Osie along with three other people for his poor posts - however, he has a massive caveat where he thinks that most points are weakened if he is actually Osie. Once Osie reveals himself, he switches to me since I was a brooding scumread of his for a while. Unless he planned this in scumchat, it is difficult to see that re-evaluation come from scum. Certainly possible but I feel like scum Grape would just barrel past that reveal.
- Poked at a lot of people during Day 1. Had a good Axel analysis. Solid evaluation of Crossbell/Osie. Probed DoTA/Cantrip a bit. Scumread me.
- Outside of the flat "legacy time", generally had a good EoD. Had spelling mistakes which is kinda NAI but indicates that he was concerned about getting his reads out there. Scum Grape may have just been frozen at EoD.
Day 2 Summary:
- Kind of floating for most of Day 2, but eventually refocused to me after some questioning. Had a good re-evaluation of Wisp where he admitted fault, which I think is slightly townie.
- Some more light questioning on KJ and DoTA.
Day 3 Summary:
- Good analysis/interrogation of KJ, really honing in on the Proph/KJ team.
- Working with Wisp on trying to solve. I can understand his reasoning for suspecting me and for thinking that I might be buddies with KJ, but he's wrong. I've said this numerous times already, but I know that I've been more charitable towards KJ than Cantrip/DoTA. But that was because of Axel's post + the fact that KJ had some micro towntells + he was more active than the two before Cantrip got replaced.
Meta Comparison:
I looked at his posts in Matter Mafia and.. it might be confirmation bias speaking, but I find his posts to be markedly different. He's way more casual in that game and has shorter posts on average. Nothing really approaching the level of detail I'm seeing in this game wrt his Osie ISO or his case on me. He displays occasional nuanced reads in the Matter Mafia game but he displays a lot more nuance in this game.
Conclusion:
Not as strong as Wisp, but after evaluating his posts, I think he is likely to be our final townie. Again, I find his push on me nerve-wracking, but upon thinking about it multiple times in my head, I don't think that he has the fortitude to scumread and push me like this if he knows that I'm town and hyperposting. He has displayed a genuine interest in solving and figuring out the game (asking multiple people detailed questions) and again, I keep coming back to this, but his nuance, level of thought, and progression I feel like is something that would be quite difficult for him to fake as scum. If he's scum, then he's played a very strong game and I think deserves to win as well. (He'll also get to use his one chance)
still waiting for that Proph town case
I *think* I am convinced that Wisp and Grape are my two fellow townies, and that the scum team is Eco/KJ. But I will do my due diligence and do two more ISOs. Will try to get the KJ ISO out later today and maybe the Eco one Friday, and then we can talk about it for the last 48 hours or so of the game Day.
If anyone has any problems with my process then go ahead. I haven't seen any quibbles about my Wisp ISO so I assume everyone's okay with that (or is just too lazy to read my posts KEKW).
so we both came to the same team then? Eco/Killjoy
the team I had before Killjoy called my posts personal attacks, and threw my brain off
I'll do my due diligence and ISO KJ/Eco tonight, but my stance is this: if you or Grape are scum, then you both have played strong games and deserve the W. I don't think Eco or KJ do.
Eco/KJ make the most sense from an Occam's Razor perspective, and TRUST IN OUR LORD AND SAVIOR DV
Killjoy is defending you
Eco is defending you and me
cause from my PoV, I am never voting Grapefruit
Killjoy is never getting a vote off on me, nor is he ever getting a vote off on grape
so they are pretty much setting each other up, to cross vote each other
But I mean. I know I'm town. I think you're town. If Grape is scum, then he has leveled up massively and I think deserves the win.
We'll see when I get to Eco/KJ ISOs.
And to answer your question I never rolled scum on MU. Both my champs games were town. As was my The Thing and Tarot games.
I'm biased, so I'm thinking Eco/KJ crossvote, then Grape votes, then Wisp/me, though I know some people will object to this order.
I assume votes are not locked?
Btw u saying that Grape not re-evaluating makes him a wolf, is wrong. Go look at his MU game where he buried my partner. I tried hard to get this dude off my partner with his crazy reachy case, to no avail. If he thinks you are a wolf, he will re-evaluate when he thinks it needs to happen, not when you think he should.
If you're town here both KJ and Eco defending you when Wisp and I were working up to a vote is just wild stuff.
Btw once u drop that case on why Proph is town, u need to tell me how you plan go get anyone else in this game voted out, except for Eco maybe
And I keep saying this, but scum make unconventional/non-optimal plays all the time. I know that it didn't work out when DoTA tried using that as an argument, but sometimes, scum are still wolves even if they play erratically.
I feel like I shouldn't like you voting after me but I don't think I hate it here if it's those two cross voting first.
As for votes locking I don't see anything about in the OP about votes locking so I'd assume they don't.
Him getting ganked N1 makes a lot more sense if he was dead on the money with his scumteam. I know that listening to dead players isn't really an optimal strat, but I think it will work out here.
OK, just wondering. Based on what I saw from you in Matter Mafia, your scum game would have had to seriously level up in a span of a year, and.. I would be very impressed if you did that tbh.
I would like to think that Matter isn't representative of my scum game but the only scum game I'm proud of is Pirates and that is like 3 or 4 years ago now.
@Wisp Okay let's talk KJ. He's now suddenly become my most confident read, are you still town reading his emotional outburst?
But Killjoy is not, and I don't care what he thinks, maybe that makes me toxic, maybe it doesn't.
Idk who is going to be alive tomorrow if we hit a wolf
But if we hit killjoy and he is a wolf, he is not a wolf with Proph, specifically pointing to how he and Proph handled each other towards the end of day 2.
KJ ISO will come a little later tonight.
and in terms of you, he talks about your vote on Osie, and if he had actually tried to read EoD, he would see it was self-preservation. Not to mention calling you out for not re-evaluating after Proph was right about Osie, which makes 0 sense to me.
but overall, yes, he does know how to write his thoughts and even respond to posts about them, if he is a wolf here
Also should be getting the wall out at around midnight my time, evening was busier than usual.
Biggest enigma in this game by a decent margin. Let's do it. (No formatting because MTGS broke it when I c+p'd from MafiaUniverse)
Maybe it's just bias, but I can't help but think that the whole "place a fake RVS vote, reply, and then unvote" is a little too on the nose/a little too staged. Like "oh hey I'm participating in RVS" thing. Very weak but I feel compelled to mention it regardless.
Also I got this Curse Premium sub thing after I resigned from moderatorship, it's pretty useless lolFine questions here, and he does follow up on them, which is good.
And here's the whole "shading Grape very indirectly" thing which I know Grape and Wisp both did not like. I think this is a very mild unaligned pair for KJ and Grape - because I don't really see why KJ would even try to damage Grape's credibility during this part of the game.
Again, I initially liked this, but reading it again I did prod him to respond to this, and yeah. Not as clearing as I thought the first time (which again could just be me confirmation biasing but shrugze)
Still like, trying to wrap my head around that second sentence. Is this KJ just being afraid that he may have touched the hornet's nest and he wants to make sure that there's not some sort of misunderstanding?
This is the post where he gets a lot of flak for having a null read on Osie. This post is fine but again not really anything that's clearing. I still think it's weird that he townreads Axel here for "getting a fair amount of hate for his typical playsyle and that makes me feel as though he was a target for scum" but then he scumreads DV and Wisp, both of whom which were NOT scumreading Axel at the time IIRC. He nullreads Osie who WAS the primary pusher of Axel. That was weird to me.
Townreads me for asking a lot of questions, nullreads Cantrip, nullreads Osie, fencesits on DoTA, nullreads Grape. A lot of nullreads.
There's a tonal dissonance where KJ just goes "I HATE THIS" in response to an early game post DV made. A little strange given how the reads post was pretty milquetoast. (Thanks, ZDS)
I'm not gonna touch on the huge body pillow post because I've beaten it to death already.
I know these types of posts are comically easy to fake, but I thought it was natural in isolation. Looking back on it in context, it is a little weird that he says this when talking to Wisp. Like, who is exactly the scum KJ is trying to catch here?
Grape did mention the weird progression here of "Cross might be scum" to "here's a list of reasons why I think Cross is off" and I'd love an explanation for that.
The second post here kind of smacks of TMI a little bit, but again conf bias again tunneling. The question to me in the first post is fine - he's noticing something weird about Osie and wants me to explain.
EoD progression. Makes sense if he thinks that EoD was tomorrow instead of today. Also random ass readswap on DV right before DV dies. I legitimately don't know how to evaluate that. It's so bizarre.
He has some more EoD one liners where he says "calm down Wisp, don't direct all the hate at me" but mostly meh.
Day 2.
Kinda +town here because I'm pretty sure as scum you just answer the question over say something deliberate like this.
Sure, that's fine. Note that he just doesn't end up doing this I'm pretty sure.
Here's KJ's ISO on Cantrip. I think Grape said something along the lines of he just never follows up on this after he posts this. I'll check for that. This post is overall good but if he never probes or votes Eco then that's an issue.
Fine questioning of DoTA.
And here's the random-ass "high poster town low poster scum" read. His Axel read as I mentioned at the time was bizarre. At the time I thought it was just KJ being KJ and his weird theorizing made him likely town, but now that I look at it again it seems kind of like a way to pivot off of his Cantrip read that he did a couple posts ago. It's worth noting that Axel did NOT like this from KJ near EoD.
His progression is weird because he just goes
Like he's literally calling people wolves at random based on this theory lmao. It's so on-the-nose scummy.
He's saying that he never fully eliminates people from the PoE.. but here he is trying to remove me from the PoE right now....
:clown_emoji:
I have to say that this read change does feel kind of real? Turning on a dime randomly is kind of par for the course I guess.
And again just a progression with no explanation other than it matches his theory of one scum in the high posters, one scum in the low. Just bizarre honestly.
If Eco/KJ are the team then this response is also kinda weird coming from KJ.
This is an explanation for him doing the "high/low posters" thing, and I guess it's mostly fine? He's explaining his mindset behind it and it seems wholly fine to me. It's very different than how I would ever approach this game but I can sorta see where he's coming from.
Here's KJ running with his theory and trying to solve with it. Again this is more of "KJ is operating in his own world" which is kinda townie-ish? Just completely approaching the game from a different perspective than anyone else. Idk.
And then this is the fencesittiest read on me ever made.
Self-implying himself as town is noted. He's trying to do this but this is like... literally an hour before the deadline? So again he's operating not only on a different time scale than everyone else, but he's also just doing his own thing with a fair amount of disregard for the actual gamestate.
Hammers both DoTA and GJ.
Day 3.
Bog standard PoE post. What's noteworthy is that he just doesn't make any sort of grand gamestate review, no emotional post, no whatever to indicate that we are currently LOSING. Just "here's my PoE, I'll look into that". So heartless.
:clown_emoji:
His responses to my questions read as.. honest, at least. Not exactly sure what that means for him alignment wise though. I can believe what he's putting down with this post I guess?
And here's the post where he gets mad. I don't really want to read into this since it's kinda gross.
At least he's honest here?
Day 1 Summary:
- Pops in mid-late D1, says that Wisp and DV are scum. Votes Wisp. Says Osie is null and gets a lot of flak for that post.
- Re-evalutates Osie, thinks Osie might be scum. Says that DV might be town. Hammers Osie.
Day 2 Summary:
- Makes the ISO on Cantrip, says Cantrip could be scum. Never pushes for this or really interrogates/prods Eco.
- Gets distracted by the "one scum in high posters, one in low" theory and makes a bunch of scintillating reads based on this. Lots of conflicting reads with very little to no progression all to fit this theory. HIs mindset when explaining why he thought it was okay, but he still hasn't made any sort of real impact on the gamestate.
- Says that DOTA might be scum for pushing him, hammers DOTA.
Day 3 Summary:
- Answers my questions. Gets angry at Wisp about his personal attacks on him. Says that he will work to clear me from the PoE despite him saying earlier that he never clears anyone fully from the PoE.
Meta Comparison:
Not gonna do this yet, very tired and want to go to bed. Will do tomorrow hopefully.
Conclusion:
Honestly, I'm just so afraid of the world where we flip KJ and he turns out to be town and the game ends and it turns out the scum are just like, Wisp/Grape hyperposting pocketing me lmao. Anyways, if he's town here, I can't get there on him. He has occasional glimmers of posts where it looks like he is actively thinking about the game and has real, concrete thoughts, but there are so many posts from him which aren't really scummy or townie - they're just straight up bizarre.
For example, the random, umprompted reads reversals, and his "one scum in low posters, one scum in high" theory. While Grape is like, hyper consistent wrt his progression, KJ is the complete opposite. His theories and reads changes just come completely out of nowhere and it's very hard to keep track of his progression.
Overall, the thing that makes me want to lunch KJ despite seeing some glimmers of towniness in his micro (if I squint) is that his macro is extremely extremely poor. He has virtually no impact on the gamestate and hasn't even bothered to try and influence or control the game. He's just There. You could take him out of this game and nothing would really change. He hasn't really bothered to push his reads or be vocal or have a compelling stance about anything, and I think that outweighs his maybe good Real Thoughts in some of his posts.
+++++
It is very telling that not only has KJ completely failed to do the one he promised to do toDay, but he has also stalled long enough that he has seen what everyone else thinks of Proph in detail first. It looks like he's just deliberately subsiding into Grape's planned bus.
Since I can't be here at the deadline I am ok with a plan like this. This specific order looks fine?
I would like the vote order to go
Killjoy votes Eco
Eco votes Killjoy
GF votes Killjoy
Me and Wisp "confirm" ourselves by not voting, then either one of us can hammer KJ when the time is right
Would aggressively take suggestions/pointers to improve postgame ofc but I've put in a lot of time and effort into the solve, and I'm happy about that.
Lesssgoo. Saved the easiest for last.
First Cantrip post and it's a lengthy one (just like most of his posts). This post is mostly fine and inoffensive, but there are a couple of things I'd like to point out. First was what Axel said about him townreading Osie, but never really going out of his way to defend him like I did. Though that can easily be explained by his intermittent activity. Secondly, I feel like his townreads on KJ/DoTA were a little too premature at the time compared to how much content they put out. Maybe it's just a difference on how Cantrip and I operate, but I'm always way more strict on who I townread versus who I scumread. So all in all a pretty inoffensive/townie post, but there are some things to nitpick.
Defends DoTA here with solid reasoning that I accepted at the time.
I think that KJ is feeling pretty lost rn, but shrugze. He's probably gonna show up later today.
Pretty snap re-evaluation of DV. Doesn't really explain the mindset or the reason why. His entire treatment of DV feels very curt and intentionally unexplained to me.
Another instance here where he starts to explain his reasoning but I don't necessarily /follow/ it?
This kind of feels like a way for Cantrip to somewhat opportunistically talk his way out of his DoTA townlean. It's weak but yea.
Still trying to work DoTA down on his list of reads, I feel.
He says this, but doesn't unvote me or try to re-evaluate the gamestate with that revelation in mind (that I might be town). Also he just.. doesn't comment on the Osie wagon at all or the amount of heat he's getting throughout the entirety of Day 1 really; he just kinda focuses on his own things. I think if we want to look at what Cantrip is NOT posting (shoutout to KJ's signature), then that would be the biggest reason to scumread him.
Could be nitpicking here, but he says "another question mark eliminated", but he thought Osie/GJ was town and was trending towards town on DV. I certainly wouldn't phrase a player who I thought was town flipping town as "another question mark eliminated", since no one from my PoE actually got removed. So again, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's /weird/ from a mindset perspective.
Ecophagy.
Eco's first post with content, and it is fairly substantial.
Both townreads on me on Axel are pretty safe and ~somewhat consensus (think the townread on me is less so compared to thread narrative at the time). Scumread on DOTA is fine/acceptable given where I was at at the time. He never really fully fleshes out his read on Grape here, and tells KJ to finish his vote count analysis. Asks me for help on Wisp, which is reasonable because my progression there was largely unexplained. He basically positions himself to have a similar PoE to everyone else and not exactly rock the boat, which is my main concern about Eco. He has well-reasoned, well-thought out posts, but nothing that I can see that would expressly clear him since I know his scum range is quite large. In addition, I get a undercurrent feeling from his posts that he's pretty fine with how the gamestate is going and is good with the status quo. Let's see if my theory bores out as I read more of his posts.
Says that he thinks Grape is slightly +town for picking a fight with me when there were easier options available (KJ, DoTA) and I am inclined to agree. Seems like a totally fine opinion to have.
Trying to get into the weeds of why exactly I townread Wisp. I guess one question I have here is - why is he trying to engage me on Wisp as opposed to asking/interacting with Wisp himself? I can sorta understand it because I not only have a lot of experience with Wisp and am a good person to bounce reads off of, but generally I think my first source would be the primary source, right?
I know we all gave KJ room to work with Yesterday but this feels kinda blatant in the world where Eco/KJ are scum. I hate to use the word "coaching", here, but it feels weird to me that Eco is basically giving the lines to KJ as to what he should be doing. Examples:
---
Does the meta-dive on LW and actually comes out with a solid re-evaluation on him, which I think is +town. I'm a little gunshy on giving townpoints to Eco on this because I literally myself was scum and looked through some games of a fellow townie to meta them and I did basically the same thing Eco did here. But objectively speaking, reading new information and having that change your worldview is townie I feel, so I'm giving him the points here.
Again yada yada conf bias, This kinda looks to be yet another instance of Eco just trying to give the answer key to KJ. "Use your tools that you've mentioned previously!"
Here is it again!
Day 3.
Okay, I guess Eco just admits here that he was trying to give KJ some rope/lead him on/give him the answer key here. I guess this makes me feel slightly better about his approach to KJ Yesterday?
Sorry Eco, I hope things are going okay for you.
You know that my scum meta involves a lot of TMI and bussing buddies. Devil's advocate time - do you really think me gunning for my buddies at EoD is a strong unaligned mark for me and them?
I do have to say that these two paragraphs sound and feel very real - it's like Eco definitely tried to weigh my alignment in his mind multiple times. So props to him for that. I still don't think it's out of the realm of scum Eco since he himself admitted that his range is almost infinite, but I do like the mindset here.
I do agree with him that Grape's scumread/tunnel on me is wrong, but I have to disagree slightly with the notion that Grape's worldview did not change. If you read his beginning of Day 2, I felt as though he was still scumreading me, but to his credit it took him a couple of IRL days to refocus. I think for the first couple of IRL days he was kinda float-y and not really pushing much of anything.
I also am wondering why Eco is focusing on Grape first in his hypothetical Grape/KJ team as opposed to focusing on the person everyone wants to lunch atm (KJ).
I do think he's trying to work things out! Eco is certainly playing well. It's just that I don't know if there's anything in particular I can point to and say "Eco is town for X"
Day 1 Summary (Cantrip):
- Voted me, expressed a townread on Osie, but didn't really do anything about those two reads (IE, push them or convince others that he was correct). It was like he was off in his own world sorta and kinda ignored the wider gamestate/wagons. Kinda unfair given that he was obviously crunched for time but yeah.
Day 2 Summary (Ecophagy):
- Joined me on DoTA as soon as he replaced in. Did not think Wisp was town, but after some meta knowledge Grape and I passed onto him, he quickly reversed that read. Worth noting that he is not really reaching out to Wisp despite him being his top town read, which I assume is due to playstyles not meshing particularly well. He also did not ask or interrogate Wisp, mostly just asked me to help him. Not sure if that is AI or not as opposed to a "playstyles not meshing together well" thing.
- While scumreading DoTA, says that Grape and KJ might be +town. Gives KJ a ton of rope/answer keys with his questions which I thought was indicative of them being buddies, but Eco straight up admits to this on Day 3.
Day 3 Summary:
- Does a deep dive of me, concludes that I am likely town. Says that GF/KJ are the scumteam.
- Starts to preflip said GF/KJ team. Focuses more on Grape than KJ which is a little notable.
No meta comparison because that's a lot of work and Eco is slippery.
Conclusion: Cantrip was wholly fine, but my issue with this slot is that it's just so damn unreadable because of Cantrip's lurking. Day 1 was the most important Day for interactions and he essentially just skipped out on it because of the lurking and decentposting when he WAS around. I still don't like the fact that he townread Osie and scumread me, but never really bothered to push these convictions that he had. Eco is better, but it's still very hard to read him given that he replaced in Day 2 with.. mostly consensus viewpoints and he's made the effort to firm up his reads but it's hard to get past the fact that his slot was just never really around for Day 1. He's essentially boxed himself into one scumteam with the stated townreads on me and Wisp, and to his credit I think it would have been significantly easier for him to agree with GF/Wisp and started to push me if he was scum rather than double down on pocketing me here. So that's a point for him. Overall, I do think this slot is scum, but regardless of his alignment Eco has played really well because most of the stuff he's saying I can see an explanation for it coming from town him as well. It's just really hard to overcome the lurking Day 1 when other people this game have had actual progressions that Day.
Gonna wait for others to do the same.
2 of Proph/Eco/Grape/Wisp are working together. I need to figure out who those two are. I'm almost done with the Proph post so after that I'll, idk. I'll figure it out.
I just don't really see how it requires pre-planning. He's got a scumread on Crossbell, couches it with "if it's Osie the case is weaker" because others bring up Osie, then when it turns out it is Osie he unvotes as the wagon falls apart and changes target. I don't think he would plan it in advance, he just has to make sure if Crossbell turns out to be Osie he reacts appropriately (and others in thread gave him a lead to follow). Maybe scum GF would be more keen to stick with his vote after the reveal, but the wagon fell apart anyway and he didn't want to be holding the bag.
I see your PBPA on me is basically "Cantrip lurked, Eco hasn't left scum range". These may both be true, but it's not exactly a slam dunk. I was trying to coax KJ into doing something town so I could see if his unified opinions made consistent sense - but he never even tried so giving him rope turned out to just be a waste of time. You're also totally correct that I didn't engage with LW because I just didn't think it would produce anything because of very obvious playstyle clash - I can't just ask him "LW is all this weird ***** you're doing town??" because he'd just say yes and call me a boomer. It was also a bit of a test for you, Proph, to see if my expressing doubt might cause you to tactically waver in your read.
It does sooth any remaining paranoia that your post is essentially a conf-biasy PoE read - if you'd produced loads of scum tells that would have looked way over-eager to bury me.
the best part is from your POV, this is literally the rest of the game, and you have done nothing to figure this out
and we have a little over 24 hours left
No ***** sherlock. You said this five days ago and you have gone absolutely nowhere with it.
At least I'll learn some new lessons I guess.
in less than 24 hours, you are voting Eco, and Eco is voting you
if you deviate you die, it's quite simple
@Proph
ya I know that feeling
His alignment is basically the crux of this game and I need to make sure that I'm correct on him.