"Don't look too town as scum"

[mhsmith0]

The point of being Scum is to be indistighable from your Town game.

Fwiw I disagree with this.

The point of scum is to achieve mislynches (technically it’s to achieve parity but the primary thing to do that is achieve mislynches)

Looking town can be helpful towards this goal... but it’s not enough. Looking town, in the absence of achieving anything else, will result in you being the last wolf lynched, as opposed to you winning.

I’m hardly one to talk since I suck at it, of course, but I always feel like having an eye on that ultimate prize and acting effectively towards that goal is the key. You can be flagrantly different from your town game... as long as you’re not lynched for it. Or as long as your death helps spew yiur teammates as town. Etc.

Conversely, you you look town while having everyone ignore you, and it helps you dodge pressure, but if they’re lynching your teammates while this happens, that’s bad.

In the proudest scum performance I’ve had, people praised me after the game for “looking town”. You know what I was proud of? Turning that town credit into a giant stack of mislynches. Earning town cred was nice. Spending it effectively was nicer

[RadiantCowbells]

the point of scum is to win

people irrationally overpraise scum on their ability to be 'towny' while underpraising them on their ability to close out games.

[mhsmith0]

Fwiw
If as scum I had the choice of taking a teammate who’d consistently achieve three shitty mislynches before getting lynched every single d4 I’d take that teammate
Every
Single
Time
(Unless I guess I have option B of an even better wolf bro but you know what I mean )

[Elsa Jay]

Or take the teammate that actually survives MyLo and LyLo on multiple occasions.

You can get 5 mislynches in a row but it does jack if your all hung before you win.

[mhsmith0]

You can get 5 mislynches in a row but it does jack if your all hung before you win.

Disagree. Three mislynches and one scum lynch is advantage scum. A scummate who can run like that is an asset. Can’t win a game by himself of course but you can’t achieve the fourth mislynch without achieving the first three
(But srsly if you go from like 10/3 to 3/2 but die yourself, that’s huge edge scum, then it’s just about teammates taking it home ftw)

[RadiantCowbells]

if all you can do is be towny and hope to reach endgame then you'll find yourself losing a decent 20%ish of games where that leaves you no path to endgame.

[RadiantCowbells]

your towniness also pays the least dividends in terms of continuing to add value to your teams as scum once people have gotten suitably wary of you

[mastina]

The point of being Scum is to be indistighable from your Town game.

Actually, that mindset is the most self-sabotaging one to get in as scum.
The goal of scum isn't to look like your town self; the goal of scum is to endgame the town as quickly as is possible, which is usually served best by keeping yourself alive, and to keep yourself alive your greatest ally is usually to make others think you look town and it is easiest for them to think you look town if you are mimicking your towngame.

But as you can tell.

Indistinguishable scumgame from towngame is fourfold removed from scum's primary objective.

Looking town takes priority over mimicking your towngame; if you have a scummy towngame, then as scum mimicking it you are going to get lynched. Keeping yourself alive takes priority over looking town, so if you focus too much on looking town and give up on more pragmatic survival strategies, you are going to get lynched. And reaching endgame takes priority over keeping yourself alive, so if you keep yourself alive by power-bussing your entire scumteam...you are going to get lynched.

[RadiantCowbells]

I mean

Elsa Jay openly claims that he plays as town to try to be like his scum game

I'm not sure he's averse to self sabotage

[mastina]

Elsa Jay openly claims that he plays as town to try to be like his scum game

As has been discussed, that's actually a valid strategy, if the attempt to make your towngame be like your scumgame has the end goal of bettering your own towngame.

This is something that you get taught a lot. Like, say, in martial arts:
If your kick on one side is amazing, but is atrocious on the other, your teacher will tell you: "analyze what you are doing well on the side you're good on, and try to replicate it on the side you are bad on", more or less.

Same principle applies for alignments.
If you have a good scumgame but a really shitty towngame, analyze what in your scumgame is so good, and attempt to replicate it in your towngame.

(Vice-versa, where you have an amazing towngame and a shitty scumgame and yet as town try to mimic your scumgame? Sure yeah, that's self-sabotaging and is bad. Trying to bring your skill level up = good; trying to drag your skill level down = bad. But there's merit in mimicking scumgames as town if doing the former rather than the latter.)

[mhsmith0]

Looking town takes priority over mimicking your towngame; if you have a scummy towngame, then as scum mimicking it you are going to get lynched. Keeping yourself alive takes priority over looking town, so if you focus too much on looking town and give up on more pragmatic survival strategies, you are going to get lynched. And reaching endgame takes priority over keeping yourself alive, so if you keep yourself alive by power-bussing your entire scumteam...you are going to get lynched.

also having your team reach endgame takes priority over you in particular reaching endgame or (necessarily) your team doing so as fast as possible (i.e. if you have a bad slot on your team that definitely will need to get bussed, plan for when is the best time to bus it rather than defaulting to "never")
tho of course if your teammates are obvscum there isn't much difference between you reaching endgame and your team reaching endgame

Spoiler:

let's just say that I've definitely done

a few times in my career

Spoiler:

and of course I've NEVER been teh one to have my wolf bros do that to me
no never
of course not...

[Persivul]

Looking town takes priority over mimicking your towngame; if you have a scummy towngame, then as scum mimicking it you are going to get lynched.

Ideally, yes. But the fact is, on this site, if you play a scummy towngame long enough, then you don't get lynched for it, because meta.

[Persivul]

If you have a good scumgame but a really shitty towngame, analyze what in your scumgame is so good, and attempt to replicate it in your towngame.

You can achieve a high win rate as scum merely by having a shitty towngame for long enough.

Part of the problem is that people equate high win rate with good scumgame, when that's not necessarily the case.

[RadiantCowbells]

layperson understanding of good scum play is meaningless lol

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

[Nancy Drew 39]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

That still counts, since he really only miscalculated the won endgame state and played his cards too quickly

Scum would have won that game otherwise since town was herpaderping

[Nancy Drew 39]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

That still counts, since he really only miscalculated the won endgame state and played his cards too quickly

Scum would have won that game otherwise since town was herpaderping

Yeah, that and we were also foiled by Drixx’s ingenious plan.

[RadiantCowbells]

I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless but not men.

[Ankamius]

If you aren't consciously trying to reach a won endgame, you can't call yourself a good scum tbh

This is ignoring games where you have no choice but to play to survive to have any chance

In Heroes, Math gave me good advice about “planting seeds”, rather than actually push an agenda. Unfortunately, he got overly enthusiastic stopped taking his own good advice.

That still counts, since he really only miscalculated the won endgame state and played his cards too quickly

Scum would have won that game otherwise since town was herpaderping

Yeah, that and we were also foiled by Drixx’s ingenious plan.

And leaving two people who can sync up against scum creature

[RadiantCowbells]

That seems like an awful lot of mistakes

[RadiantCowbells]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

[RadiantCowbells]

I hope creature doesn't take offense to me using him as a case study

[Ankamius]

That seems like an awful lot of mistakes :P

Scum is a lot harder when you can't take over the game through force of will, since you can run into those pitfalls a lot more easily

[Ankamius]

Like fucking creature has 11/8 scum wr

That's baseline

To be competent scum you gotta be far above that

And to be great scum you gotta be far above that.

It's horrifying for the state of towns on this site if a 55-60% win rate as scum is just average