Newbie 2051 - Prism's personal notes

[fferyllt]

Notes

[Prism]

I don't really think I've done anything too nuanced so far. I'm honestly kind of puzzled-I haven't rolled scum in a Newbie before, and to me half the table is already very obviously town. That doesn't mean I have to acknowledge it but it does mean I have to be a bit more careful. Replacements are unfortunately a thing that I have to account for: I can't rely on getting away with murder if a pinchhitter enters at some point. The small size also really throws me-I don't know yet know whether to play more aggressively or more passively.

I normally like to position aggressively against partners to be set up well regardless of who flips first, but the setup and unpredictability/lack of knowledge of the table make me hesitant to try it. I can normally be quite confident my push will go nowhere beyond appearances, but I don't have that same confidence this game.

I'm basically just trying to get a feel for the players while giving reads that won't be hard to flip later down the line. I would probably get punished for it elsewhere, but here I can get away with just raw activity and surface level reasoning.

I mentioned it in the scum PT but one thing I do want to do is run interference by seeing if I can bait flow trap into a slapfight.

[Prism]

I'm really uncomfortable with how I've interacted with Spartan so far. Until he gives me enough reason to townread him I can't justify him being any better than the middle, but I'm uncomfortable leaving him in the with players that will stop there if I flip. I'm trying to give an avenue towards more aggression or for him to be town, but I really hate how I'm having to play the association aspect.

I think I can get a safebet elimination at some point, I wouldn't mind it being today.

[Prism]

Two lessons esoteric is about to learn unfortunately: Never trust tone with chat mafia players, and analytical ability doesn't depend on alignment.

[Prism]

You will hate me for this.

I will hammer anyone, if i see him at E-1.

Don't put people on E-1 unless you surely decide you want them dead. Ask for claims on E-2, so mafia can't trade self on some Cop claim with instant punch.

I decided on it, so don't argue.

I will elaborate on this post at a later date.

Point of this is Enchant is now instantly getting nightkilled. This is to claim that I knew they were a PR, hoping they lived and I could selfclear. Naturally, I'm scum and will kill them, but would scum out the knowledge over keeping it quiet? Of course not.

There's also some WIFOM stuff I can claim but I think that wouldn't work well. Will need to cook up something else in the event they flip VT.

[Prism]

Not really looking to catfight with flow trap over defending Frederick. Catfight was valuable on ground that leaves me net town, this is very stupid and shifts the focus from Frederick. It will make both of us look worse, no benefit.

Endgoal here is probably a safebet Day 1 into a Spartan vote Day 2.

[Prism]

We might be able to swing an Enchant or Salsabil vote Day 2 actually, we'll see.

[Prism]

Frederick scumread was fully expected due to stylistic differences, consciously traded this for more general townreads. Not too concerned about him being able to swing it, more concerned he tunnels longterm.

[Prism]

I'm actually really confident I can get him [Frederick] voted out here without any difficulty, but my big concern here is Spartan.

I'm not suited to go deep in this table-I will be too town to live through NKs if I bus and expectations of me so far are too high to survive multiple miselims. I can't really afford to go solo, meaning Spartan needs to be town enough to survive my flip. In an ideal world I engineer two miselims and he secures the last but I'm not willing to bet on that just yet.

I'm finding the 2 person scumteam doesn't suit my style well. I don't find the lower miselim threshhold worth the tradeoff in operating room.

[Prism]

Decent dialogue. I'll take it.

Pretty disappointed in my play this game. No art, no nuance, just being town.

[Prism]

So Frederick is kind of alien to me completely in thought process. I really don't know what to expect from him here, but I'll take it.

Spartan's play is quite strong the more I look at it, for certain sections he really kicks into gear. It's the smaller posts that I think are mistakes but he's done a great job so far. I feel a lot better about our positioning now having dedicated the wall towards publicly flipping the read and working together.

Enchant has gifted us a free miselim with a bowtie. I don't really know what else to say here; it just kind of validates my approach that you can win most scumgames by just waiting for town to mess it up. There are still some danger points with town finding each other but I think the lack of activity on Frederick's/floo's part gives us enough room to win even if all of Salsa/flow trap/Esoteric link up.

I think floo and Frederick are both good targets for the next miselim with quiet as a backup.

[Prism]

It's worth digging deeper into my recent progression with Spartan.

For background, early on in the game, I really didn't know how to approach the day given that it felt like a minefield with the level of unpredictability of the game. I've gotten more comfortable with positioning around him as I've seen the TRs on both of us trickle in.

This sequence I'm about to dive into was planned in the scum PT.

Don't have time to really read today, prefer the Spartan vote to Enchant one. I'm probably not going to get more out of Frederick, safebet was top scumread but will wait on replacement. Might swap vote tomorrow, might keep it.

Can you explain your read of me compared to Enchant, why am I the better vote? Why do you think I am scum?

Why was Safebet your top scumread? Personally I he is a townread of mine I'm going to have to re-evaluate once he is replaced.

Spoiler: scum PT quote

Can probably actually ask why I'd prefer you to Enchant, forcing me to back off by challenging me might look decent

With my original post of 598, I was intentionally noncommittal to my vote to give the appearance I might be willing to flop to Spartan. This is scummy for me individually, but critically important to setting up Spartan in the event I flip! The original plan for the followup was for me to give a shitty justification, have him grill me a bit more, and then reluctantly back off. The idea behind this is that if I flip, Spartan successfully defuses a scum push on him. In a more advanced table, this would have worked wonders, but in this specific table I think it might have looked bad.

Spartan asking about safebet specifically was actually a godsend and allowed me to kick this up a few more notches.

[Prism]

Next, let's break down the sequence itself.

Splitting this into 3 different posts was a conscious choice. You don't want to tell someone what your thought process is; it is much more convincing to

take them along for the ride

. Most people tend to stop at sentence-to-sentence or make only reactionary pivot turns.

Unprompted

turns utilizing multiple posts and real time gaps have great power. Splitting up posts, waiting a few minutes, then going further or in a different direction gives the appearance that you've finished a thought, but have been chewing on it more. Here, I chose to use the illusion that I'm just now catching up to further this as being spurred by quotes, but honestly? It tends to work better without them.

Let's dive into the first post where I immediately react to Spartan.

Don't have time to really read today, prefer the Spartan vote to Enchant one. I'm probably not going to get more out of Frederick, safebet was top scumread but will wait on replacement. Might swap vote tomorrow, might keep it.

Can you explain your read of me compared to Enchant, why am I the better vote? Why do you think I am scum?

Why was Safebet your top scumread? Personally I he is a townread of mine I'm going to have to re-evaluate once he is replaced.

Hey, I'm really sorry I couldn't get to this yesterday.

Enchant and you are both kind of dart throw gut reads. Enchant was pretty comfortable at the start and his thought processes have mostly been fine in my book, the questioning floo in 150 is one example. esoteric was right that he was a bit fillery but in context I think he's just conversing, not really going out of his way. The worst thing he's done to me is put flow trap at E-2....which was fine.

With you I didn't like the explanation for the "I feel like there's at least 1 scum in these two" comment about Salsabil/flow trap. Your explanation seems to just suggest Salsabil town and flow trap scum-and flow trap wasn't even in your top reads and you were voting outside.

Declaring something as likely TvS is one of the few things I ask about immediately as a hard rule. It's not a superb tell, but it's great to force people to justify it immediately regardless. As scum it forces you to justify it rather than chain miselims/let the 1v1 continue without interdiction. As town I need to get you to drill down and pick which one is scum, or realize neither have to be, instead of leaning on one of the easiest bad assumptions to make in the game. You were my third vote choice so you'd be more of a compromise than my first choice, if that's what you're worried about.

For safebet, I know he's been replaced and will get to that in a bit, but I didn't like the clashing motivations he had early on and the read wall he gave. (Post links are my explanations). I never got explanations from him on any of these and now I never will.

First sentence in red is standard tonal distancing, friendly/ingratiating to give the nonpartner appearance.

Second paragraph, in blue, tackles the Enchant half of the preference statement. It's intentionally very weak to give the appearance of waffling. I had mostly caught up and known about Enchant but not completely at this point, I don't for sure know that he's getting voted out yet: So I want it to draw Enchant-Prism flags in the event I flip. Enchant ~probably~ flipping town soon means I can afford to be a bit lax in my justification for not voting him over Spartan without much concern. If you don't see why it's weak, it's really lacking in depth, very vague and extremely noncommittal. I'm ascribing vague attitudes like "comfortable at the start", which means nothing. "Thought processes have mostly been fine" is again noncommittal and with no depth despite the backlink. The defense around filler/the worst thing comments aren't

terrible

but like I said, this entire section is intentionally very super weak.

Next up it's time to go to bat against Spartan to complete justifying the preference order. This one is a delicate balance. I need to make this strong in case he flips, but I don't want to bus him. I need to give both of us room here: I want room to townread him, he wants to be able to answer with depth that makes us both look good without pushing me in turn. So I turn it into a fake teaching moment. His TvS statement

was

scum bread and butter, but I can play it off. The more nuanced part comes down to my lecture: I'm trying to give the appearance that me asking him about it was good for him, good for the town members in question, and me trying to encourage good play. This is just +town points for me while not putting any pressure on Spartan's alignment at all.

The final line, "You were my third vote choice so you'd be more of a compromise than my first choice, if that's what you're worried about", is again all tonal distancing. I have no reason to reassure a scum partner I'm not bussing him inthread over the PT: the endgoal here is to look like I am reassuring a town I'm on their side.

Finally, in white we have the beginnings of a dialogue on our reads. This gives me the important launch point I need: Shifting from Spartan as a potential waffle vote to someone I'm actively trying to team up with and mislead into misvoting.

[Prism]

Next we have the second post where I really start backing down on Spartan.

His post 136 gives me townie vibes about him first, very detailed about what he thinks and why he thinks; His interaction with me in post 266 indicates that he was trying to understand my point of view; His interaction with you also indicates that he was trying to understand you better; Post 339 is constructive, also very detailed, indicates that he takes our 1v1 conversation seriously (though I think you're a town most probably, despite being a pain in the *** ); His conversation with

Fredrick A Campbell

gives me town vibes too, I agree with post 359 for this matter; His interaction with

esotericzoomer

(specially, post 547 and 560) gives me some new perspective to think but I still townread

esotericzoomer

at the moment.

Rereading 136 I agree and think this post was better than I gave it credit for in my early readthroughs. I'd caution townreading 339 in that this came more from me grilling him on it than organically.

I actually concur on 547/560 being a lot better than I gave credit for at first glance.

I went into this with the intention of kind of taking down the TR but Spartan can actually move up here.

This one is pretty straightforward. I'm using the illusion that I'm rereading to pull this quote as an excuse to engage further with my thinking on Spartan. Sentence to sentence and post to post, my thinking on Spartan is shifting realtime, moving towards a townread. Expressing caution about 339 is again just basic anti-partner distancing. I think the last line would get eaten alive in a more advanced table-it's too blatant-but I felt comfortable enough to take the shortcut so I could be done with the townread justification.

In a more ideal world, I make it stronger but I didn't really want to bother risking overshooting it. I'm not very worried that he'll have to deal with accusations I was defending him for no reason in light of the other posts.

[Prism]

Finally, in our last post of the evolution, we get the transition to explicitly working together. This one wasn't ideal and could have been better in so, so many ways, but I was running out of steam and still had a lot more to do afterwards w/ quiet and Enchant.

Spartan, I get why you scumread Esoteric at the time of 547/560, but I think esoteric had a point in that he could make jokes about being townread and such while pushing his scumreads simultaneously. You have a point that he should probably fight harder for a top SR before settling for a lower scumread but do you think this is implausible as town?

I kind of have the polar opposite reaction to his early reaction to the E-1 which is unfortunate but I found the wall insanely town. Writing for its own sake isn't town but you can see him actively using the math as a way to put the pieces together, he's not just throwing one liner reactions out. This was at a time when he would naturally have needed to sort as town but was far from getting eliminated as scum.

I guess a good starting point here for working together might be: Why do you think safebet is town?

My lines on Esoteric are again very weak. This was intentional. I could have easily made this stronger by delving more into the reaction, the wall, and various other posts, but I want to give Spartan as much room to operate as possible in response. I don't want to make the argument strong enough to where he feels compelled to flip, strong enough to completely sell a third party on Esoteric town, or strong enough to sound any alarm bells on Spartan for pushing it to the third party reading it.

All throughout I'm trying to find points of commonality/connection for a springboard to talk things out and work together, but it's the last line that makes this attempt at cooperation explicit and gives us a talking point to really, really split on or consolidate on as we see fit. Both it being the last and it being alone were intentional to highlight the sentence for attention. The idea, again, is that if I flip at any point, I want to give Spartan something good to fall back on: Making him appear a high-priority target for me to mislead and win the vote of.

[Prism]

I could break down the latest updates in this sequence but I'm tired-between the game itself and this PT I've typed up a lot. I'm quite happy with the quality of Spartan's responses.

[Prism]

My recent sequence of posts, 933 to 953 is just to cause complete chaos.

Originally I was planning to revote Enchant but my response to 953 has me verbally work through my status as a swing voter. I don't want the perception to be that I revoted

after

realizing that, even if I knew it all along.

I can definitely afford to play it slow here, but I'm actually really curious about another potential play: Can I actually get a Frederick flip here? This requires teaming up with Spartan, who I've just positioned more aggressively against, but I think this avenue would be a lot of fun!

[Prism]

There's just so much fun to be had in this entire sequence. 933 is pocketing quiet by going the "skeptical but hopeful" route. Anytime you can take this route knowing the other person will townread it is just so huge-it gives a ton of flexibility. I can opportunistically vote hop to him later, I can try and force a 1v1, or I can just townread him and call it a day.

940 is a dangerous post, I think overall it's a really poor one that I wouldn't let fly in a more advanced table. It's a bit too pointed and should beg the question later down the line of why I'm not shoving Spartan hard. There are some fun elements to it, though, that make it so dangerous to begin with: I'm suggesting Spartan-scum harddefends Enchant as scum regardless of what Enchant is, even though I come down harder on the "Enchant/Spartan" team line. It's very rare for me to cast my scum partners as being scum with a town they're harddefending, even if it's basic, so I'm having fun with this one!

Rest of this is again just causing chaos. Unvote on Enchant leaves open other votes, I'm questioning both quiet and flow trap, I'm pushing Spartan. I think my flip should make a few players-esoteric and quiet-obvtown, but reading into everything else would be a nightmare.

[Prism]

Gotta decide pretty quickly if I want a Frederick flip or not. Hmmmmmmm.

It's definitely the more fun route but it's a bit gamethrowy.

[Prism]

My revote and not visiting the readwall explicitly is a scum claim but the first/second drafts didn't feel right to me. I lost the first draft but the second draft was the more simplistic: "I think the only reasons not to vote this are that he bothered with the reads wall and that he didn't push an alternative vote in it." I could probably cook up something better, but I'd rather just bet on no one noticing.

I've had my chaos inducing fun for the day.

[Prism]

I think my mistake was not committing to either Enchant vote or causing chaos/angling for Frederick. I actually think angling for Frederick was the correct play; the much better play would have been to leave Enchant for later. Unvoting/revoting was kind of halfassing it and I deserve to get burned a bit for it.

[Prism]

The good news is that I can punish it [not shooting me] regardless.

About to start rereading, my instinct on flip was quiet/Spartan with an outside chance my Esoteric read was wrong.

This one's a bit weird. The last sentence is meant to be -town. The first sentence is meant to be +town while laying the foundation to come out hitting harder later.

I really want to sit in the middle but flip the switch at a moment's notice to get a miselim.

[Prism]

I expect to be making extensive use of specifically targeted posts this dayphase, ones that are meant to be townread by specific players (mostly quiet) but not the table at large.

[Prism]

This day is actually going to be trickier than I wanted. I need to be more proactive to ramp up a townread, but being on two miseliminations in a row puts me in a rough spot come Day 3. Quiet/FaC should be obvtown with my flip.

I think I have to be more forceful against Spartan, and I need to position as a loud but ineffective voice. A bus isn't the worst thing in the world but I really would rather not.

I really want one of us to claim Doctor Day 3 for the shutout but planning ahead here is surprisingly rough. I really want a quiet or flow trap driven miselim here, but I think quiet will come around to a Spartan elim if left to his own devices. I want Salsabil, Frederick, and flow trap to make it to Elo.

[Prism]

Hmmmmmm hmmm hmmm. I really don't want to talk about the town players right now. I really don't want to help them find each other; I'm a bit worried about flow trap/quiet dialoging but can insert myself if needed.

I'm just going to focus on talking about Spartan without actually voting there.