Micro 1010: Divide and Conquer: Round 2 - Game Over!

[GuiltyLion]

Here's how I opened F3 as scum in Newbie 1995

Here's how I opened F5 as scum in another Newbie

Here's how I opened F3 as scum in another Newbie

I can't find a lot of great examples, a few times I was scum in F5/F3 and townies opened voting each other right out the game which obviously would make my opening different enough to not be worth referencing. I also haven't made it to F-whatever in most of my recent scum games. But I hope at least these three can start to give you a sense of what scum!GL is more likely to do - open composed, very neutral, non-committal. I think one of the weak links of my scum game is I have a hard time convincingly faking my emotional reactions to things as town, and so I opt to try to just seem a little distant and collected as much as possible, unless I get involved in 1v1s.

[Vanderscamp]

VOTE: guiltylion
Sorry if this is wrong, but I just don't see myself not voting here.
You've done more today to convince me that hopkirk is town than yourself.

[Hopkirk]

posting to confirm myself as town

[Vanderscamp]

i saw what you mentioned about the last game not having a night phase, and went to check and vanders did post a little in his 2p hood in the game i just played with him as town. vanders, have you got any backup for your 'not reading hoods'

The previous run of this game.

In that game there is a slight difference in that you're posting in a hood that is not literally guaranteed to contain a scum, but iirc my contributions in that hood were basically telling whatever my neighbour's name was (I don't remember) that I wasn't interested in discussing anything meaningful in that hood. That hood also turned out to be far worse than useless because my hood partner was trying to do shit like set really weird traps for me in the hood and then lost their mind when I didn't react the way they wanted.

[Vanderscamp]

Good news!

Happy to answer any other questions you have to me after I get through with the ones from last page

[Vanderscamp]

@Vanders - can you give an example of any times where you have bussed early? i'm interested in seeing the stuff you offered where people are commenting about a long history of not bussing as well

i'm not going to be able to get through meta reading from other games tonight, that's likely/is going to be a Friday evening thing

vanders hit L1 i think twice in the last couple of games so i don't agree you were the only one pushing him, you also said just now that i was pushing him more than you during a bunch of that time

frankly Hopkirk I'm really disappointed you don't see me as town here in comparison. It's a large part of why I still think you might be scum. It's also bullshit you tried to suggest it could be scummy I didn't post in the hood over the last night phase when Lukewarm didn't either and flipped town

I wanted this LYLO to be me deciding between you two (probably unreasonable, I know , but it's what would have been my preferred outcome) and instead it feels like I am primarily defending myself against both of your slots whenever either of you pop in, and neither of you are even really trying to pressure the other.

I also just don't get how you progress on me Hopkirk. It's like you think I'm more suspicious because I gave up on Vander and went along with everyone else's desired eliminations, when you were more strongly scumreading him than me on D2/D3. Like it feels like you pivot to scumreading me whenever I try to either get you to see scum!Vander or to see me as clearly town, and I don't really know what would have been better or more productive for me to do here, like you are just motivated to continue to keep scumreading me despite any tactic I try to help you solve correctly - assuming you are town

the two biggest reasons that i started
- Vanders' Bingle vote- this is the reason i unvoted vanders several times
- At the end of yesterday (then today) you were considering me in a way that felt out of line with what i'd expect. it feels so weird you'd be saying you 100% commit to never voting me & spend days pushing vanders then still act like you're deciding both end of day yesterday then for ages today. i'd have expected town!you to vote vanders out of the gate, but you highlighted prenight that you were no longer sure in a way that felt weird

the lack of you saying stuff overnight is different to Luke because he ended yesterday by explicitly saying he didn't want to give reads if he died.

also something i'll clarify with a couple of quotes on the topic of overnight posting in one sec

Bussing someone as early and hard as my bingle push, I think literally never in years / hundreds of games.
The reason for that is that I found I win more easily without bussing, and I think almost every meta does not "respect" bussing enough to make it anything other than -ev in almost all situations. Especially in metas where I don't have a reputation already as a non-busser, like this site or when I play on mafia universe, when I'm town and successfully push scum early it's still an uphill battle a lot of the time to not get killed because people generally seem to just expect bussing.

There was a pretty recent game where I did start bussing on D2 after trying hard (and failing) to defend a scum partner of mine who ended up getting killed D1, the reasoning there was because I looked like total shit and was obviously not making it to endgame and wanted to prop up someone who could actually win an endgame.

I think the only time I can remember actually pushing a partner to any real extent on D1 in the last several years was about four years ago, when a scum partner entered the chat with a line that was something like "well sorry guys, you're stuck with me, hope you guys can win after I inevitably die early" and proceeded to try in the game even less than that line implies she was going to. Even then I'm not sure I ever actually voted her, just called her scum and tried to discourage the null reads on her and stuff. I also remember not getting any cred at all for it because it was so obvious that she was a sinking ship that "even I" would have pushed on her in that situation (which was obviously true)

Re: the quotes that confirm my meta, I can quote you a bunch of examples tomorrow.

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Vanderscamp

Hop, I'll be around to play more in a bit later today. I think the main thing I want to pose to you right now is to really ask yourself who has felt like they've been ~ present ~ and involved this entire game trying to figure things out. I haven't been a model of perfect reads or consistency but I have been engaging with everyone, trying to form and express my opinions as I have them, or generate content, and work with people to reach consensus and steer town in useful directions.

Vanders on the other hand has a good looking vote on Bingle to lim him D1 and has coasted on that since. I also think it's fundamentally disingenuous to compare this set up to standard games of mafia where bussing isn't as necessary, as I've said throughout the game I think smart scumplay in this set up would be to use the 3p scumflip to make the 6p scum look as good as possible because the 3p scum flip is almost an inevitability if town doesn't get straight up rolled

[GuiltyLion]

Like, you seem to dislike the fact that I've been paranoid of you at times especially once we got to F3 - but do you really think scum!GL is more likely to introduce that into the mix when I'm aiming to lim Vamders? What did Vander even do today to convince himself it's not you, or to sort you at all? What did he do to sort me?

[GuiltyLion]

Also, Vanders was hesitant to vote Bingle first, that's what the whole deal with him shading Bingle but then voting Marci was about and what first made me suspicious. Reread his whole sequence of posts in the 230s-250s somewherethat I called out several times throughout this game. I think after that sequence he realized he wasn't distancing hard enough to be believable and voted Bingle, and then after nEE and NM started suspecting Bingle he got stuck voting there. Backing off afterwards would have looked even worse.

[GuiltyLion]

Also, Vanders was hesitant to vote Bingle first, that's what the whole deal with him shading Bingle but then voting Marci was about and what first made me suspicious. Reread his whole sequence of posts in the 230s-250s somewherethat I called out several times throughout this game. I think after that sequence he realized he wasn't distancing hard enough to be believable and voted Bingle, and then after nEE and NM started suspecting Bingle he got stuck voting there. Backing off afterwards would have looked even worse.

[GuiltyLion]

GL what do you think about what i've just said?

I think you're right that the scum in the 6p hood getting caught is worst case scenario for scum whereas scum in 3p is most likely going to be sacrificed at some point or another, and that the scumteam are going to be playing around getting rid of the 3p scum to set up the 6p scum as best as possible

I'm not sure yet if I'm convinced that means we should eliminate in the 6p hood first tho since I do think mathematically I'd rather take the safe bet, feels like a world where we mis-elim twice in 6p and wind up with 5p evenly distributed across the pools is the worst possible gamestate.

Ask yourself if scum!GL posts this and then behaves the way I did around Bingle EOD1

Either I'm lying about what I think is good scum play, or I simply fail to execute what I think is the best way to play the game

[GuiltyLion]

I really don't think Lukewarm is likely, all the twilight posting would be hard to do in real time knowing Bingle scumflip was imminent, including posts in our hood between thread lock and flip.

I posted this in our hood and Vander ignored it in favor of not posting at all over the entirety of the night phase, here it is for your viewing pleasure N_M:

I think Vanders' progression on Bingle is quite awkward

in 230 he votes marcistar, despite the fact that he claimed to believe we should eliminate in the 3p. (I still maintain that despite posting a handful of times about eliminating in the 3p, Vanderscamp did not seem to actually care about eliminating in the 3p, especially when most players had suggested that we shouldn't).

He then quotes Bingle posts from prior to 230, in his 231 and 233 he quotes Bingle's 212 and 219, then concludes in 235 that he thinks Bingle is scummier than N_M and that he thinks nEE is town. If that's the case, given that he thinks 3p was a better odds to hit scum and he's townreading one of the 3p, why was he voting elsewhere? I called this out in my post 236 and got a very short 238 in reply, which I didn't sense Vanders genuinely believed given that he spent more time discussing Bingle than marcistar.

Then the progression from question -> I don't like your answer -> vote (in 255, 262, 263) feels like where the decision to bus comes in. Despite scumreading and voting (!) Bingle, Vanders claims he got "nothing" out of Bingle v Hopkirk in 329 - I feel a townie who was voting Bingle as their primary SR there would have had more to say.

I also still agree with my own 469 and I don't think Vanderscamp understood my point nor addressed it in a satisfying way. My point wasn't that he wasn't aware of the pools once he posted, my point was "I was gonna say it's not S-S until I remembered [emphasis mine] it couldn't be" betrays a lack of critical thought or care about the pools when analyzing interactions. I haven't once forgotten who was in which pool this game, because it's centrally important to determining who scum is. Vanders post implied that he did, which I find hard to believe coming from town.

I also think Bingle's openwolf 477 may have been meant to scare us away from a Vander wagon.

[GuiltyLion]

I'm gonna keep 1v1ing I guess cause none of y'all else want to post I suppose

I don't think that the 3p scum is anything close to a lost cause in this setup given the number of people who are happy to kill into the big pool first.
I also pushed bingle before he got suspicion iirc

This is a pretty fundamental disagreement between us I think. If we had mis-elimmed in the big pool, I'm pretty sure the correct call after that would be to lim (up to) twice in the small pool to at least take a 66% chance of hitting scum with a F5 as worst case scenario. So in my mind, scum team is playing this entire game around losing the 3p scum member, even prior to gamestart in how they divide the pools.

Do you disagree with me on that? This ^ has been centrally driving how I've been evaluating players the entire game.

[Hopkirk]

Intending to be on for about three hours stating in half an hour

[Hopkirk]

having read the isos in vanders' last 5ish games this resembles the town ones more than the scum one on average, but i could do with more data on the scumgame

[Hopkirk]

some GL scum!QT thought processes and some of my thoughts on them not separated

generally I don't like to bus - people will WIFOM their way out of a lot of associatives as long as you are actually engaging with your partner to some degree - and my goal is to make sure all my pushes sound reasonable/genuine. It works pretty well in newbie games cause newbies often fall for the logical = townie fallacy and there are usually enough lurksacks / people-playing-weird to burn through the first couple mislynches. but lemme know what your experience is, what you feel comfortable with, etc
Which brings me to another point - one other key point of playing scum IMO is to effectively mask your associatives. I think either hard bussing or hard town blocking is optimal - the key is to take a strong and believable stance on your partner instead of living in a wishy washy zone where you "scumread" them but don't push them, or don't comment on them at all.
Slight minus associative with bingle if this is true when reading scumgames

Considers Dunn potentially scary if he is playing seriously but also likely to lurk which would make him an easy mislethal

- as a result, the best scum tells in my experience are when you find posts or thought processes that are fundamentally hard or impossible to imagine coming from town. These posts are rare and mafia spend the entire game trying to hide/avoid posting them, so you don't find them often, but that's the gold standard.
Matches comment from this game/makes a lot of sense from town GL
I'm mulling over this comment on reread... I feel it's less likely town would forget who is in which pool and which interactions can or can't be S/S. I've had my fair share of poorly thought out comments/takes this game, but certainly the entire game I've been constantly paying attention to interactions cross-pool and keeping in mind potential scum candidates of each pool. I'm skeptical town!Vanders wouldn't really be aware that Marci/Luke can't be scum together 300+ posts into the game.

[Hopkirk]

GL why do you think Bingle (effectively) self hammered when you'd stated that you were going to be back reading between him and hopkirk the next day?

[Hopkirk]

Vanders pushes GL a lot less than i'd expect from someone who thinks GL is reading him in bad faith around the 700-900 area

[Hopkirk]

i feel like this is GL's towngame and so did Norway very strongly when he has more experience of it hm

[Hopkirk]

at least in terms of interaction with bingle being puffy. but there's an obvious incentive to treat bingle like that + GL just lost a scumgame despite hard bussing and doesn't like it in general so i feel like it still aligns with the scummeta

NM disliked GL for the same reasons that hectic brought up as being most meaningful

[Hopkirk]

when/where/how did you confidently sort NM @GL?

[Hopkirk]

you can't just townread people when it's convenient to townread them but then say you're not looking at the other players by POE. If they're town they're town and you should be willing to put your foot in the ground there. I would say I'm literally never voting Hopkirk or marcistar this game at this point, doesn't feel like you'd commit to the same?

I don't believe his Marci vote was genuine, the fact that it lasted less than 12 hours is just further evidence for that point.

I am hunting to make a scum case on him, because I think he is scum! I've already sorted Hopkirk/Marci to my utmost satisfaction, and I'm comfortable thinking you are green enough for today and likely would still bet the game on you being town. So that leaves me with Dunn/Vander, and people are just blindly townreading Vander and I need to put a massive dent in it because I am going to be pissed if he skates to endgame with how little scumhunting he's done and his passive vote history he's built over this entire game.

Pretty interested to know how this affects your read of me

I actually do think it lowers your scum equity somewhat and I'll use this as an opportunity to give you another olive branch, because I'm really not interested in continuing to relitigate the same points against you and your same defenses against them.

You keep making claims that I don't believe in my scumread on you, I think it should be pretty evident that I do. I've also explained several times why I'm townreading Hopkirk, marcistar, and Lukewarm to the point where I have no interest in voting them unless it got to literally F3 and I had to rethink the whole game. So that leaves me with two candidates left and I find your play to be altogether scummier than Dunn's, and it also looks to me like if you are scum, you are trying a lot harder to

win the game

than a hypothetical scum!Dunn is.

If you are town, and you were to know for a fact that I am town, who would you be looking at here? Because from where I'm sitting Bingle and marci were your only real scumreads yesterday, you haven't committed to any other scumreads today besides arguing with me saying I must be scum because you don't like my case on you, and yet you won't even commit to solid townreads elsewhere to help yourself POE. Part of my goal is to make sure you can't possibly avoid my potential flip today with any semblance of town credit because I see scum!you as the biggest potential threat in this game and I've played very hard to try to ensure that scum!you won't win. If you're really town and I'm flipped today you should have no shot to live through endgame and that means effectively one more chance to identify scum. and I really don't see you caring about that at all, it has felt to me like your priority is to win a 1v1 and survive today.

sorry for less activity the past day or so - I should have a bit more time for the next few hours to play and chat in real time if anyone else is around. I did look through some of Dunn's recent scum and towngames but frankly I didn't spot any patterns that stood out to me or things that might help solve him in this game.

Overall, my latest feelings are:

- I have not wanted to admit it but I am wavering a bit in my confidence of the scumread of Vanders, I'm not sure if that's more due to waiting it out and just getting cold feet or due to both Lukewarm and Hopkirk pouring some water on the flames of that read. I still think he's best bet for scum by POE and my general philosophy of how scum is likely to play, as well as me still being stuck on the awkward "I remembered Marci/Luke can't be S-S" phrasing, but I'm like maybe 50% sure instead of 70-80%. I'm also a bit flummoxed that my response to Hopkirk about townslips was the thing that apparently changed his mind on me, but I can honestly see that coming from either alignment so I couldn't draw any AI conclusions from it, though I do think it's odd for his read to swing so drastically off of just that.

- Since I'm less sure of the Vander read I won't exactly cry today if Dunn is eliminated instead, but I still just don't really see a good reason to think he's scum other than him not really playing very hard. Like if Dunn is scum, you have to believe he didn't try to gain any towncred from scumreading/distancing/pushing Bingle, nor did he try especially hard to protect him, and you have to believe he's happy to give flippant low-effort posts in thread even when most players are casting suspicion his way. It's possible but it just doesn't feel like The One True Answer to me.

- I do see the wishy-washiness in marcistar's posting today that's being called out, the progression from being less trusting of me in 844 to sheeping me in 849 is a bit stilted. I intend to look over her newbie scum game that others mentioned previously as when I skimmed it a week or two ago I thought she played with more agenda there than she did here. I do weigh N_M's vote seriously, and I think if there's scum in the blind spot it'd be her, because I've grown more confident in town!Luke given some of his play today, and Hopkirk is still nigh conftown.

man

am I talking myself into the marci scumread

I gotta work for a bit more so effortpost explaining thoughts later but her associatives with Bingle are kinda worse than I had assumed with review and if I completely disregard the pool spec argument her play fits the same profile I suspect Vander for (constantly scumread/discredit Bingle to disassociate with him, but it's even worse in her case as she didn't actually vote him until Luke goaded her to do so)

yeah 893 is also a great point

UNVOTE:

I'm tired and don't have time to lay out the explanation of things in marci's ISO I didn't like on reread but I can post that tomorrow. Want to get Hopkirk thoughts but I'm starting to feel pretty good about a Marci elim. I changed my own mind with the reasoning I posted earlier today about the number of townies who would have to be wrong at this stage for Vander to be scum

i find the progression on Marci here really hard to buy as coming from town
going from never voting never voting , fully sorted, why won't you hard commit to the read as kind of a gotcha question to vanders > a vote feels like it came far too easily & GL only looked through Marci's iso here? it feels weird to have hard 100% townlocked her without the reread first
plus even when voting Marci it's stuff like 'for the same reasons as my vanders SR' while hard TRing me but also seeming unsure? like how isn't that a scumpool of Marci/Vanders afterwards

the read is very confident then flips at the exact time it would really benefit scum!GL to flip the read and matches the behaviours scum GL does seem to exhibit in the scumreads that don't feel genuine

[Hopkirk]

just noticed from bringing it up later that GL wasn't aware of Vander's extensive experience earlgame, so i can see him seeing vanders as an easy early push

[Hopkirk]

during the lulls where you're considering/voting other people (Dunn/Marci) it doesn't really feel like you've got reasons why your previous solid reasons Vanders is scum don't apply and you bring up the same reasons afterwards

the point about Vanders being scum for voting Marci when he TR Norway & scumleaned Bingle doesn't feel super strong when another criticism is that Vanders voted Bingle shortly afterwards. i can see this as scum, but i can also see it as town shopping around on their votes. it feels a bit harsh arguing that vanders' vote on bingle was scum because he considered voting someone else before committing to the bus

[Hopkirk]

during the lulls when you were rethinking Vanders do you ever address stuff like

- Vander's vote on Marci instead of Bingle
- Vander's post saying he forgot the hoods
- not reading the hood
etc

and say why these kind of things that you thought were smoking guns/strong reasons to SR that you couldn't reconcile coming from town didn't apply?

it feels like you still believed a number of things both both and after the moments where you switch to TRing Vanders and i'm unclear how you mitigated their impact during the time when you were questioning the read