Alfred Borden - In general, Empire is easy as hell to read and Empire has taken the lead in a hydra where his partner is a competent scum player. This is a good sign. Other good signs about this hydra are:
- Good interactions with people who aren't incompetent and can read him well! (See: kanye interactions from empire: they begin kind of buddy buddy, but Empire throws himself in his way a few times to talk about reads. Tammy interactions: See his response to Tammy's hopes that Empire drew scum this round. Nacho interactions: Calls me scum! Then later calls me obvtown. But even better than that, after he calls me obvtown, he keeps. on. interacting! Empire scum if he's ever going to make it past D1 with me has to put in the time, but the time he's put in this game is so free and easy that there's just no way I could think of him as a scumbag).
- The Empire endorsement: reads on people close to him have been stronger than Empire normally presents them. This is yet another point towards his towniness since it's a natural progression of hydraing with Llamarble.
- The Llamarble Factor: Note the complete lack of posturing, attacking, defending, etc... he's been working on reads and letting Empire do the majority of the heavy lifting.
(so for all of those who needed a rock to build their games around after macmollie died, Alfred Borden seems to be your pair of men!
Andrius/AGar - First thing that needs to be talked about with this slot is Andy's post restriction shenanigans before he replaced out. I have thought on this for months and years, I have meditated with Tibetan monks asking myself if it as an Andy-scum move or not. My answer, my beautiful subjects, is fuck no. In Xenologue, Andy did manage to keep a somewhat cheerful demeanor, but his play was conventional as all hell; he didn't pull off crazy shenanigans (except accidentally quickhammering a townie, but the quickhammer was completely accidental), and he didn't do anything on "principle", which is what he did in faking a post restriction. Andy's town meta is something that is occasionally hard to nail down because he sometimes goes completely off the map, melts down, etc; but he does those things because he's confident in it and can get away with it. He doesn't follow that same route as scum.
AGar has been decently town on his own, although is "decently town" comes in bits and pieces that need to be woven together like a beautiful "AGar totally isn't scum although we all have trouble reading him" masterpiece. The biggest patch is his interactions with Thor; he opens up the game trying to claim authority in being able to read Thor (good), then starts fighting with him tooth and nail to nail him down into doing something sensible (better). Smaller patches include his interactions while tunneling; he doesn't get lost in an obnoxious battle with ooba while pushing them (most battles are saved for mollie and dissenting townreads), works to do things after ooba, and doesn't keep pushing a tired ooba wagon when he could easily continue doing so.
This townread is not complete and raging hard because getting fucked by Andy faking a PR to muddy the waters and AGar going for some creative interactions with Thor isn't fakeable, but still unlikely.
Benmage - I'd be lying out of my ass if I wasn't mostly sheeping Beautiful Universal Townread (and kaney) with this one, but I do think that Benmage is more likely town than not. Disconnected from his read, coasting, decent adjectives that make him more likely to be town. His opening Day 2 was also completely unlike what I'd expect out of him as scum who just lynched Thor D1, he was quiet and disconnected, and when AGar called him out for dancing all over the place about his awesome lynch, he responded:
In post 1899, Benmage wrote: In post 1886, AGar wrote:Benmage, why are you not in here pontificating about how amazing you are right now owning that massive fuckup of a clear and obvious mislynch?
That lynch was a clear success. Get better.
I liked that.
Cephrir - Cephrir is a shiny townread from Nacho to you! Cephrir's scumgame is a hell of a lot more posture-y, a lot more confident, and usually pretty decent in bringing up reasoning he thinks other people will like. Cephrir's towngame usually involves less posturing, more waffling, more paranoia, far more genuine. He has town leans similar to Empire townleans that has him personally seeking me out and interacting with him when I have a pretty good record of reading him and an awesome grasp on my meta.
In post 639, Cephrir wrote:don't care for the note formatting as they don't feel like how a townie would keep their notes,
I've seen Cephrir several times as town pull the whole "hmmm this looks like townie notes" bit, so I enjoyed this post quite a bit.
In post 716, Cephrir wrote:
In post 698, Syryana wrote:
I will only speak with mollie when she shows up. I dislike how hard she's lurking right now.
Not that I probably have as much experience with her but I'm feeling similarly.
This sort of thing also seemed pretty town. Cephrir tends to expect a ridiculous amount of towniness from certain people, and the fact that the Syryana troll went over his head is probably a good thing in retrospect.
His appeals to mollie/Tammy are all generally useless for him as town, him getting extremely weird on me when it looks like I'm posturing to call him scum was
awesome
.
elleheathen: I look at this ISO and I want to call it town but I hear shadows of Tammy in the back of my head and I can't get past my fear and embrace the towniness.
Things I like:
Back off Thor after asking for his flavor claim.
Calling Tammy town for no paranoia of her (it seemed like the predicting what you think someone is gonna do as scum then giving you a townread when you don't do it. it doesn't seem effective, but the thought processes are decently hard to think up when scum, I feel).
I liked being called town. I liked when she got weird on me a lot more.
Thought process with regards to what kind of miller Thor was in #780 was townie.
Push on Zdenek.
Things I don't like:
???
???
???
Goat's tipping point seems to be irrationality that I'm finding town.
She is very bubbly as scum.
I embrace the Elle townread.
Garruk Relentless:
So it goes without saying that there's some weird shit with Tierce where he investigated her as town and did something else and now she thinks he's town too? The role seems like Faraday-troll and I enjoy the way that he approaches figuring it out. His wight flavor analysis is weird but seems to be coming from a good place. I liked his sheeping Syr quite a bit, honestly: I feel Nat is more likely to get lost as town than as scum and so the reachout felt very genuine. I also really like the attack on AGar for "baiting the hammer"; it's thinking one step deeper than "lolhammer" and isn't that bad at all. The niggles are not enough interactions with me but that's probably just narcissistic paranoia because I've been spoiled by the reachouts in this game.
Goat on a Raft:
Goat drove me crazy until something like #753 when my blind rage against him started to see the possibility of him being town. I usually can't read CDB worth a shit unless people are pushing him decently as scum, and I feel his reactions here are confident and something that's pretty unlikely from his scumgame (although on the outside edges of possibility). His claim is a hard thing to lie about (especially with Shadoweh/Syryana/Alchemist possible third party) and can lead to him getting powerlynched to shit in a lot of scenarios. I think his early reads to form strong trust townreads (nacho, what's your read on mollie? sheeping your read on Tierce.) was a good move in a subtle way, his push towards deathrage is genuine as hell, etc. Probably definitely town.