Mafiascum.net

tl;dr: You started playing at time where Chaos’s meta is viewed as scummy. Hop in the time machine, see it’s NAI and look for other ways when style demands it. Players can fake very complex processes as scum when there’s no real disadvantage to doing so, and sometimes getting townread really is the only point.

First, it’s a joy to play with you, and it’s great to see you keep playing and have so much enthusiasm. You’re one of the most exciting new players to come out of the last year or so!

I have two real pieces of feedback for you. First, I want to touch on the Chaos tunnel. You’ve started playing at a time when hyperposting & emotional play is put at a premium. It’s not impossible for more reserved players to be town but it’s generally viewed as less likely. Chaos is a very old-school player that doesn’t fit cleanly into this meta, and I think focusing more on progressions & the guilty would have gone a long way. Town knew there was a traitor after Umlaut flip and there’s just no way they bus at that point. In other words, Chaos’s style might be difficult to get a solid read on, but some research/meta would have revealed a lot of it very NAI. That doesn’t mean townread him for it, but it does require you to put in more work to solidify it.

Second, I want to touch on your read on me. There were so many pieces to my play that it’s always very hard for me to distill, but we’ll focus on just the bit about the selective ISOs. The origin of this was that I came up with the ISO-petapan claim first as a means of incredible flexibility and a plausible evolution of previous play. Immediately after I thought of that, I skimmed you to see what I would be forced to do. If you were obvious town, I would have delayed it as long as I could (see: my comments to Gamma). But you weren’t, and so this gave me a bonus opportunity. I had no intention of ever getting you voted out or even trying to- if you were scummy at the moment, you could still flip to UTR on a dime by virtue of inexperience-but I had every confidence after skimming that your play was different enough to justify a scumread on my end, which I hoped would drift to a mutual townread. I expected this to be a lengthy progression that shifted to townreading you over time, but I always hoped that you’d make that EXACT connection (Town Prism immediately ISOs me for an easy read). If I needed to I would explain why I started with your ISO around the time of Elo, but I really wanted you to make the connection on your own at a time that was advantageous for me by nudging you or getting more contentious Day 3/4. When you made it virtually instantly I was .
So where did you go wrong in buying this as an actual if it’s plausible for me as town? Let’s review the key post:

In post 658, Lukewarm wrote:I feel like Town!Prism starts with a Lukewarm iso, and that scum!Prism doesnt?
Like, her one and only game with me, I was so townread that it hurt, so I don't think that scum!Prism starts with me as their target to try and get a fake scum read / push a miselim. But I also, tunneled Prism somewhat hard that game, so she also would not think of me as an easy pocket target either I don't think.

Reviewing the above, I knew I could get away with it on the virtue of the difference, but especially was never the point. You seem to understand that it was possible my only aim was for a townread, but I think you put too much stock into getting tunneled by you , which is a whole different ballgame than when I am . None of this has to be for a longterm pocket, a big strategic vision, or playing the game around you completely either. I just needed some capital that I can use later down the line, so I did this on the side. It is also worth noting that this capital in the form of a townread is especially nice when I know I can get it for a , as opposed to for a . (ie. Get townread+not box myself in by narrowing PoE, essentially I’m getting townread for free).
I was actually disappointed when you made the connection early because a slow burn, “Eureka!” moment in elo where you made that desired connection would have had so much more effect.

tl;dr: Preflips bad, not enough info on Meg alone to justify fighting against a third party, why would I ever be worried, intentionally kept you on edge to prevent you from connecting with other towns+to revisit Meg

Long wall: There’s a lot to break down here from the Day 1 play. I came in expecting to get some heat from you, but did not expect the specific angle & force behind it, and while I thought my entrance was plausible as town I definitely see a world where I make a more cerebral/laid back one.

There are some obvious difficulties with connecting me/Meg to begin with. I think preflip associations are generally terrible to begin with, but there’s just no world where I risk getting chainflipped like that Day 1. Even if I save Meg for a day, inexperience means he would be flipped a day or two later. I can’t play both slots simultaneously, it’s just a matter of time. Even on willow in Draft Mafia I was again going for a townread regardless of what flipped.

Iirc your counterpoint to Meg town/Prism scum was simply that I wouldn’t derail it given that I was the counterwagon, but the truth is just that…that was just never a concern? Why would I ever be worried about that?

That’s from the Meg/Prism team perspective, but crucially this all would have been nipped in the bud if you realized that , and even if you got that with the flip trying to preflip was really putting the cart before the horse and in fact got in the way of your read on Meg.
Stopping at the me/Meg connection being wrong would be missing a huge piece of this. I disagreed with your Farkran characterization in that I thought what I was saying wasn’t walls of nonparsable garbage akin to a flail, but there was a lot more going on there. As alluded to in my notes PT, I was very determined to react in ways that reinforced the scumread on me in strictly tonal fashion. While the rage/tilt was intentional and kind of decided pregame, this was my primary means of keeping you in check. My thinking was that if you felt guilty or bad, this would prevent you from sorting other slots more rationally. I wanted you on edge, worrying about scum Prism but unwilling to pursue it as it was mostly tonal, in order to A) Outright prevent you from connecting with any other town B) Guarantee a Meg/Chaos flip and avoid a flashwagon on Umlaut C) Give my partners significantly more room to operate. Making sure you don’t actually vote me was important, and there was only one post where I really risked it all game.. It is worth reviewing this post in my notes PT.

To be more explicit: The payoff here wasn’t to drown the game in garbage, or just to get a Meg flip. Sometimes I legitimately wanted the interactions to end, though I was more than happy to use the extensions as reasons to avoid rereading/giving thoughts on other players (see: Gamma). It was entirely to keep you from connecting with other players, and you should have either called the bluff or focused more on talking with others.

I didn’t keep track as much of Day 2 on, but I thought by just sheeping/AFKing the rest of the game you gave up something valuable, which was seriously connecting with the other town. Fundamentally I think this game would have been won a lot sooner had you been a UTR. On a personal note, while I was ready to flip it for diversity’s sake, I definitely don’t relish being scum: I am instead easily bored, and Day 1 definitely fit that bill.

I don’t have too many comments for you other than what work for me. I had several things planned with you but just felt like I did them out of order. No reaction was probably a great call, if only to deny me further guidance, but I think it denied yourself some of the opportunity to sort. At the end of the day, I think you just bought some of the AtE, but at no point did you throw and you hardcarried together with Titus. It was a joy to play with you again and I was happy to see you succeed and I’m sorry that we didn’t get to play more-plus that I was intentionally so abrasive
As far as I’m concerned you should walk around all week with this song on loop, absolutely balled out and punished the scumteam for switching the kill off you N1:

There’s a school of thought about remaining intentionally more scummy/a potential elim as an investigative so you live longer. I don’t know if that was what you were doing, if so great job, but in general I think Day 1 could have been an outright disaster had you been outed. Your play after N1 was stellar but D1 was very shaky and could have been improved with more activity or realtime interaction as opposed to the more wall-style typical of older players.

I have no real feedback, I don’t know exactly how you got snowed by Math but that was the only clear error. Instead I just want to say that between this and FGO it’s a joy to see you in good form & playing more aggressively. Some theories were still out there but you did your job mechanically, were vocal, and your reads were generally just fine and it was trivially easy for others to spot you as town. Extremely solid game!

Not too much to say here other than that I fully expected my encouraging comments to have the opposite effect, and was infact trying to demoralize you. I had an instinct that you scumread my slot and I think it was a mistake to not push it if I was right. The tilt was more winging it to sell it while also knowing you wouldn’t scumread it.
At the end of the day you have to play the game to be successful at it.

Generally this was one of your better games-never being too inflexible especially-but on a smaller level, I think you were in the best position to nail my slot as scum. I don’t know if you just avoided trying because of always townreading me when I was scum before or what, but exactly what Lukewarm picked up on-that Luke was a great candidate for a first ISO read on the basis of being easy-should have brought up huge alarm bells for you. I have literally never read you incorrectly, and generally I get it right almost immediately. I put you as an early ISO candidate on my list because of this, but I stalled hard for actually doing it (leveraging Pooky breathing down my neck) because I really didn’t want to take you off the table as an elim.

…And you just really let me give no read on you at all and delay it indefinitely. Not immediately coming in and giving SOME read on you should have been a red flag the size of Texas.

I think you just straight up needed to post more, as I alluded to in the scum PT. Understanding that T3 was a prime elim target whose inexperience would lead them astray as the game went on, while Datisi had it all: unvoteable, potential PR, above average reads, etc. would have been a huge boon. The double guilties were validation that while you may have made it past Day 1 you needed to be more vocal throughout the day to survive longterm. You don’t have to no-life it but posting a few more times a day would go a long way.

You can afford to get lurker default voted when there’s 3 real scum, but with only 2+other PRs lurking in the distance that’s a very dangerous game.

Absolute hero shit, I have very little feedback for you, Sisyphus up the goddamn mountain, absolutely got hung out to dry and I’m sorry I had to leave you like that. I didn’t see/don’t remember the T3 kill justification but I would really advise weighting likelihood of being an elim over PR hunting; as long as T3 wasn’t a straight up cop it would have been worth killing a VT Datisi over him. T3 is quite young has a lot of potential but right now his tendency to overgame+inexperience leave him perpetually up against the wall.

I also think you got way too worried about me/Pooky Day 1 when in reality there was nothing to worry about, but it was a very minor mistake IMO and I get why you went to bat, especially when we couldn’t communicate directly.

It’s also a shame that the Sisyphean carry kind of backfired with the N_M gambit, but I don’t think you were wrong for trying.

I didn’t see your play as much this game but honestly? Keep playing games and keep making mistakes, you’re doing fine and growing fast. It’s fine to miss sometimes on Meg/me, you get bit by tone/WIM and slowly your lesson.

Generally I think town didn’t have the information needed to confidently flip you, and that was really more criminal on Pooky/Datisi’s end. I think you did a good job with not townreading me just for defending you, which is especially difficult when people think I have to be your partner. I agree with Datisi that you worked a little too much in abstracts, and your extended V/LA got in the way in that even when you give more substantive posts, they were handwaved away as “only because we called him out” There’s not much you could have done about a V/LA or this time, but I think that provides a lot of useful feedback for even when you’re not on V/LA

see notes PT, absolute chad, no one goes harder than the miltank man, udder made of solid fucking steel. I do think you played too passively Day 2/3 and could have benefited a lot from just posting an occasional one liner to pressure.