I mean, that was explicitly the null zone--I had no scum north of null! I just had a LOT of nulls at that point in time because I was ~struggling~.
In post 6191, Milobird wrote:given they haven't had much luck with their scum approach maybe they chose a more traditional scum reads list.
Oi!
My approach as scum, I'll have you know, is
very
effective!
It does precisely what I design it to do.
1: It hides who my scumbuddies are when I flip scum.
2: It makes town players look like my scumbuddies when I flip scum.
3: It makes reading my iso a waste of time, because I don't spew scumbuddies as scum or town as town, and usually, this is mutual with the people who pushed/defended me not being spewed as town/scum from their positions on me.
4: It makes me look town enough that I am usually not the first elimination in the game, making me
just
town enough to not be seen as the best D1 elimination.
I achieve all four of these in basically every scumgame that I play!
Now, granted!
You are correct about one thing: I have
shit
luck as scum.
If my entire scumteam save me botches their fakeclaims, it aint gonna go well for me down the line because step four keeps me alive only temporarily. (The average modern-scumastina death time is D3.)
If I deliberately sacc myself on D1 because my scumbuddy was the counterwagon to me and I'm a goon compared to my scumbuddy being a PR, and then after I die to saccing myself said scumbuddy is eliminated anyway (and not because of failing steps 1-3, because the players eliminating said scumbuddy ignored interactions altogether and just voted the player who looked most scum by play, interactions be damned), then it aint gonna go well for my team down the line because my death was in vain.
But like.
Those aren't things that I, personally, can control. I can't do anything about it. I can't influence factors like that.
So like.
I keep doing it anyway because why wouldn't I? It does precisely what it is designed to do, and does it
damn
well.
scumastina might be night to my day, but in spite of how painfully obvscum I am as scum, I
still
use the same strategies time and time and time and time again as scum...because they still
work
at doing
exactly
what they are designed to do.
What they are designed to do is also fairly effective at helping my team, too!
But, well, it DOES run afoul of, as you said it: bad luck. The strategy is fairly effective but it's not foolproof so with bad luck, it's still loss after loss after loss. (Granted. It isn't all luck, obviously. I'm shit at scum now compared to peak scumastina. My strategy keeps me from being complete deadweight but I am NOT good at scum right now. Being unable to endgame means that my scumteam fundamentally needs to plan for my inevitable pre-endgame death which is a disadvantage. I manage to work with said handicap quite well, but like...is a stopgap measure obv.)
Lacking bad luck tho, you'd be surprised how often it still works. The four goals I want to achieve in my scumgame can and
have
gotten me scum wins, even after I entered my scum funk! (Animals UPick is probably the most prominent example, or at least the example that most immediately comes to my mind. I wasn't the D1 elimination, and after I did die, I didn't spew my scumbuddies as scum and didn't spew town as town and my scumbuddy did win the game in the end. This, in spite of the fact that I put in absolutely zero effort to disguise it being my scumgame. Like, I was, to use the term, openwolfing; I was blatantly scum with zero attempts made to appear as anything but. Still worked tho because my scum strategy, while not as good as peak scumastina, works well enough.)
It's not every game but it's not like scumastina has a 0% winrate these days. It's probably like 33-40% if I had to guess. (I dunno, would have to look at all post-funk scumgames and do the W/L ratio there, which is :effort: best spent elsewhere.)