Right, fully caught up. I tend to play loose in my catchups and not take detailed notes (and in this case, I wasn't even sure I'd be playing in the game until I was halfway through) so this is going to trend more toward a summary than responding to specific posts for the most part.
I've got a very strong town read on
navigatorv
. For a new player, the surest towntell is actually scumhunting, and I see that quite a bit in naviagatorv's posts, there's a ton of analyzing and trying to look for suspect things, stuff like them going back and rereading the game on their own and posting notes on everyone just to try to get a fresh perspective/look for things they missed speaks to a very proactive mindset, I'd be extremely impressed if they were able to play like this as scum in what is apparently their first game ever. I also felt like
297 is the type of post that is far more likely to come from newbie town, the "eliminate me if you have to" mindset and the willingness to self-sacrifice is indicative of a townie who doesn't think them dying will be harmful, scum don't tend to make that play on the off chance someone calls their bluff and as I said, since this is navigatorv's first game I wouldn't expect them to be making that sort of gambit, especially since there wasn't that much in the way of actual pressure on them at that point in time.
I've also got a town read on
JamesTheNames
. There's a lot of digging at people and trying to spot out contradictions in their reasoning, there again seems to be a decent level of depth of thought here I would expect would be very difficult for a newer player to fake. Even the stuff where he finds reasons to suspect other players more but gets hung up on the idea of a JV/Dum team feels like the type of thing a newer town player does, where they get overly caught up in theorizing based on pre-flip associatives. That type of theorizing isn't good because it can often lead you down false paths that get busted up if you're wrong on a single read, but I understand the temptation, I still get into doing it myself from time to time even though I should know better. Still, the mindset itself is geared toward scumhunting I think, and were he actually just trying to push a bad case as scum I'd expect something more along the lines of calling two people individually scummy and then trying to find reasons to pair them together, rather than what he did, which was call certain people scummy but go against those reads because he thought he'd found a team that made sense. I also think him backing down and re-evaluating on his JV tunnel is townie, before I replaced in he'd have had ample cause to continue pushing JV and the refusal to do so looks like a genuine read shift rather than a tactical one.
full disclosure: I started skipping some of his posts that were colored in replies inside quote tags. That type of formatting is incredibly hard to read and I would advise finding a way to reply to people that's more readable, as most players are incredibly likely to tune out that sort of exchange. I might go back to those parts at some point if I feel they're pertinent but for now I'm comfortable enough slotting him as town based on his other posts.
I've got a weak town read on
Dum
, owed more or less entirely to his weird E-1 gambit, as it seems entirely like the sort of bizarre off the wall play a new player tries to catch scum, I wouldn't expect a newer player to make such an attention-grabbing play solely as an attempt to get townread when it's far more likely to get them attacked for being weird (as mostly happened here). It's also entirely dependent on someone being unaware enough to try to hammer without actually checking to see if it's E-1, and as scum there would be much less reason to expect any townie would try to vote micc while ignoring dum's bolded underlined statement about E-1, just to fall into his "trap". So I lean much more toward it being a genuine attempt at a fancy play from town rather than a scum trick, as I'd expect the play of a newer scum player to be much less complicated
Otherwise the slot has been inactive/afk (and is well past due for a prod, which I messaged the mod about), so I wouldn't call this a fully confident townread owing to lack of content but I've not really much interest in voting here at all.
I'm null leaning towards scum on
NinjaStore
. When reading through his posts didn't make a strong impression on their own, some of getting worked up about an early E-2 felt like it could be overcautious newbie town who gets too worried about things that are standard play, but that's not a strong read. Some of his analysis trends toward the questionable side,
241 is mainly concerned with drawing associations between people, but unlike with what James was doing, he seems to not actually get around to many reasons why this is actually scummy? he's mainly attacking navigatorv for saything they don't mind if they're eliminated, which isn't scummy but is the sort of thing i could see a newer scum player picking on. the rest of it is just drawing harmless associations and saying they could be teamed? the immediate back down in
271 because navigator started wall posting doesn't sit quite right either, it feels like he realized the target he picked was too difficult to tangle with and went with the easier vote on micc at the time, the way he says "It doesn't exonerate you" feels like an unwillingness to relinquish the scumread there, although he does concede to navigator looking townish later. after that he gets somewhat light on analysis, he contributes shade on fizz raab in
396 by attacking her for defending herself, and attacks JV in
517 for "interesting tone" and a fairly innocuously worded phrase.
That being said I
could
see this being the work of a newer player who's not used to forming reads as town and ends up overly focused on sort of trivial bits of language so this doesn't feel like a slam dunk read but the overall level of scumhunting doesn't feel very strong.
I'm ambivalent towards
humaneatingmonkey
. I couldn't necessarily point to anything he said that was glaringly bad but his overall play felt a bit sideliney and geared toward targets that were either lhf or blatantly self-destructing. I had him as a pocket scumread coming into the game because some of his posts with regard to orctin felt rather shifty and he seemed to be minimizing attention on orctin while directing people's focus elsewhere, but I don't want to get too deep into preflip associatives.
558 about Dum is a bit of a head scratcher because he seems to be implying it's scummy for Dum to have fallen off in activity, rather than just being a case of someone not having enough time for the game. The townread on ninjastore today is a bit of a headscratcher as well in how loose/easy it is, feelsa disproportionate level of confidence for the reasoning behind it. Didn't like the way he was pushing JV but I sort of expected scum-him to continue tunneling me on my entry to the game if I presented myself as a threat but he agreed with me on orctin pretty quickly, he's either town or a very pre-emptive busser. I guess ultimately my feeling is while there's maybe only a few spots in his posting that strike me as odd there isn't anything I would say is necessarily obvtown and out of the scum range of an experienced player.
I've got an incredibly strong scumread on
orctin
. To start off, his
64 which got read as "helpful" is pure information over analysis, he's simply describing every other player but makes no conclusions toward anyone's alignment. I hate to bring up
111 since it was discussed so much, but that post really did look quite bad. so much of orctin's defense after that post was that he
could
have hammered Micc earlier and didn't, but...he never actually addresses whether 111 was meant as a hammer? And the thing is, the way it's written, it absolutely
looks
like it was intended as a hammer - he says he's given enough time and starts talking about micc's flip, which very strongly implies he thought the flip was going to happen after that post. additionally, he says he "sat back long enough" after the post where he could have hammered micc but is still not seeing him as town, but...only one IRL day passed between
64 and
111. Micc only posted a handful of times. orctin didn't try to question him at all. There's basically no indication orctin cared or was trying to figure out Micc's alignment. the defense that he could have hammered earlier doesn't hold water either, hammering on page 3 the second someone got run up would get you autovoted day 2 and orctin absolutely knows this, he was just making a show of holding back.
326 is his next significant reads list, and...it's also not very good? he drops a few town reads without reasoning, and then the rest is simply...describing what people are doing. The closest he gets to a scum read is ninja, I guess? but his reasons are just that ninja's following the train of thoughts of other people. fizz is "reactive" and "finding place to slip in with others". He makes a comment that james and nav are going against each other but doesn't actually conclude anything about james's alignment. Ultimately, he just votes fizz because fizz is the default wagon, he never really gives good reason for scumreading her at all, just says he's okay with going there.
The opener to today (
578) is also bad, it reads entirely like play by play commentary where he's just describing things that are going on and drawing basically no conclusions from it. The readslist in
596, as previously described, is extremely scummy because orctin is seemingly leaving himself open to vote anyone and contradicts his own reasoning within his list - it reads like he's making it up as he goes along rather than having genuine thoughts on the game.