Open 710: MKUltra - Foreign Spies Win!

[Technical Difficulties]

VOTE: Not_Mafia

Udders, distracting, sexual, etc.

[Technical Difficulties]

O btw guys, if you're ever wondering if it's me or Math posting, just ask yourself "is this post extremely witty and/or incredibly useless?"

If yes, it's me.
If no, it's Math.

[Technical Difficulties]

sup my good dudes

Mathdino here, gonna be significantly less active here than on my main because of team mafia and the hassle of logging in on a fkin Chromebook. Mostly gonna let Impede take the wheel/decide the votes/pushes, while I play more of a support role (Not_Mafia is gonna love me lol) and help with reads.

To that end, standard reminder that, yes, this is multiball, and yes, scum scumhunt too. That said, town is the only faction actively hunting for both teams, town is the only faction completely uninformed, and town is the only faction that can have most of its members die and still win. So on one hand, fuck multiball scumhunting (thanks Impede for signing me up for this), but it's also possible by tells that are different from singleball.

N_M vote/wagon is good, Beefster/Mumble seem town. Sky is weird and that might be due to toning against meta.

Beef, GIF, serious votes?

- Math

[Technical Difficulties]

Barring that mandatory opener: given that this game is multiball we will be strongly advocating for and systematically lynching anyone who fails to produce reasonable amounts of content.
The optimal play for scum in this game is to not towntell, take a town leader position and risk getting shot, it's to do as little as possible and hope to evade lynches and nightkills.
We want to put an immediate stop to that manner of play and lynch anyone who is doing little enough to never be a logical nightkill. Everyone plays the game and we work together.
This will significantly increase the odds of scum crosskilling and as a result give town a much higher chance of winning the game.
[snip]
This specifically is being said (the not-doc parts) because of Technical Difficulty's opener: no you do not get to play low key Mathdino.
There's way too much scum motivation in you as a usual impact player deciding to be inactive this game and if you are going to fail to produce content you are D1 lynch 100% of the time.
If you are being useful unless you are lockscum I am most likely going to never consider lynching you till far later in the game, so you get a break from me in that respect!

Believe it or not, I actually see this strategy as fairly solid. If we're talking about optimal scumplay though, I'd argue that the most high-level scumplay would be to play so town-leadery that they get doc'd (or scum fears they're doc'd) and have a reasonable excuse for being alive.
Knowing your own history, I suspect that you were willing to join this multiball setup in particular because if you rolled scum, this is one of few setups in which you could actually not die at night. That's NAI, but it weakens the strategy of "might as well let RC do his thing because he's probably dying tonight anyway".

Re: my opening: While I understand that and agree with your strategy, I'm not playing lowkey Mathdino. I'm not playing Mathdino at all. I'm playing half of me/Impede, and I intend to put in 50% of Mathdino-level content. The extra steps to log into this account is also gonna be a natural barrier to me hyperposting and insta-responding as usual.

And while that hurts people's ability to read my slot (and consequentially hurts my slot), it's also a deal that I made when I agreed to signing up to a hydra game with Team Mafia still ongoing. NOT a deal that was made after the role PM, or even after Impede chose this game in particular.

I fully expect that 50% of my usual content and >50% of Impede's usual content will be about equivalent to one of me. If this slot starts running behind on content (or town is doing dumb shit and Impede does nothing about it), I'll step in and start picking up the slack, hard.

[Technical Difficulties]

Technical Difficulties

N_M vote/wagon is good, Beefster/Mumble seem town. Sky is weird and that might be due to toning against meta.

Heya! Could you please elaborate on these? I'm mainly interested in why you see Beefster/Mumble as town.

What is toning against meta? I picked Red because in our last game he was lurkscum and that bothered me a lot.

Mumble's early in-thread confidence/attention-seeking (before RC laid out his lynch strategy) pinged me as town.

Beefster RVS vote with an actual reason is pro-town and not what I saw of him in his last scumgame (incidentally in which he changed his vote a lot early game).

My early spitball reads are half moon logic and half tonereads. Your opening post(s) didn't seem much like what I know of your towngame (although Polygamist was fkin weird); without knowing your early scumgame that's more "kinda weird tbh" than "oh shit this is scum for not being Skytown". Had nothing to do with your actual vote.

That said,
@Sky: I experienced Red as lurkscum too in another game. But if you voted Red for that reason, what did you hope to achieve?

[Technical Difficulties]

Like you're throwing out (very) general advice for what you think town ought to be aware of, and the last paragraph kinda feels like it exists to demonstrate that you're scumhunting.

Like I feel like the conclusions you've drawn are kinda weird/unsubstantiated for this stage of the game? Like I'm not really sure what you've seen that's AI from either Beef or Mumble. What does 'weird' mean in this context, and what does this context even mean lol?

Knock the methods if the results turn out wrong. Page 1 gutreads are almost always bad but it gets people talking, invariably draws attention, and gives me a starting point later. My most valuable contribution to a me/Impede pair is reads that get less bad over time, and I hate playing closed/having a hydra PT to document shit, so congrats, you get to read what's basically my hydra notes.

Also, highkey, haven't rolled town in a non-BS multiball setup before, so I'm laying out my own scumhunting strategy so I have guidelines in mind for myself.

Responded to reads stuff above. I'm not gonna pretend shooting from the hip like that produces very accurate reads, but I'm also not gonna pretend that nothing on page 1 can be read into.

I'm on board with this wagon for now. Mathdino seems self-conscious about the multiball situation and Impede's half just looks self-conscious in general. Let's see where this takes us.

Impede's always self-conscious, I'm hoping to help him with that. You're right on my self-consciousness, but it's with the hydra sitch, not multiball -- I'm mostly afraid that Impede scums it up and gets our slot lynched because I haven't been here enough to produce readable content.

now that that's done,,,

[Technical Difficulties]

N_M being a good wagon should be pretty self-explanatory by now. N_M is ALWAYS a good wagon. If Impede wants to switch off to an outright scumread, that's cool too.

Iconeum and Red are pretty clearly newbtown I think. Red could 180 very quickly if he lurks it out because I remember him being obvtown like this in my/Sky's game.

skitter trying to read deeper into things reads genuine attempted scumhunting. Need to watch more interactions here.

RC is being RC. It's whatever. If he tries to use incorrect mechanics advice against us I'll lynch the shit out of him because I know he's capable of doing that, but I also see that as unlikely.

Beefster either town or purposefully juking me out because of that last scumgame against me.

If I personally were a kingmaker right this second, would decap Not_Mafia all the same. No strong scumreads yet.

Unless anyone wants me, next post will be Impede. Cheers.

- Math

[Technical Difficulties]

idk where the fuck impede is so i'm here responding to shit regarding me
i want impede to give reads next so i don't dominate or drown out what's basically his game

It's not the multiball thing. It's that I feel like math is intentionally planning on lying low, but informed us that if impede is in trouble he'll come and help him out -> it kinda feels like he almost expects this to happen and is forewarning people not to pay attention to what impede does as much because he'll come rescue the slot if necessary.

This is... literally exactly my strategy, yeah. I get that you feel weird about it.

Impede requested to hydra with me after he and I finished a game together where I dom'd the town, correctly townread him, but town lolhammered/mislynched him anyway and I had to gamesolve the LyLo. To me personally, he's obvtown as town. To everyone else, people scumread him for some dumb shit reasons. When we played together in JK9++, half of my progression toward him was derailing the shit reads on him.

@Everyone scumreading my opening:

What do you think town-Math does in that situation? More specifically...
1. Do you think town-Math even tries to lie low? (if no, this implies I'm lying about the nature of this hydra)
2. Assuming town-Math DOES lie low, how does town-Math do it differently in the opening?

Like he's announcing that he's going to lie low because he wants to give impede agency but he's also saying that if impede doesn't provide content or if the slot is hard to read, he'll pick up the slack, which is implicitly informing us that we don't need to worry about impede that much because math is always around as a backup.

So I'm just getting this overall vibe that he's like pre-emptively trying to defend against scumreads on the slot that might happen because of impede's posting by telling us that Math will pick up the slack if impede isn't contributing.

You're correct that I'm preemptively defending against people who expect too much of me. sheepsaysmeep would literally read me by "If Math isn't obvtown by page 5, he's scum". I'm saying, don't expect me to dance around and obvtown for you guys, or defend myself in real-time, because while most of you know me more than Impede, this slot isn't the Mathdino Show.

What scum motivation do you see in implicitly discrediting my hydra partner, or in warning that I'm here to back him up? To clarify, if Impede doesn't provide content, I'm literally just gonna tell him to provide content. If he's just flakey/low-activity or isn't around when important things are happening, that's when I start taking over.

[Technical Difficulties]

The fact that his activity was to countervote me made me feel that he resented being poked. Or it could just be rvs. I don't know. I guess I'll see where it develops.

Like this post from red here saying about not wanting to put NM at L-1 and then voting for GiF because GiF 'voted with NM'. Seems overly cautious and wanting to justify the vote early on. Could be meaningful later down the track if we get a scum!NM flip.

Red could 180 very quickly if he lurks it out because I remember him being obvtown like this in my/Sky's game.

He was 'obvtown' to MathDino only iirc ^_~ And then he flipped scum.

I think I can read Red much better now having had a few conversations with him about town strategy (I told him I'm not the one to ask for scumtips lol). Gonna teacher hydra with him at some point. Still seems town so far tbh.

Also you should respond to the question in 75.

I still don't know how I feel about the Hydra comments being AI... Is this the first game for that Hydra?? Math made it sound like it was a new hydra.

I'm still cautious of Red here.

Sky doesn't GiF voting first then NM following up onto me make GiF look better if Red was scumleaning NM? I don't follow the logic of Red moving his vote then and even mentioning it's to move off of NM. how would Reds vote have put NM to l-1?? NM had to my count 3 votes on them with Red being 4... it takes 7 to lynch? I was so confused by this statement.

dude you can literally check our profile for postcount/post history

also i assume red thinks this is a micro

...which now that i think about it strongly implies he's on a 2 man scumteam holy shit

@RedFlavor:

Why the fuck did you think your 4th vote was L-1?

[Technical Difficulties]

Hey guys, sorry for not existing… Been super swamped at work this week. Will catch up after I get home tonight and try to involve myself at least somewhat meaningfully in this game.

-Impede

[Technical Difficulties]

Impede's half just looks self-conscious in general. Let's see where this takes us.

In my two posts you were able to ascertain this? Come on.

[Technical Difficulties]

Fuck that was meant for the Scum PT

OHHHHHHHHHHHNOOOOOOOOO

Idk about NM’s meta, but he’s joking a crap ton about being scum and saying literally nothing of substance. Gotta keep reading to see if Math has voted, but if not, I’m voting here.

[Technical Difficulties]

How is that reaching?? RedFlavor voted saying that Mathdino saying 50% is a scum excuse. But I don't see how math commenting that he wants the Hydra to be 50% him and 50% impede as scummy? Like why would you make the slot 100% one head of a hydra if that was the case just play your main. Is that a meta read on half a head of a hydra?? I've played one game with Dino and in that game he was terribly productive as town. I would like Tael said rather he not he a backseat in that hydra but if he's got team mafia and it's a pain to long into the Hydra I don't see that statement as AI.

Math and I both played in that game w/ Hawk. I don’t remember Town!Hawk being this defensive. Like I feel like he’s getting trolled and taking it too seriously?

[Technical Difficulties]

The bolded is very interesting to me. Impede do you get lynched a lot?

I am NEVER widely townread. I have no clue why. Math’s point is fair because I am typically scumread and Math is typically townread and part of the entire point of this hydra is to fix that. So yeah I’ll probably need his excessive towniness to balance out my bad play.

[Technical Difficulties]

Need to baseline some reads before my weekend get nuts. Will be low activity for this weekend and also T/W/R of next week. Hoping Math can pop in a few times as well.

Kop’s entrance pings me. Although I always feel like scumreading Kop because he looks tryhard.

Agree with the Iconeum TRs.

No clue how to sort GIF, but 105 would be weird coming from scum.

I think math is TRing Beef, but I’m not feeling it. Hard to articulate why, so I’ll sideline this one for now.

Somewhat inclined to agree with Kop on N_M. Although I can see some effective scumplay in his posts.

Paranoid of Sky. His only meaningful interactions iirc have been with us and he hasn’t made a real effort anywhere else. Need more content.

Sesq looks scummy. Overly defensive and sheepy. I feel OK about sorting her though based on a previous game. A little pressure will probably sort her fairly quickly.
VOTE: Sesq

Math says he can read Red. Idk how. This is my third game with him and I have no idea how to sort him. Maybe I’m just bad lol. I don’t like his posts, but I’m not sold that they are scum-motivated.

[Technical Difficulties]

I was V/LA for three days. Not an excuse, I'm just curious how this can be a real thing from you (note my vote was on Red and I'd asked Not Mafia to explain themselves) so that seems kind of fake effort there.

To be fair, I’m REALLY busy and totally forgot about your V/LA when I posted that. MB. Idk why you are kidgloving me on that though. Why didn’t you go for the throat and accuse me of being manipulative? That’s what I would’ve done. Idk your meta so I can’t say if you’re normally a BOTD-giver, but I both appreciate it and am mystified by it.

[Technical Difficulties]

@GIF: In response to 121: Idk he always seems super meticulous with his posts and overjustifies things in a paranoid way. Like his not voting for NM. Tbh, I’ve only played with him once though and he was Town doing this and I think I like it

[Technical Difficulties]

I have no meaningful opinion on this game right now. Really overwhelmed with real life guys. Trying not to lurk out or be worthless, but struggling. Will try to post some meaningful reads tmrw.

[Technical Difficulties]

Decided to take a look at the fence-sitty goodness that is Beefster.

30 He calls me self-conscious for a joke post. Still have no idea where this came from.
41 Same thing. More use of the term "self-conscious" which is close to as subjective as you can possibly get.
62 He says that self-conscious is not necessarily scummy, but good enough for page 3.

@Beef: Ostensibly you have better reasoning/context now that it's page 7?

88 Being friendly. Probably completely NAI, but I felt like including it.
93 Here he actually defines self-conscious as scum trying to look towny but doesn't explain how this applies to his vote.
103 Soft-defending Sesq while still fence-sitting it.
126 Annoying post after Math was explicit about his role in this hydra. Fence sits. "I don't like it" is my favorite rationale for scumreading.
160 More fence sitting.

Basically, it looks like Beef is showing up just to show up and has no interest in pursuing real scumhunting. He tries to make his posts look analytical and thoughtful, but they fail to come to ANY conclusions whatsoever or advance the discussion in any way.

VOTE: Beefster

-Impede

[Technical Difficulties]

@Mod:

Replace us out. Impede got swamped with real life recently and basically haven't been following this game. Hydrae are weird.

Gonna do some ISOs and a reads list for the benefit of my replacement in the meantime.

UNVOTE:

[Technical Difficulties]

EBWOP: I basically haven't been following this game

[Technical Difficulties]

this is gonna be mostly shoot from the hip
scumhunting in multiball is just as shit as ever
open queue needs more singleball games
anyway

Beefster

: The things he thinks are scummy are actually fairly consistent, and his reads reevaluation reads genuine. I powerlynched Beefster literally last multiball game, and either he's actively making an effort to not play exactly the same, or he's just not scum here. Constantly changing trajectory heavily implies town. Not_Mafia vote is actively pro-town.

GIF

: Generally difficult to read playstyle. It feels like he's put himself in a position that will let him pretty much lynch anyone. I'm not seeing much effort to sort people. Hawk vote was good but then he backed off of that.

@GIF:

Please explain exactly why you backed off Hawk. Do a towncase if you have to.

Hawk

: I feel like I expect more of this. Chainsaw defence of my slot feels like buddying up to me after JK9++, and going after RedFlavor when Red is absolutely playing differently from JK9++ is predatory. Then when I lurk off the face of the planet, he switches over to discrediting/fencesitting my slot (WTF?). A lot of his reads feel politically motivated.

Iconeum

: Jesus christ am I gonna have to do wagon analysis on this shit? Iconeum is so obviously newbie tryhard town it hurts. Literally my first game I tried to policy lynch the shit out of someone D1 for claiming scum and the town wagoned me. The rules quoting, the digging his heels in at "BUT BUT HE CLAIMED SCUM". It's like you guys completely forgot how to read newbies. Like MAYYYYYBE he's fire mafia (the one that N_M isn't), but the rules post quote really makes me think he just didn't get a scum PM.

Kop

: 117 feels fluffy. The "DID N_M CLAIM SCUM OR NOT" is just a really easy discussion to have to look busy. Seems LAMISTy.

Mumble

: Mostly NAI, but generally feels like a newbie who's genuinely incapable of reading other newbies. It's like...

Not_Mafia

: @my replacement: DO NOT LET HIM LIVE TO LYLO.

RedFlavor

: I straight up don't believe he's improved his scumgame THIS MUCH since Polygamist and JK9++. He's not obvtown in the newbie sense, he's obvtown in the sense that this game is straight up out of his league. I've seen no evidence that he's capable of actually casing people as scum, or going through nuanced reasoning.
Trust my meta guys, don't lynch Red.

Sesq

: She's defending herself trying to frame herself as town on singleball towntells. Doesn't work. Complaining about the gamestate reminds me of myself as scum. If she doesn't get into the game or show original content by the end of D2, you need to lynch here. Never getting shot.
That said, figure out if Sesq has ever played with RC before, because if she has, antagonising RC seems to have little scum motivation for someone who's clearly not a powerplayer.

skitter30

: I was waiting to give a read on her entrance because I was modding town-skitter. I know nothing of skitter's towngame, but I'm seeing almost exactly the same playstyle, the same genuineness in her reads, the same pushiness with a "hit you over the head with this case every post I make". 195 fucking REEKS multiball-town. Honestly likely to get NK'd anyway. Should post a full reads list at some point.

Sky_Paladin

: I don't like the Beefster vote. The "don't you know you're town?" thing is predatory as shit. I don't like the Not_Mafia vote when he spent an entire post talking about how concerned he was with me, and then admitting to not wanting to go head to head with me (I almost got him lynched last time he did so). It feels like he's jumping on the train of "WOW TD'S OPENING WAS WEIRD RIGHT" but isn't putting any ass behind it.

T&T

: I'm not gonna pretend I can read RC. Keychain feels pretty decently town though. Questioning people that she could've just started pushing instead. I guess she could still be multiball scum who's just actively scumhunting while RC pushes the scum agenda, but it doesn't really feel like there's an agenda here.

Okay ranking:
Town: {Iconeum, RedFlavor, skitter30}
Probtown: {Beefster, Mumble, T&T}
Nullscum: {Kop}
Probscum but depending on certain things (see my reads on them): {GIF, Sesq}
Probscum: {Sky_Paladin, Hawk}

Lynch anyway: {Not_Mafia}

If I were going to continue to play this game, I'd be voting Hawk.

TO MY REPLACEMENT:

PLEASE don't fall into the trap of going along with the shit Iconeum/RedFlavor wagons. They're newbtown. And be super wary of the Beefster/Mumble wagons; a lot of the things people think are scummy about them are not actually scumtells.

Outside of that, do whatever you want.

[Technical Difficulties]

Beefster (5) - Technical Difficulties, Sesq, RedFlavor, Iconeum, Sky_Paladin
RedFlavor (3) - Hawk, Kop, Not_Mafia

4/5 of my scumreads?!?!

ON THE SAME SHITTY WAGONS?!?!?!?!

Red and Icon don't know better. Sesq sheeping my slot is absolutely horrible. Sky's vote is exactly the scumspot on the wagon.

Hawk vote on Red was chainsaw-y. Kop vote was lazy. Not_Mafia can always be lynched.

Beefster is a bad lynch today. Deadline lynch him if you absolutely have to (it's high information to be fair) but after that, you're lynching Sesq/Sky_Paladin.

[Technical Difficulties]

Yeah sorry for the replace-out guys. Feelsbad. This is the third and last game I'm replacing out of right now because life is hard. Appreciate all of your collective patience with me... esp. Math lol. See you when I return!

With love, your valentine,
-Impede

[Technical Difficulties]

really am sorry about replacing out

but i'm in too many games and i never intended to play this without impede (i don't want y'all to see me as someone who would replace out solo)

and the last time i banked on getting shot N1 so i could just leave the game alone... didn't turn out so well

VOTE: GuyInFreezer
will give my replacement a helping hand
please ask that question and then get reads on GIF's ISO from everyone else