Micro 1010: Divide and Conquer: Round 2 - Game Over!

[GuiltyLion]

Ok, i'm on a keyboard finally.
So my first nuanced thought is that it would be weird for Bingle to put himself in the 3P hood as scum when he was put in it as town in the last game and saw how bad it went for Skitter. I feel like Bingle would see himself as a much better player than me or N_M so for him to put himself in there seems really bold. N_M however, might feasibly do it for the memes.
But whatever i think we should eliminate in the 6P hood. Because then we can win in day 1 just like the last time Divide and Conquered was hosted.

I think we also have to consider that if we hit scum first or second in the 3p hood, the remaining player(s) become unremovable conftown. From that perspective I could imagine a scum!Bingle figuring conftown!NM or conftown!nEE doing less damage

[GuiltyLion]

I think 42 from Norwee feels like a genuine comment. N_M, do you think scum!Norwee is likely to post that?

[GuiltyLion]

I also have a light scumread on Lukewarm for the casual/flippant way he voted, ignoring N_M's 41, and a general vibe I get that he's buddying up to marcistar both here and in our neighborhood

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Bingle

[GuiltyLion]

oh lmao you're right, I read that the setup was Mountainous and assumed that meant no NKs for some reason

fully disregard that point then

[GuiltyLion]

Getting scumread for a casting a RVS vote on the first page of the thread. smh.

I've caught scum on page 1 RVS votes before, this isn't even the only time just the first I remembered

[GuiltyLion]

I'm not taking your jokes as 100% serious, but I do believe scum tend to use jokes in an attempt to be charismatic or to deflect scrutiny of their votes or scumreads. If you're town you'll be better served by not fixating on an early scumread on you and instead continuing to hunt the real mafias.

It's also odd to say I was "upset" with your RVS vote

[GuiltyLion]

GL what do you think about what i've just said?

I think you're right that the scum in the 6p hood getting caught is worst case scenario for scum whereas scum in 3p is most likely going to be sacrificed at some point or another, and that the scumteam are going to be playing around getting rid of the 3p scum to set up the 6p scum as best as possible

I'm not sure yet if I'm convinced that means we should eliminate in the 6p hood first tho since I do think mathematically I'd rather take the safe bet, feels like a world where we mis-elim twice in 6p and wind up with 5p evenly distributed across the pools is the worst possible gamestate.

[GuiltyLion]

Also i will be referencing this game a lot since it's like almost the same playerlist too. So please commit it to memory if you already haven't.

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=86273

I've read through a bit of this game and I better see the arguments now for limming in the 6 pool, thanks for linking it

VOTE: Lukewarm

[GuiltyLion]

I'm not taking your jokes as 100% serious, but I do believe scum tend to use jokes in an attempt to be charismatic or to deflect scrutiny of their votes or scumreads. If you're town you'll be better served by not fixating on an early scumread on you and instead continuing to hunt the real mafias.

It's also odd to say I was "upset" with your RVS vote

No, scum are afraid to joke in RVS, they tend to come out paranoid and throw out a fake read. Which is what happened in your linked example. So this really doesn’t jive with your link or scum caught in RVS in general

You're conflating two different points here

a) Generally, I think a number of people play scum by trying to be all funny/lighthearted and joke around, especially in RVS when it's most difficult/awkward for scum. Scum love to get away with a joke reason to plop a vote down, get a foothold in chitchatting with the players, then wait around until something comes along they feel they can fake a real scumread on.

Do all scum play this way? Definitely not. Some of it is probably more personality indicative than alignment indicative, as a natural jokester as town will have to emulate that as scum, and a natural earlygame tryhard (me) will have to emulate that as scum. However, I do get the sense Lukewarm hasn't done anything via real game advancing content, yet he's around posting, joking, trying to be the funny guy. It vibes off to me, I think that's a valid reason to scumread him. Do you disagree? I notice you're defending him here despite the fact that you called him out earlier.

b) I just linked that past game to show that RVS doesn't mean it's impossible to be scumread authentically. Lukewarm was acting like it's ridiculous to scumread someone for RVS joking, I disagree entirely and can find other games in the past where I've had this exact same argument, sometimes with scum, sometimes not. I wasn't trying to use that game to say I caught Lukewarm with the same tell/read as I caught chennis, and I feel it's a little disingenuous you're acting like I was.

[GuiltyLion]

three or four things from Norway feel much more likely to come from town but who cares about sorting the small hood

I'm not taking your jokes as 100% serious, but I do believe scum tend to use jokes in an attempt to be charismatic or to deflect scrutiny of their votes or scumreads. If you're town you'll be better served by not fixating on an early scumread on you and instead continuing to hunt the real mafias.

It's also odd to say I was "upset" with your RVS vote

and yet you haven't said hello to me?
can you remind me of your playstyle? I remember you being fun to play with but don't think we've played in a whiiiiile now (i have used your name in place of the word guilty in that time though, so thanks for that). some of your stuff so far feels kind of surgical?

this is my first game back after a 9-10 month hiatus, we've only played a couple games together the most recent being Micro 773: Twin Trap which was a terrible game on my end, you got me good as scum in that one

I dunno what specifically you're looking for from me in terms of playstyle, I generally believe in forming solid townreads over scumreads, I tend to push on what I find to be awkward/uncomfortable vibes until we have a few wagons and the gamestate takes shape, maybe even a flip or two at which point I start looking more at voting behavior/wagonomics. historically if I'm getting erroneously scumread it's usually for robotic tone / making reaches in the early game, I tend to try to put pressure on people ASAP even if it means making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill, I think that's what you're getting at by calling me "surgical"? I do try to stay open-minded and constantly re-evaluate and avoid tunnels though, nEE can attest to this (I hope) our last game together that I remember we 1v1d a lot throughout early D1 but I had him town by the end of it

[GuiltyLion]

is this good posting or fake content posting [re: Lukewarm's 120]. someone sort it for me

One thing I liked in that post was his comment about NM's activity, I similarly feel NM is playing a lot more involved here, but I was also struggling to draw a firm conclusion from it. I don't believe the increased activity necessarily means NM scum, but Lukewarm also picking up on that could be an uninformed perspective + the rest of the post didn't really feel especially agenda-driven, the "I'm kind of glad we're not voting in the 3 player neighborhood" sentiment I also saw as slightly townish

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Vanderscamp

I see you were online after the game started, come play

[GuiltyLion]

I really dislike the last line (and not just because I dislike the notion of refusing to vote into the 3p pool)

I also think n_m is the scummiest person in the small pool so far for a pretty similar reason, I'm pretty sure he's posted more times so far this game than in the entire game we just played together, and if I thought he was tabled from contention today I would be very far from kind of glad about it.

can you be explicit/clarify for me your thought process here:

are you saying that you think Lukewarm is scum with N_M, and is cheekily using the "vote in the 6pool" logic to distance from his buddy while claiming he's glad he doesn't actually have to vote there? Do you really think that's a likely comment to come from scum!Lukewarm paired with scum!N_M - I think scum are usually pretty self-conscious about talking about their buddy, I generally don't think they're likely to say "I'm glad I don't have to vote there today". If he's going to distance from his buddy, why would he not take a more strong stance? what scum agenda did his post actually serve here?

I find the alternate explanation - that town!Lukewarm feels N_M is a hard slot to effectively sort and is somewhat relieved he doesn't have to correctly evaluate him today - to be a lot more natural and likely. It kinda feels to me like you found a convenient reason to shade Lukewarm ("he says he's 'kind of glad' he might not vote his scumread, that doesn't sound like a townie thing to say!!") rather than you're actually thinking about how and whether his posts indicate his alignment. Not to mention the odds of a NM/Lukewarm team are generally low in a vacuum, so tying them together in this way is always going to be specious reasoning.

[GuiltyLion]

as an addendum to the above, I could vibe with your sentiment more if you are saying the comment from Lukewarm is scummy in the town!N_M world. But given that you're voting NM and claimed him as your strongest scumread, I don't see how that comment from Lukewarm pings you as partner-y. I would think it's better evidence for potential T-S alignment than shared S-S alignment.

[GuiltyLion]

GL, when you thought the game was nightless what did you think about game balance?

Why did you sign up for this game specifically?

I really had not thought about the game balance, I thought it was an interesting concept to have one mafia in two separate pools of players but hadn't thought through how townsided it would be to run this without an NK. I was just looking at the setup page again and I believe I can explain why I thought there wasn't an NK, it was this section -

"Night zero, one Mafia Goon neighborizes two of the Vanilla Townies, and the other Mafia Goon neighborizes the remaining five of them.

The rest of the game

is Mountainous."

[emphasis mine]

In my first read through, I assumed the "rest of the game" phrasing was used in a temporal sense to suggest there were no more night phases the rest of the game, since the sentence immediately preceding was talking about 'night zero'.

Specifically, I just signed up for this because it was the next available game in the Micro queue and I've played with a bunch of players here before.

[GuiltyLion]

Vanderscamp's ISO doesn't lend itself well to being allied with N_M imo. Ping me if you disagree.

I disagree with this, I called out in 160 some weird reasoning he's using to scumread both Lukewarm and N_M, and I suspect it may be that scum!Vanderscamp with scum!N_M trying to paint a false associative between town!Lukewarm and his buddy.

p-edit: @nEE I don't really see why he couldn't post that as scum, even if he knew it was true already. It could be a question to make him look uninformed, and it's also entirely possible N_M didn't mention you at all in pregame scum chat.

[GuiltyLion]

actually, let me rephrase that, it's unlikely he doesn't mention you at all given that they have to group townies together, but he could easily say "put me with Norwee for the lulz" and not mention your history* at all

[GuiltyLion]

do you think marcistar is scummier than bingle?

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Marcistar
This feels the most likely to be scum cumulatively when looking at both worlds.

i agree

explain please.. what makes me most likely

Why do you agree?

wait, I missed this first go around, did you actually take 191 as a serious comment? Like are you saying you genuinely believe marcistar 'agrees' she's the most likely to be scum, moment before asking Norwee what he meant?

[GuiltyLion]

i don't have a problem with Vanders

Is this a townread on Vanders, or an absence of scumminess?

it's kinda nice knowing you can't be S/S, so either you're town and not seeing the causes for suspicion that I'm seeing (slash maybe have reasons I'm missing to TR him?), or you're scum TRing a townie. either way I'd be interested in whether any of his content looks to you unlikely to come from scum as I really don't see anything that's struck me as especially town

[GuiltyLion]

So they thing I was thinking about, is that imo, the scum team would have put the scum they felt could comfortable dodge a day 1 elim into the 6p neighborhood, because that is an instant lose condition. This is Marci's first game outside of the Newbie cue, and there are 3 people in this game that just saw her scum game. It just seems like a needlessly dangerous choice to put scum!marci into the 6P team.

Norwee and Bingle both have played in this set up before, and would be aware of that danger, and both started the game by pushing for a vote in the 6P pool. Not_Mafia on the other hand, came in pushing for the Day 1 elim to be in the 3P pool, so there is a chance that he thought the better Day 1 elim dodger should go in the 3P pool if he expected town to start there. But then he just agreed with the growing suspicion on Marci.

This is how I feel about the idea of scum!Marci as well. The only explanations where she's scum in my mind are if nEE is trying an elaborate distancing/bussing gambit with the hope she's not actually voted off D1, or Bingle decided to put himself in the 3p and his relatively newbie partner in the 6p. I guess NM/marci could be a team divided across the pools this way, but then I don't see why NM decides to post 250, it wouldn't serve either of them at all

[GuiltyLion]

EBWOP - I dropped this:

"The only explanations where she's scum in my mind are if nEE is trying an elaborate distancing/bussing gambit with the hope she's not actually voted off D1, or Bingle decided to put himself in the 3p and his relatively newbie partner in the 6p,

and neither of those feel likely to me**

"

[GuiltyLion]

The reason I say that is because if we correctly eliminate in the 3 person pool today, the next 2 nightkills are going to be the other 2 in that pool

If we eliminate in the 6p pool today, and start from the 3p pool tomorrow, I think we have better odds, including if they take the 3p pool down to 2

why is your vote stuck on Bingle

it's weird that you say all this yet keep your opening vote on someone in the 3p, I don't really think it's scum-indicative but your vote is not doing anything useful to me in terms of leading to a desirable elimination or generating pressure/information that helps sort in the 6p

[GuiltyLion]

yeah I'm not vibing with a Lukewarm scumread, nor the marci scumreads, if whoever's town in Hopkirk/Vanderscamp/Dunnstral could town it up a little bit that'd be great

I read through Bingle's push on Hopkirk but I'm going to reread it now with close attention and think about how much I agree with it

[GuiltyLion]

the crux of it seems to be that Hopkirk said Norway has an established reputation as being low WIM as scum and cited players that he thought had expressed that sentiment, Bingle doesn't think those players would have said that and asked Hopkirk about a specific one (FL), Hopkirk gave a jokey response instead of clarifying where he saw/heard FL talking about it.

I generally feel like "Norway has low WIM as scum" is likely to be something Hopkirk felt is true regardless of his alignment in this game (or nEE's for that matter), like I don't think he's going to just make up a complete lie about another player's scum meta, especially when naming specific players as references. however I do not see why he deflected a question about it instead of just saying where he might have seen FL comment on it, so I can sympathize with Bingle's suspicion there. If this is a premeditated push from scum!Bingle I think it would be hard for him to continue pushing it if Hopkirk had brought receipts, but at the same time I could envision scum pouncing on a townie's careless remarks about meta, so I don't know if it's strictly a town-indicative push especially since odds are not in Bingle's favor.

I do think this rules out a S-S relation and has decent odds of T-S in some direction given the difference in pools

I have some other thoughts that I typed up and deleted cause they amounted to further wishy-washiness than even the above. I'm a bit rusty at this game and feelin like I can't quite make reads yet with the confidence I used to have in my prime

[GuiltyLion]

Still trying to get a better feel on Vander and Hop before I try any kind of push on Dunn.

Why do you need to have a better read on other players before pushing your scumread? I find that generally anti-town, town should always be making pushes and generating pressure

And what actions have you been taking to get a better feel of them?

VOTE: Lukewarm

[GuiltyLion]

lukewarm seems really really different to all of his other games. what's up with that luke?

what games did you look at to get this impression?

[GuiltyLion]

this game feels markedly different at the start here where Luke doesn't seem to have a clear direction or any scumreads (still based on the recent readslist i asked for). there's markedly a lot more fluff, which could be due to friends being around/vibing with, so how does the vibing read to other people? either way, there's a lot more setup stuff, fluff, and generally contentless posts. in the other game everything is moving the game forwards and it feels resonably easy to see that even barely reading the posts. there's what seems to be a marked absence of proactivity here. like in the first 20 posts how many actually feel game advancing compared to spinning in place and struggling to get reads?

thoughts?

I definitely feel you that Lukewarm is more passive this game, that's why I prodded/voted him because I felt he was just coasting on very light reads and not using his vote to generate any information.

However, I do buy that he has an established precedent of not doing well / not liking early D1, I don't think it's really fair to compare play here to play in games in which he replaced. I do see the difference you're calling out but I'm not certain I can really convince myself it's definitely alignment indicative.

[GuiltyLion]

His progression on my slot does not make sense to me. Like he started to townread me, asked me questions, and then townread me harder, and even came to my defense, until I became mildly suspicious of something he did. And he quickly switched to me being his highest scum read / wanting to vote me out?

It just feels like his "soul townread" on me was not genuine if a small bit of suspicion from me is enough to swing his opinion of me so far.

I don't think this is necessarily scum indicative either, IMO scum are more likely to be focused on projecting a consistent narrative and tend to feel scared to completely turn on a dime, I don't think scum!nEE needed to vote you here and I feel if he really was planning and engineering it he'd have tried to add more dressing as to why he was changing his mind.

I think his "soul townread" was likely weak but not necessarily disingenuous. I've similarly also struggled to get a read on you, and seeing now that he's since unvoted I'm not seeing his play as agenda-driven or notably fake.

[GuiltyLion]

I reread Vanderscamp, not feeling like voting there

why the hell is everyone townreading Vanderscamp this game?? I really can't remember a single post or comment he's made that has made me feel like he's earnestly game solving. I'm going to re-ISO him again after I respond to the posts we've had but I'm also asking myself this: if town!Vander, why am I the only person who has even looked his direction? Who is scum in either pool who's keeping Vander on the table as a potential mis-elimination today?

[GuiltyLion]

I feel like it's pretty likely that if lukewarm joined this game to encourage Marci to step out of the newbie queue (which I have no reason at all to doubt) then he's probably going to be buddying up with her as any combination of alignments.

Was going to say it didn't feel like a S/S interaction from them before I remembered that isn't possible anyway

.

I'm mulling over this comment on reread... I feel it's less likely town would forget who is in which pool and which interactions can or can't be S/S. I've had my fair share of poorly thought out comments/takes this game, but certainly the entire game I've been

constantly

paying attention to interactions cross-pool and keeping in mind potential scum candidates of each pool. I'm skeptical town!Vanders wouldn't really be aware that Marci/Luke can't be scum together 300+ posts into the game.

VOTE: Vanderscamp

[GuiltyLion]

I feel like it's pretty likely that if lukewarm joined this game to encourage Marci to step out of the newbie queue (which I have no reason at all to doubt) then he's probably going to be buddying up with her as any combination of alignments.

Was going to say it didn't feel like a S/S interaction from them before I remembered that isn't possible anyway

.

I'm mulling over this comment on reread... I feel it's less likely town would forget who is in which pool and which interactions can or can't be S/S. I've had my fair share of poorly thought out comments/takes this game, but certainly the entire game I've been

constantly

paying attention to interactions cross-pool and keeping in mind potential scum candidates of each pool. I'm skeptical town!Vanders wouldn't really be aware that Marci/Luke can't be scum together 300+ posts into the game.

VOTE: Vanderscamp

is this the only point you have on him?

No.

I already called out that 147 combined with 150 looks like fake reasoning to me - he's giving reasons to scumread both N_M and Lukewarm but not paying any attention as to whether those scumreads made sense together.

I didn't feel like his vote on you had any conviction or intent to solve.

The strongest/most meaningful content he's posted has been about Bingle, his questionable reasoning about both the Dunn & Norway slots, but it's rather easy for me to imagine that content being either a) scum!Vanders jumping on a townie making illogical/reachy assertions without justifying why those assertions indicate

scum

alignment or b) scum!Vanders distancing/bussing a buddy!Bingle. He's also just holistically been pretty inactive this game, he hasn't bothered to fight harder against the thread consensus to eliminate in the 6p despite his strongest SR being Bingle, and he hasn't taken a lead or a stake in substantially building nor defusing any wagons.

Given that it's D1 and he's played pretty careful, I don't have any surefire scumtells to nail him on, but the overall profile of his posting and votes this game vibes very much to me like scum treading water and trying to let town eat itself up in the meantime.

[GuiltyLion]

I have read up but it is late and I'm tired and I need to sleep on things before really diving back into this game, I'll be around tomorrow

my current laying in bed hot takes:

- Lukewarm posted a great point in our hood about how scum!Bingle would have hard defended both marcistar and Lukewarm slots away from potential elimination today and to what gain? If it's something like a Bingle-Dunn or Bingle-Vanderscamp team, that's playing fairly awkwardly as it's strictly increasing chance of autoloss. I was kinda waiting to see if Lukewarm would raise the same points in the thread, but he hasn't?

- Overall I do find Bingle scummiest in the 3p hood in a vacuum but I'm struggling to see winning partner candidates due to the above ^. This is one of the matters I intend to sleep on. If you're in this game and scumreading Bingle but townreading Lukewarm/marcistar I need help seeing why Bingle is playing the way he's playing - who is his partner and how do they win after we eliminate a town!Hopkirk?

- Vander's reply to me is alright, I guess. I feel a bit more town vibes from him now that he's actually playing, I still disagree with a few of points, should probably cede a few others

- I thiiiiink I agree Bingle/Hopkirk really doesn't feel TvT, eliminating either way there is likely a good call for D1. I do intend to sleep on this and look at all the Bingle/Hopkirk posts in closer detail so no flashwagons tonight plz

[GuiltyLion]

y'all I SPECIFICALLY requested no flashwagons

[GuiltyLion]

@GL- why do you see reasons that Bingle wouldn't be aligned with Dunn

It's not that I don't see specific reasons he could be with Dunn, I agree that's a viable pairing, it's more that I don't see why he'd stick his neck out so early/decisively on behalf of marcistar/Lukewarm if those were two viable miseliminations today, narrowing the 6p to 4p with his partner in the group of 4.

[GuiltyLion]

Currently GuiltyLion, Marci, and Hopkirk are all off of the Hopkirk and the Bingle wagons.

So to each of you, do you think Hopkirk and Bingle are TvT?

Do you think someone else would be a better Day 1 elim?

What makes you think they are scummier then hopkirk/Bingle?

If you are wrong, and it is a minelim, do you think it would give us more information then a flip on Hop or Bingle, and if so why?

This feels like a weird post - I just stated in my last post that I'm not really feeling TvT from Hopkirk/Bingle, but I haven't yet had time to feel comfortable throwing a vote down especially since there's been so much action between the two of them. It's also odd to me that you're asking Hopkirk these questions??

[GuiltyLion]

I explained what's weird about it, you're assuming I'm "not on board" when I had already suggested I *would* be on board. And it makes no sense to ask Hopkirk why he thinks another scumread "is scummier than Hopkirk/Bingle" or whether his own flip would be informative. Just feels like thoughtless busywork questioning all around, especially since you claim to TR marcistar and myself as well

[GuiltyLion]

I wanted him to state for the thread why he was not voting for Bingle, because that is for us to analyze once Bingle flips.

Like this in general is pretty manipulative framing, there are reasons to not vote someone if you don't want the day to end or want to see where other players are thinking their vote might go. How am I to look at this and see it as anything but an attempt to further poison Hopkirk's standing on a town!Bingle flip?

[GuiltyLion]

especially since in the hood you gave pretty good reasons as to why you didn't personally think Bingle was likely to be scum, but then here you're championing eliminating him ASAP by telling everyone to vote between the two of them?? Do you see how that raises yellow flags for me?

[GuiltyLion]

bruh I've played mafia for 5+ years you don't need to say things like "Picking at peoples motivations is a key way to get a feel for whether or not their actions and motivations line up or if you think their actions are genuine.". My point is that your questions specifically were generic and bad and demonstrated no attempt to infer my thinking from what I had literally just posted.

[GuiltyLion]

and if Bingle/Hop is in fact TvT then all of your posts and actions are setting us straight on a path to two straight miseliminations. If you really thought Bingle was town you should not have been goading marcistar/Bingle to eliminate there today

[GuiltyLion]

yeah I def think Luke is town on a scum!Bingle (or a scum!Hopkirk) flip, I'm just worried about the TvT world in which case all of these posts are awful

p-edit: Bingle how can you not see what Lukewarm is doing here as bad. I really hate the overconfidence in D1 scumreads as if you're wrong on Hopkirk you've made life so easy for scum

[GuiltyLion]

Instead if people want to ignore Bingle's reads, they are going to have to argue that Bingle is not good at spotting scum, and I think that is a harder case to make.

It's really not?? No one is so good at mafia that they reliably nail a scumteam on D1, even in a set-up like this with slightly more information. I can

easily

imagine a town!Bingle being wrong about nEE, and that's starting from coin flip odds for him on that one. You yourself said you've been terrible at reads in your past games, why the hell are you assuming Bingle is infallible?

[GuiltyLion]

I really don't think Lukewarm is likely, all the twilight posting would be hard to do in real time knowing Bingle scumflip was imminent, including posts in our hood between thread lock and flip.

I posted this in our hood and Vander ignored it in favor of not posting at all over the entirety of the night phase, here it is for your viewing pleasure N_M:

I think Vanders' progression on Bingle is quite awkward

in 230 he votes marcistar, despite the fact that he claimed to believe we should eliminate in the 3p. (I still maintain that despite posting a handful of times about eliminating in the 3p, Vanderscamp did not seem to actually care about eliminating in the 3p, especially when most players had suggested that we shouldn't).

He then quotes Bingle posts from prior to 230, in his 231 and 233 he quotes Bingle's 212 and 219, then concludes in 235 that he thinks Bingle is scummier than N_M and that he thinks nEE is town. If that's the case, given that he thinks 3p was a better odds to hit scum and he's townreading one of the 3p, why was he voting elsewhere? I called this out in my post 236 and got a very short 238 in reply, which I didn't sense Vanders genuinely believed given that he spent more time discussing Bingle than marcistar.

Then the progression from question -> I don't like your answer -> vote (in 255, 262, 263) feels like where the decision to bus comes in. Despite scumreading and voting (!) Bingle, Vanders claims he got "nothing" out of Bingle v Hopkirk in 329 - I feel a townie who was voting Bingle as their primary SR there would have had more to say.

I also still agree with my own 469 and I don't think Vanderscamp understood my point nor addressed it in a satisfying way. My point wasn't that he wasn't aware of the pools once he posted, my point was "I was gonna say it's not S-S until I remembered [emphasis mine] it couldn't be" betrays a lack of critical thought or care about the pools when analyzing interactions. I haven't once forgotten who was in which pool this game, because it's centrally important to determining who scum is. Vanders post implied that he did, which I find hard to believe coming from town.

I also think Bingle's openwolf 477 may have been meant to scare us away from a Vander wagon.

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Vanderscamp

pagetop vote for justice
remember to turn back to previous page to read my case

[GuiltyLion]

oh FML that wasn't pagetop, man the rust is so real

[GuiltyLion]

I'm a million percent not buying that you don't believe that town!me could see you as scummy here. You are only pushing me because I'm pushing you and you feel forced to 1v1 me to discredit me.

The point of 469 is that it should not have ever crossed your mind that marci/Luke COULD have been S-S in the first place

[GuiltyLion]

I'm not reading the neighbourhood chat, sorry.

shouldn't you be concerned about what scum might be posting in there?

[GuiltyLion]

Overall, I like a lot of your reasoning about Vanderscamp, but this one really give me pause.

I also think Bingle's openwolf 477 may have been meant to scare us away from a Vander wagon.

Because, like when he made 477, You+Marci were alraedy voting for Vanderscamp, and I was so obviously trapped in his pocket, he should have know there was a chance I would follow his lead there. That puts Vanders at e-2, which is often equivalent to e-1 in a game with Not_Mafia. So, if I had followed through with his suggestion, the he would have immediately been put into the position of needing in to ante up or back out of his "I will vote Vanderscamp if we then vote Hopkirk"

For 477 to save Vanderscamp, Bingle would have had to assume I was going to climb out of his pocket at that moment. But from the nice and cozy comfort of his pocket, I saw it was "extreme confidence in his scum read" instead of "openwolfing." So 477 came awfully close to either getting Vanders voted out (GL, Marci, Me, Bingle, Not_Mafia is an Elimination) or essentially a scum partner claim by forcing Bingle to backtrack 477 the moment I follow him and vote Vanders.

I do feel this. 477 would have to be a pretty brave bluff, but I don't want to say it is entirely clearing because if the team was Bingle-Vanderscamp they were in very hot water by that point anyways.

Lukewarm, who is your pick for scum here?

[GuiltyLion]

I normally don't like to do protracted 1v1s so don't expect me to engage with every point but I'll give you a bit of an olive branch here

I thought I should be the most obvious town in the big pool coming into the day today, that obviously isn't true since you and hopkirk are both voting me.

I specifically don't like you thinking the Marci vote is suspicious, I think that is much scummier than your s-s thing.

Why do you think it's scummy that I voted Marci? Because your reasons are all things that are not only wrong, but I explained why they're wrong both at the start of the game and when you made this case on me last time.
I find it hard to believe that you can actually make this case against me in good faith because of this.

You said earlier that you were conceding some of the points you made against me.
Which points were those?

a) first off, the idea that you would be most obvious town is frankly absurd to me. In what ways do you think you should be cleared after D1? Serious question, I'm not trying to be snarky why should a neutral observer see you as locktown?

b) It's not scummy that you voted Marci, what I am saying is scummy is how toothless it was. All you said via why she was scum was calling her awkward, you spent far more of your words on Bingle than her, and you switched to Bingle almost immediately. To me, your Marci vote looks more like a floaty convenient vote rather than one you genuinely believed in,

that

is why I see it as scummy.

c) It's mainly 495, it's fair of you to say that we did actually have a decent sized Bingle wagon and personally all of your posts feel vaguely robotic to me so I may be underrating the seriousness of your belief in eliminating in the 3p over the 6p. Especially given that you did also say you weren't opposed to eliminating in the 6p and were more arguing from the point of voting our top scumreads.

as for your most recent post, if you are town you should absolutely be reading the hood. How otherwise are we to discern between scum making excuses for not posting there? Can you really say you're giving this game your best effort if you're categorically ignoring information that may help you sort people?

[GuiltyLion]

A) I don't think the bingle kill would have happened without me.
I was continually calling out the stuff he was saying that made no sense, and I was essentially the only person who was defending killing into the 3p pool, I was speaking up to argue that killing there is not a bad idea when people were suggesting it was. Not possible for you to know since you've never played with me but I generally avoid bussing, I've commented on this on other games on this site.

Ok, but you understand that the nature of this setup encourages the 6p scum to look as good as possible on the 3p scum's flip, correct? If I were scum I'd certainly be pushing my buddy to make myself look town on his/her flip, especially once it was clear they were getting suspicion.

Can you also link me to those comments?

B) I thought they were both fairly scummy and iirc didn't feel super strongly about either. When I thought bingle became more scummy I voted him. If your reasoning was that the vote was toothless, why were you talking about the different pools and which of them I was voting into?

Because from where I'm sitting:
- You made an argument about why eliminating in the 3p should not be disregarded and if anything was actually slightly better odds to hit scum
- You gave plenty of reasons for suspecting Bingle and had nEE down as a townread
- You instead voted in the 6p for reasons I saw as comparatively much weaker, which seems incongruent with both of the above

C) I don't care if scum posts there or not, there's no reason to post anything of value in that hood that we can't post in the thread instead.

My point is that town should be scumhunting in both threads, and you ignoring me in the hood overnight feels more likely to be scum ignoring conflict/posting until they have to, rather than town just completely ignoring game relevant content.

[GuiltyLion]

- Bingle's weird perspective on you mitigating your preference against bussing because it would have been premeditated to give you towncred on a Bingle scum!flip (but after looking back i don't think this initial perspective holds up well)

Can you explain to me why you don't think it holds up well? I don't really see any other compelling scum candidates and I think the entirety of Vanders' ISO is scummy, I don't want to be ruling him out as scum on the basis of a singular comment from flipped scum, especially since if they

are

teamed then both of them were in trouble at that point in the game.

I'm trying not to get frustrated with your vote on me, if you assume I were to flip town today would you revisit Vander tomorrow?

[GuiltyLion]

I'm interested to know why you voted in the first place

Do you think Hopkirk is scum after yesterday? Otherwise this is a completely useless question.

[GuiltyLion]

actually I guess 732's a bit unfair to you if I'm being honest, strike that one. but the rest of my points all stand

[GuiltyLion]

To reiterate some other townreads:

- Hopkirk is as close to locktown as it can possibly get, he was in real danger of being eliminated yesterday largely due to Bingle pushing him. I can't see that as a galaxy brain bus gambit, the threat of auto loss was too significant.

- I don't think scum!Bingle puts Marci in the 6p and expects her to solo carry the game, and I think if that

was

the team she would have tried much harder to look good on Bingle flip. I've also townread her tone and content the entire game. I'm confident putting her out of the pool barring a F3 scenario.

- Dunn is maybe in range of scumplay, but I think Bingle gave a real awkward townread on him early and I also stand by my thought that Dunn would have manipulated the game better on a D1 Bingle scumflip. He feels too detached and agenda-less to be trying to win a scumgame.

- Luke is the weakest of these townreads and likely where I'd look hardest in F3 but I believe he didn't know what Bingle's flip was going to be in twilight yesterday, his level of effort/involvement has been far more involved/sustained which would be incredibly taxing if he were scum, and I see his interactions with Bingle as more pocket-y than theater-y. Standing by his approach yesterday even after we railed on him for it also reads as obstinate town to me.

Which leaves Vander

[GuiltyLion]

marci, do you disagree with any of my reasons for townreading those 4 players above?

I get why I might be suspicious or a POE scum candidate from a neutral view of the game, I'm trying not to get salty about it, but I think anyone townreading Vander is giving him way too much credit for play that profiles to me as the most scummy of the remaining players. It's clear the dude knows how to write townie sounding posts/arguments regardless of his alignment, but I think scum in this setup is more likely to wind up scumreading/voting their 3p buddy because they have no shot if they're linked together. It's also important to note that Bingle didn't push on Vander in any substantive way other than threatening to hammer him if he got to E-1.

Vander has also been absent for large stretches of the game, gave a weak (and in my mind, implausible) reason for not reading/responding to anything in the hood, and just doesn't feel interested in solving this game. His push on me effectively amounts to "I don't think you're scumreading me in good faith", and I think an honest townie in his shoes would have to recognize he's a viable scum candidate, especially if they share townreads on some of the other players.

[GuiltyLion]

Assuming N_M scum we're left with:

Dunnstral
Hopkirk
marcistar

Vanderscamp's ISO doesn't lend itself well to being allied with N_M imo. Ping me if you disagree.

I don't think Dunn opens the way he did if he's scum with N_M. Too blatant.

I’m extremely bad at reading Dunnstral. If you can explain how he thinks and plays as scum, and why he wouldn’t be bold like that, feel free to enlighten me.

Dunn likes to low effort as both alignments ime. Calling out a partner as sus while voting one of the other people in the pool is something that is going to inevitably look bad and without the context of the last game it isn't a safe assumption we'll solve in the 6p first.

Is Dunn capable of being bold like that? Sure. Would Dunn actually draw late game attention to himself for a throwaway RVS vote? I don't think so, when he very much prefers to take the back seat and passively manipulate the thread.

NM being in the group of 3 is an anomoly. Is it because the deep scum is in the pool of 6 and NM is the other scum, or because they want to miselim NM in the smaller group?

VOTE: Bingle

This has serious reasoning on 1/3 of the small pool and a vote on a different 1/3 of the small pool.

If N_M flips scum, Dunn looks weird for having posted it and there's nothing to gain from having posted it. There's really nothing more that can be elaborated on there. Either you agree with the thought or you don't.

To his credit, Vanderscamp himself called this out as pretty bizarre/awkward reasoning to conclude a town!Dunn on a scum!N_M. The question is if scum!Bingle is more likely to dress up a fake anti-associative TR like this on a buddy or a townie.

In my mind, and especially in this set up where Bingle has to assume a serious risk of going down early this game, scum don't want to fake reasons to townread their buddies this way, especially if their buddy isn't playing hard to be read as obvious town. I think it's generally more likely he didn't want conflict with Dunn or to dress up a fake scumread, and so instead he backwards justified a townread on town, while maybe giving himself an angle to push Dunn if N_M flipped town.

[GuiltyLion]

did bingle also not push on anyone else..? or was it only vanderscamp?

on this, I should clarify - I don't think Bingle's associatives with Vanderscamp are damning in and of themselves, or that they only apply to Vander (he treated me much the same way, ignoring giving a substantial defense or a push). Rather I just mean to note that you can't clear Vander in the way you can clear Hopkirk. Bingle also hard defended Marci/Lukewarm to defuse their wagons which makes me think they're less likely buddies as well.

[GuiltyLion]

one last point on why I don't find Vanders' scumread on me genuine - he says I'm pushing him in bad faith, but who else does he think I *should* be pushing? If he's town and absent any other major scumreads (which is currently a fair assumption IMO given that he hasn't really pushed anyone else since his Bingle vote mid D1), how does he conclude that I'm scum solely on the basis of me pushing him? If he's not scumreading anyone else, who else would he expect me to push? He's already stated Hopkirk/Luke town on Bingle scumflip and that he TRs Marci on the basis of pool spec.

So from his point of view, the only possible scum are me and Dunn, and he's calling me scum (as opposed to Dunn) solely because he can't imagine that a town!me would scumread him. Terrible reasoning and I have to think he's better than that as town

[GuiltyLion]

I'm gonna keep 1v1ing I guess cause none of y'all else want to post I suppose

I don't think that the 3p scum is anything close to a lost cause in this setup given the number of people who are happy to kill into the big pool first.
I also pushed bingle before he got suspicion iirc

This is a pretty fundamental disagreement between us I think. If we had mis-elimmed in the big pool, I'm pretty sure the correct call after that would be to lim (up to) twice in the small pool to at least take a 66% chance of hitting scum with a F5 as worst case scenario. So in my mind, scum team is playing this entire game around losing the 3p scum member, even prior to gamestart in how they divide the pools.

Do you disagree with me on that? This ^ has been centrally driving how I've been evaluating players the entire game.

Here's what I think is the most recent comment
viewtopic.php?p=12738362#p12738362

I notice here you said:

I do bus occasionally, I actually bussed a couple of partners in a recent game, but when I do this I do it because I think the cred is worth it.

And now here in this game, your first and primary defense for why you should be seen as town is arguing that you are the reason that Bingle got eliminated. I think the cred for bussing in this setup, where (as I just said) you can presume 3p scum is very likely going to go down, is absolutely better than having awkward associations with your buddy.

You may think my case against Marci was weaker than my bingle case, that's fine!
Eventually I did too when bingle didn't respond very well to what I had to say about him.
I don't think I was on Marci particularly long during the period when I scumread both of them because I remember voting bingle when he did react badly to what I had to say.

Again you're twisting my words here - it's not solely that your case against Marci was weak, it's that your case against Marci was weak

combined with

the fact that you had said you had reads in the 3p and argued previously that 3p limming was mathematically comparable/better to limming in 6p.

And I don't actually agree that town should be scumhunting in both threads.
Why is the neighborhood chat worth scumhunting in, how is it not just strictly worse than posting in the thread?
What benefit is there to a chat that potentially gets relayed to 100% of the scum and a fraction of the town?

But luckily you don't need to take my word for it that I believe this, you can look at the past game of this where I also did not read the neighborhood chat.

Because scum is posting in the neighborhood and if you're concerned that I am scum it's odd that you don't bother to respond (let alone READ) at all to how I could be manipulating people in there. I checked your activity over the night phase and saw that while you hadn't posted site wide during the night phase, you had signed into the site around 10 hours before thread open. My belief is that a townie should at least be somewhat interested in what's been discussed in the hood after the Bingle flip. It's fair that you never posted in the hood in the past game, but I would say that:

a) this game has a pretty fundamental difference in that the main thread was locked after the D1 elim (which never occurred in the last game) and
b) it's still bad/anti-town play to not post in there and express your thoughts on discussion in the game, at bare minimum it's not transparent and a reason to be suspicious. Everyone else has posted in there.

[GuiltyLion]

for most of the game you have been trying to phrase it as it not making sense that I would vote into the 6p pool at all, given what I said about voting into the 3p pool

That's not really true, maybe I happened to phrase it that way at the start of my case today on D2 but it should be clear from my question on D1 that I've suspected this on the basis of me not understanding why your vote didn't align with the reads you gave. The fact that you had indicated that you disagreed with the thread notion of limming 6p first is just the cherry on top

[GuiltyLion]

There's a difference between saying my posts have sounded scummy or whatever, which would be a wrong read but would at least be a reasonable perspective, and saying shit like me not posting in the neighborhood chat being scummy and the 6p pool vote being scummy when these are things that are obviously objectively wrong from glancing at the other game of this roleset that I played AND have been explained to you why they're wrong many times.

I think you're scummy because I don't think you believe your reasons for pushing on me, which has nothing to do with how I think you should be reading anyone else in the game.

All you've discussed in your defense is why you think my reasons for scumreading you are wrong. It's quite a leap to then argue that this means I must not believe in them. Do you have any reasons for thinking I don't

believe

in my scumread on you, even if you (obviously) disagree with points I'm making? Which points specifically do you think a town!me would not believe in?

[GuiltyLion]

I think scum are in general more likely to give more genuine sounding reads on town they know are town, and less genuine sounding reads on scum they know are not town, and this is pretty obviously not a genuine read.
Last game I'm pretty sure both scum never pushed each other and gave fairly weak reasons to justify that.

We agree the read on Dunn isn't genuine but I think if scum!Bingle is making a disingenuous read on scum!Dunn he's going to be more careful about how blatantly disingenuous it would look on his flip. We actually have this is evidence of how Bingle thinks, because that's what he was trying to argue a scum!Dunn paired with scum!N_M

wasn't trying to do

.

Also, last game scum autolost on D1, so that seems to indicate they played the game poorly, don't ya think?

[GuiltyLion]

How is bingle diffusing the wagon of someone in the 6p pool an indication of being town?

Same philosophy as in my other replies to you here -

given that scum know scum!Bingle in this game is more likely than the average scum player in an average setup to be eliminated

, I believe it's less likely he'd stick his neck out for a buddy in an obvious way unless he absolutely needed to. Maybe Lukewarm was getting close to that point, which is why I'm not completely clearing him as town, but Marci wasn't. Combined with independent reasons to TR each player, it makes the altogether odds that scum!Bingle is paired with either of them fairly low IMO, in my experience scum will often position themselves against early popular wagons to try to give them things to argue about and feel like they're sorting - you can get a fair amount of D1 towncred from defending actual town. As I also said earlier, it looks more to me like a pocket on Lukewarm.

[GuiltyLion]

but for most of the game you have been trying to phrase it as it not making sense that I would vote into the 6p pool at all

In fact, this is actually a pretty significant misrep the more I think about it and I have the receipts:

do you think marcistar is scummier than bingle?

Here's what I posted when I first felt it was suspicious that Vander gave a bunch of reasons for suspecting Bingle but voted marcistar instead. It's clear that I find it weird that he's voting marcistar

as opposed to Bingle

, said nothing about the pools.

Here's where I start really reiterating a push/case on him:

The strongest/most meaningful content he's posted has been about Bingle, his questionable reasoning about both the Dunn & Norway slots, but it's rather easy for me to imagine that content being either a) scum!Vanders jumping on a townie making illogical/reachy assertions without justifying why those assertions indicate

scum

alignment or b) scum!Vanders distancing/bussing a buddy!Bingle. He's also just holistically been pretty inactive this game, he hasn't bothered to fight harder against the thread consensus to eliminate in the 6p despite his strongest SR being Bingle, and he hasn't taken a lead or a stake in substantially building nor defusing any wagons.

Note that I've said nothing about Vander's attitude about the pools prior to this post. Now look at what I am saying - what's weird is that "he hasn't bothered to fight harder against thread consensus to eliminate in the 6p

DESPITE HIS STRONGEST SR BEING BINGLE

". Again, referring to the fact that his posts are all centered around Bingle being scummy to him, having reasons to suspect Bingle.

But look at how Vander twists the argument in his reply to defend himself:

It's also ridiculous to say that

I haven't pushed harder against killing into the big pool

, I have probably said more than any other player in this game about which pool is better to kill into

He drops the most important part of my point ("Bingle is your strongest SR, why were you a)voting Marcistar and b)not trying to get people to lim Bingle instead") and shifts the entire discussion to instead being about how he argued for limming in the 3p in the general sense. It's a misrep to make my argument different than what it was.

On D2, I did phrase it poorly:

in 230 he votes marcistar, despite the fact that he claimed to believe we should eliminate in the 3p. (I still maintain that despite posting a handful of times about eliminating in the 3p, Vanderscamp did not seem to actually care about eliminating in the 3p, especially when most players had suggested that we shouldn't).

I have a bit of mea cupla on this one, it does read less focused on the oddness of his votes/play regarding who he wants to eliminate, and more about the general 6p/3p discussion. But even here, you can see what I'm trying to say despite the poor phrasing - I'm saying he "did not seem to care about eliminating in the 3p" because of my prior memory that he gave reasons to scumread Bingle yet voted marcistar, and then when he did switch to Bingle he disappeared for quite a long time IRL and came back and barely pushed it (SEE 329).

But now suddenly, this amounts to Vander saying that "most of the game" I've been phrasing it as not making sense about voting in 6p? Nuh uh. What didn't make sense was voting marcistar, specifically after giving reasons why your vote should have been on Bingle. The secondary point is that you can't use the argument about us limming in the 6p as a defense, because you already have a well-documented belief that voting in the 3p was fine.

[GuiltyLion]

If y'all wanna vote me out today, fine. But bury this scum with extreme prejudice after my flip, there is no universe where Vanderscamp gets to live through the F3, especially once you all can reread all my posts against him knowing my alignment.

[GuiltyLion]

Firstly I don't think at all the the "only possible scum" are you and Dunn.

also on this,

I'm not seeing why town!Vander would feel the need to disagree with this. In his own words:

I read Marci as town from the meta about which pool she would be in despite reading her content as scummy.
I think I like lukewarm now,

like that was a self-hammer since you made the vote knowing that NM was going to vote you. if this flips town then i'm pissed and you've lost the respect i had for you as a player before this. the amount of self-hammers i see from town ruining a good half of my games is pissing me off.

I think given scum bingle this was a very towny comment from hopkirk btw

I also think given scum bingle the stuff lukewarm was saying about flipping bingle to confirm the validity of his reads if he's town is towny

[GuiltyLion]

you can't just townread people when it's convenient to townread them but then say you're not looking at the other players by POE. If they're town they're town and you should be willing to put your foot in the ground there. I would say I'm literally never voting Hopkirk or marcistar this game at this point, doesn't feel like you'd commit to the same?

[GuiltyLion]

Lukewarm, when I'm flipped, will you vote Vanderscamp tomorrow?

[GuiltyLion]

I really don't think Dunn is mafia and you are letting way too much slide with Vander here. Please read my 754 with care and really internalize it once you see my intentions are pure.

[GuiltyLion]

He has repeatedly brought up the fact that Vanderscamp voted Marci as a reason to scum read him, which also seems off to me. The main issue here, is that this is exactly how Vanders handled the first game. He made the same argument about the math of voting in each pool, made the same conclusion that it was really just best to vote for the scummiest person regardless of pool, then he voted in the 6p pool. - So why is GL taking this to be scum indicative
-Also, at the time multiple people said that marci seemed scummy, including 2 people with experience with scum!marci (both of which have been confirmed town, so scum reading Marci at that point in the day was clearly not a scum only trait)

Because Vander gave NO good reasons for scumreading Marci, and plenty of good reasons to scumread Bingle! Then he votes Marci and I've not understood why the entire game. See 236.

[GuiltyLion]

But if he also completely ignored the neighborhood chat in the first game, where is the logic that this makes him more likely to be scum

Addressed this in the last section of 749

[GuiltyLion]

If y'all wanna vote me out today, fine. But bury this scum with extreme prejudice after my flip, there is no universe where Vanderscamp gets to live through the F3, especially once you all can reread all my posts against him knowing my alignment.

If y'all wanna vote me out today, fine. But bury this scum with extreme prejudice after my flip, there is no universe where Vanderscamp gets to live through the F3, especially once you all can reread all my posts against him knowing my alignment.

If y'all wanna vote me out today, fine. But bury this scum with extreme prejudice after my flip, there is no universe where Vanderscamp gets to live through the F3, especially once you all can reread all my posts against him knowing my alignment.

reposting for emphasis. Flip Vander tomorrow after N_M hammers me, I will rage at you all in the dead thread if you do something stupid like flip Dunn instead

[GuiltyLion]

Again,

I'm not saying Vanderscamp is scum for saying he's pro-lim in the 3p and then voting in the 6p.

I'm saying Vanderscamp is scum for giving great reasons to suspect Bingle, giving comparatively weak/awful ones to suspect Marci,

claiming he has a TR on nEE

, and then voting Marci in the 6p instead of Bingle in the 3p. His stated reasoning did not align with his vote, and he cannot use any sort of justification about "we were limming in the 6p" as a defense since he said he was pro-limming in the 3p. He also then made no real effort to push Bingle from his vote in the 250s or wherever until several days later IRL once Hopkirk/nEE/N_M were both more solidified on Bingle

[GuiltyLion]

LUKEWARM

I’m extremely bad at reading Dunnstral. If you can explain how he thinks and plays as scum, and why he wouldn’t be bold like that, feel free to enlighten me.

Dunn likes to low effort as both alignments ime. Calling out a partner as sus while voting one of the other people in the pool is something that is going to inevitably look bad and without the context of the last game it isn't a safe assumption we'll solve in the 6p first.

Is Dunn capable of being bold like that? Sure. Would Dunn actually draw late game attention to himself for a throwaway RVS vote? I don't think so, when he very much prefers to take the back seat and passively manipulate the thread.

I don't like or understand this.

Why do you think Dunn is being bold?
Because I don't think a throwaway RVS vote is being bold in any way, and I haven't seen anything from him that contradicts him taking the back seat and passively manipulating.

Additionally, he wasn't directly calling n_m sus, he was just speculating on why he was in the pool. It might have been indirect but even if it was, it's not like a super bold statement to make.

Vanderscamp's ISO doesn't lend itself well to being allied with N_M imo. Ping me if you disagree.

I disagree with this, I called out in 160 some weird reasoning he's using to scumread both Lukewarm and N_M, and I suspect it may be that scum!Vanderscamp with scum!N_M trying to paint a false associative between town!Lukewarm and his buddy.

p-edit: @nEE I don't really see why he couldn't post that as scum, even if he knew it was true already. It could be a question to make him look uninformed, and it's also entirely possible N_M didn't mention you at all in pregame scum chat.

In general, it means "This post is something I find noteworthy in a way I'm not entirely sure I want to share yet but would like other people to pay attention to." but thinking about this further I don't actually see a drawback to bringing this up.

Your argument for N_M not being partnered with Scamp applies equally well to yourself, but you phrased it in a way to avoid that entirely which leaves me inclined to think you might yourself be aligned with scamp and looking to passively clear him.

I don't like this either since it's pretty easily explained by nor being town and not thinking about the perspective about me being scum with him.

I think bingle is now more scummy than n_m for the stuff I quoted.
I like a lot what Norwegian is saying.

I also think nor_GL is a scum team that absolutely does not exist because of what nor is saying about GL, I don't think nor would be calling GL confirmed town from what GL said if they were scum together.

[GuiltyLion]

IT'S RIGHT THERE IN HIS ISO HOW DO YOU NOT SEE IT

[GuiltyLion]

ALL THOSE POSTS I QUOTED ARE DISTANCING WHILE VOTING TOWN ELSEWHERE

[GuiltyLion]

And he responded to 236, by saying that he did think Marci was scummier then Bingle

this is like saying if he said he was town then you'd accept it

he gave no good reasons or evidence to suggest he thought Marci was scummier than Bingle. He said she was "awkward", meanwhile brought up

actually good points

against Bingle

[GuiltyLion]

just flip Vander tomorrow and admit you were wrong after I flip green

[GuiltyLion]

N_M, come in here and hammer me so I can yell at Lukewarm from the throne of confirmed town

[GuiltyLion]

Lukewarm you're zeroing way too much in on a temporal thing that is wholly insignificant to my point. Yes he technically voted Marci first,

then

gave a bunch of reasons why he should have been voting Bingle. But all those posts were posted together, sequentially, and I immediately came in and started questioning it right afterwards. It makes no difference if he posted 235 before or after his marcistar vote, the point I'm making remains exactly the same.

[GuiltyLion]

But for some reason, Guilty Lion keeps saying that he scum read Bingle over Marci, and I just do not see that in his ISO at all

also, assuming you're not scum taking advantage of a TvT here, then this reasoning right here is exactly why you've been wrong on your scumreads in past games, frankly

yeah, I got the very minor details wrong of Vander voted marci first, then immediately ripped off a string of posts about why he thought Bingle was scummy. In my head this morning I had this happening in reverse order, but all the posts were posted by Vander immediately after each other and weren't broken up by any other players doing anything in the game.

The question you should be asking yourself is "a) does GL being wrong about this change his argument in any way" and "b) does GL

believe

what he's saying".

You're just doing like basic surface level "GL said it happened before the vote but it actually happened in the immediate posts after the vote, therefore he's scum" thinking and not even thinking at all about what my actual motivation would be for getting that wrong as scum. If I'm scum I play way more careful here and make sure I don't make mistakes, I carefully read everything I'm talking about to make sure the story I'm selling makes sense. As town I just post hip fire memories and takes because I don't need to hide anything about my thought process and emotions, and it means I'm more likely to get small, inconsequential details wrong, especially when they change literally nothing about the actually indicative point I'm calling out

[GuiltyLion]

It is

incontrovertible fact

that in the sequence of posts from 229 to 235, Vanderscamp votes Marci for very poor/shitty reasons, and meanwhile gives solid to great reasons to scumread Bingle. I have not once bought this game that his vote on Marcistar was because he

genuinely

thought she was

more likely

to flip red than Bingle,

especially once you take the pools into account

, which we KNOW Vander wanted to do. That is the clearest summation of this point that I can give, and what my case has been the entire game.

[GuiltyLion]

I don't believe his Marci vote was genuine, the fact that it lasted less than 12 hours is just further evidence for that point.

I am hunting to make a scum case on him, because I think he is scum! I've already sorted Hopkirk/Marci to my utmost satisfaction, and I'm comfortable thinking you are green enough for today and likely would still bet the game on you being town. So that leaves me with Dunn/Vander, and people are just blindly townreading Vander and I need to put a massive dent in it because I am going to be pissed if he skates to endgame with how little scumhunting he's done and his passive vote history he's built over this entire game.

[GuiltyLion]

Can you just promise me that you will flip him tomorrow. I honestly could care less that you are wrong about me but I am going to be very pissed if you just default to voting Dunn tomorrow and don't bother to reread my points and take me seriously even once paranoia about my slot is removed

[GuiltyLion]

couldn't* care less fuck

[GuiltyLion]

you might get an opportunity still if that was a "let me read" unvote and not a "GL is clearly town" unvote

I'm trying to take a breath and consider if I'm wrong about Vander but not gonna lie it's really hard for me to see the town case for Vander. Luke has done some ostensibly overtly scummy stuff, and the way he's kinda ignored my pleads to elim Vander after me is kinda giving me pause - it doesn't match his attitude at all with Bingle EOD1 - but I still think this would be quite an impressive scumgame especially in terms of real time posting if he's scum here. Do we feel confident about a hypothetical Lukewarm/Marci/Dunn F3 if that does somehow happen? If Dunn is town and Actually Tries I think we'll be okay and that's the real worst case scenario

[GuiltyLion]

This is what town!Bingle said in the last game:

I think Pooky/Infinity thinks that Pooky is the stronger scumplayer.

I think that Pooky/skitter thinks that both of them are strong enough to duck an elim.

Basically, I think the scum in the 6p is someone that has a higher opinion of their own scumgame than infinity or someone confident that they can get multiple miselims in that pool. I don't think a scumteam containing Vanders is confident that they can pull of multiple eliminations in that pool given the sum total of 3 completed games in the last three years Vanders has under his belt and the fact that he would definitely have a partner who could tell him that.

I'll be back to finish my thoughts in a while.

which is actually kinda funny given my read on Vanders in this game, but it definitely shows he's of the opinion that 6p scum would likely be stronger than 3p scum. There's a few posts earlier in his ISO (which don't quote quite as succinctly as this one) where he makes similar reads about 6p scum needing to be confident to duck a few eliminations. Does he reverse that belief for this game after he rolls scum? Frankly I don't know if anyone in this lobby could claim a stronger scumgame than Bingle based on past experience other than myself/Hopkirk/Dunn, but I know it's not me and I still strongly doubt Bingle-Hopkirk was S-S

[GuiltyLion]

As said I don't think the 3p scum is dead if the meta is to kill into the big pool, there is also a pretty large middle ground between awkward interactions and pushing bingle as hard as I did.

You didn't push bingle hard, what the hell? you parked your vote on him, failed to post in the thread for a long time, came back and said you "got nothing" out of his notable fight with Hopkirk, then made a couple other random questions to him. That is light years from "pushing bingle hard" lmao.

[GuiltyLion]

You have yet to give me a single reason why the neighborhood chat is not strictly worse than posting in the thread.

It's not about needing to post in the neighborhood chat because it's better or worse than posting in the main thread (claims I never made) so much as it is incredibly suspect that you claimed to not even be

reading

it when I asked why you weren't posting there.

[GuiltyLion]

It is

incontrovertible fact

that in the sequence of posts from 229 to 235, Vanderscamp votes Marci for very poor/shitty reasons, and meanwhile gives solid to great reasons to scumread Bingle. I have not once bought this game that his vote on Marcistar was because he

genuinely

thought she was

more likely

to flip red than Bingle,

especially once you take the pools into account

, which we KNOW Vander wanted to do. That is the clearest summation of this point that I can give, and what my case has been the entire game.

If you thought that my reasons against bingle were solid to great, why did you not mention that fact at any point before he flipped scum?

gonna take a page from your book where I just quote relevant posts in my ISO and ignore the rest of the substance of your point

do you think marcistar is scummier than bingle?

The strongest/most meaningful content he's posted has been about Bingle, his questionable reasoning about both the Dunn & Norway slots, but it's rather easy for me to imagine that content being either a) scum!Vanders jumping on a townie making illogical/reachy assertions without justifying why those assertions indicate

scum

alignment or b) scum!Vanders distancing/bussing a buddy!Bingle. He's also just holistically been pretty inactive this game, he hasn't bothered to fight harder against the thread consensus to eliminate in the 6p despite his strongest SR being Bingle, and he hasn't taken a lead or a stake in substantially building nor defusing any wagons.

- Overall I do find Bingle scummiest in the 3p hood in a vacuum but I'm struggling to see winning partner candidates due to the above ^. This is one of the matters I intend to sleep on. If you're in this game and scumreading Bingle but townreading Lukewarm/marcistar I need help seeing why Bingle is playing the way he's playing - who is his partner and how do they win after we eliminate a town!Hopkirk?

[GuiltyLion]

Pretty interested to know how this affects your read of me

I actually do think it lowers your scum equity somewhat and I'll use this as an opportunity to give you another olive branch, because I'm really not interested in continuing to relitigate the same points against you and your same defenses against them.

You keep making claims that I don't believe in my scumread on you, I think it should be pretty evident that I do. I've also explained several times why I'm townreading Hopkirk, marcistar, and Lukewarm to the point where I have no interest in voting them unless it got to literally F3 and I had to rethink the whole game. So that leaves me with two candidates left and I find your play to be altogether scummier than Dunn's, and it also looks to me like if you are scum, you are trying a lot harder to

win the game

than a hypothetical scum!Dunn is.

If you are town, and you were to know for a fact that I am town, who would you be looking at here? Because from where I'm sitting Bingle and marci were your only real scumreads yesterday, you haven't committed to any other scumreads today besides arguing with me saying I must be scum because you don't like my case on you, and yet you won't even commit to solid townreads elsewhere to help yourself POE. Part of my goal is to make sure you can't possibly avoid my potential flip today with any semblance of town credit because I see scum!you as the biggest potential threat in this game and I've played very hard to try to ensure that scum!you won't win. If you're really town and I'm flipped today you should have no shot to live through endgame and that means effectively one more chance to identify scum. and I really don't see you caring about that at all, it has felt to me like your priority is to win a 1v1 and survive today.

[GuiltyLion]

basically what I need is an explanation of who is Bingle's partner if it's not you. I really can't see Hopkirk at all. Marcistar would be an incredibly brave choice to put in the 6p. Lukewarm felt to me genuinely uninformed about Bingle's alignment and I think Bingle worked to pocket Lukewarm rather than save a buddy. So if it's not you then it's Dunn, and maybe we're eating ourselves up and ignoring the low WIM scum just coasting, but you haven't seemed interested in looking there at all and it's not clear to me why, especially given how cagey you've generally been with townreads.

[GuiltyLion]

Is this a troll?

also, this is a really thoughtless response/accusation

like, if I'm scum, then these would be the best arguments that I believe I can make, and I would believe that pushing them will get you flipped without making me more likely to be flipped once you are miseliminated.

if I'm town, even if you think I'm bad/dumb town, then it's a genuine push and I'm not trolling.

in either universe, there's not really any world where I'm trolling. so what exactly are you suggesting here? You're just insulting me to discredit my arguments to try to make yourself look better, instead of actually sussing out whether you think it's AI or explaining why scum!me is making these points or even why they are wrong

and this is not an invitation to keep arguing with me, cause I don't think it's productive at this point

[GuiltyLion]

We need to reach some form of consensus

you can't just say this while not putting any opinions down

[GuiltyLion]

I don't know what to do to help improve town's chances if no one is really engaging with me other than Vander. Lukewarm do you really not find any of my points against him convincing at all?

Can you walk me through how you think scum in the 6p should play this game, especially if you don't see Vanders as scummy? You were thinking on D1 about how Bingle's play didn't make sense pushing eliminations off of marcistar and yourself, yet it doesn't feel like I can get you to think at all about how Vanders' play makes sense attempting to solidify towncred from scumreading and ultimately bussing his buddy. The fact that he said today that he "pushed Bingle hard" (do you agree that he did?) is also evidence for this. It's why I think he has far more scum equity than Dunn, Dunn isn't trying to survive at all or set himself up to endgame.

[GuiltyLion]

if I've whiffed on the Vander read completely, it feels like whoever is scum is too afraid to commit at all in the TvT here. Certainly they haven't jumped to join me in burying Vanders, which would be a pretty easy and natural play for them since I would look a whole lot worse were he to flip green.

[GuiltyLion]

I actually really don't like this point. Because in the context of the post, he was actively examing the interactions between me and marci, and running through the possibilities of that interaction, and then dismissed the possibility of s/s himself. The fact that he never suggested it in the thread makes me not suspicious for him over this. Once again, I see no reason to TR him for this, but it does not strike me as suspicious

I think I just wanna clarify this point, otherwise I find your post fair enough.

The argument I'm making is that he should have

already known

just from thinking about the game and playing from a town perspective, that marci/Luke cannot be a S-S interaction. I think it's far less likely that a townie wouldn't already have this in mind when reading two players in the same pool talking to each other. I'm basing this on my own mindset playing the game - once I internalized who was in each pool at gamestart, I have been intentionally reading every interaction across-pool with potential associatives in mind, and within-pool differently specifically

because

they could only be T-T or T-S. I even mentioned this in one of my own posts 273.

So when he says,

Was going to say it didn't feel like a S/S interaction from them before I

remembered

that isn't possible anyway.

it registers on my bullshit radar. A townie should not have 'forgotten' that it was impossible. I can't grok or empathize with that at all.

To me, this feels like scum making things up to simulate a fictional thought process. I don't buy it as an authentic one. I find it remarkably hard to imagine that town!Vanderscamp was reading conversation between two players in the same pool and not already aware that it cannot be a S-S interaction.

Have you at any point this game "forgotten" who was in each pool and who could or couldn't be potentially aligned?

[GuiltyLion]

I just don't understand why scum!Dunn would be playing so lackadaisically, it's been a long time since I've seen scum!Dunn and I think the past few times I did play with him as scum he was in a hydra, but this is just super lazy play if he is scum here. Do you all think he really just says he's "unsure" about Bingle (in my convo with him in the hood) and nothing more if he's buddies?

I do think in a vacuum, Dunn or Hopkirk would be most likely 6p scum with Bingle 3p scum by pool-spec, and I still think Hopkirk is locktown. But that's about the best point I would have for scum!Dunn, and I'm always gonna be more paranoid about the players that seem like they're explicitly trying to stay alive

[GuiltyLion]

Do you think that that example is different somehow, or is this something that has never happened to you?

yah I don't know if I've ever read posts without checking and knowing who has been flipped already, when I'm playing as either alignment. so I guess I just don't empathize with you here

[GuiltyLion]

I'm skimmin' Vanders' past games and continuing to feel validated in this scumread, his towngames feel more involved and insightful than what he's given us here (and what he's contributed D2 has really only ever been under direct fire from me). He also clearly has extensive mafia history, claiming 500-600 games played, which removes any poolspec concerns about Bingle putting a 'newbie' in 6p.

As long as he gets flipped at some point this game I think we win. Y'all can ignore me and vote myself or Dunn instead today but I don't see myself wanting to vote elsewhere, and I will expect you to atone for bad votes and sheep my read if I'm flipped first. Do not let him live through any F3.

[GuiltyLion]

This is by no means a slam-dunk scum tell but I also did notice in his past scumgame, he made a very similar post to one he made in this game:

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p12647731

I'm not getting anything from the flea/mena discussion

Also of importance is that Mena was his scumbuddy here.

What do we see in this game?

I got nothing at all out of the bingle/hopkirk exchange

have not found a similar post in his town ISOs yet, claiming to receive nothing useful out of other players arguing/discussing, but I haven't done a full deep dive.

[GuiltyLion]

damn I didn't know there was a book out there on scum!GL meta, though I don't think any of it is wrong haha

I think you gave a decent case for town!Vanders, given that I really can't seem to get any traction with either you or Luke on this read makes me think my perspective is probably biased/tunneled from my unique position of knowing my own alignment while being off wagon, suspecting that scum would be more likely bussing than not in this setup especially given how D1 ended with both NM/nEE pushing Bingle. The point about not tactically giving himself outs I think is the best one and definitely something I have been undervaluing. The weakest aspect of my case/read is that it relies a lot on an assumption that Vanders played most of D1 around a plan to bus Bingle, but I still do feel his ISO really doesn't have any notable towniness to me in it and so the case for town is almost solely because he voted Bingle - even Vander has basically said as much. Since you looked at some of his past games, do you share any of my feeling that he comes across more solve-y in his town games?

I also think Dunn just feels like the easy compromise elimination at any point this game, so I'm both not really worried about scum!Dunn winning here and makes me think he's the easiest miselimination for scum today if town.

p-edit: cause I don't like joking without answering and at the time I thought Bingle's questioning towards where the bit about nEE meta came from was fair. You have to remember I didn't know who was scum/town between you, like that was always going to feel immensely more obvious in your shoes, and so I was trying to weigh how things look given a town!Bingle

[GuiltyLion]

I can't remember ever faking a townslip, no. I just read through the occurrences of "townslip" in my post history and didn't find anything in Maf PTs or anything reminding me of past townslips of mine as either alignment. Honestly I'd say I'm generally a bit too proud to try to fake townslips for towncred, I feel more embarrassed about my lack of awareness about the setup more than anything

[GuiltyLion]

Why is he just saying he's unsure on bingle not indicative of them being partners?
I don't understand that read at all.

I just try to operate from an assumption that scum are going to be playing with intention and trying to win, and so when he just barely gives a comment on his hypothetical buddy when that buddy may be flipped strikes me as fundamentally bad/sub-optimal play, and therefore less likely to be scum

I think it's fair to question that at this point though, I might be making too many assumptions about what scum!Dunn would or wouldn't do. I'm gonna try to find time today to look through a few of his recent past scumgames, cause this is crossing the line into "play so uninspired you can't assume it comes from town either" territory at this point

[GuiltyLion]

sorry for less activity the past day or so - I should have a bit more time for the next few hours to play and chat in real time if anyone else is around. I did look through some of Dunn's recent scum and towngames but frankly I didn't spot any patterns that stood out to me or things that might help solve him in this game.

Overall, my latest feelings are:

- I have not wanted to admit it but I am wavering a bit in my confidence of the scumread of Vanders, I'm not sure if that's more due to waiting it out and just getting cold feet or due to both Lukewarm and Hopkirk pouring some water on the flames of that read. I still think he's best bet for scum by POE and my general philosophy of how scum is likely to play, as well as me still being stuck on the awkward "I remembered Marci/Luke can't be S-S" phrasing, but I'm like maybe 50% sure instead of 70-80%. I'm also a bit flummoxed that my response to Hopkirk about townslips was the thing that apparently changed his mind on me, but I can honestly see that coming from either alignment so I couldn't draw any AI conclusions from it, though I do think it's odd for his read to swing so drastically off of just that.

- Since I'm less sure of the Vander read I won't exactly cry today if Dunn is eliminated instead, but I still just don't really see a good reason to think he's scum other than him not really playing very hard. Like if Dunn is scum, you have to believe he didn't try to gain any towncred from scumreading/distancing/pushing Bingle, nor did he try especially hard to protect him, and you have to believe he's happy to give flippant low-effort posts in thread even when most players are casting suspicion his way. It's possible but it just doesn't feel like The One True Answer to me.

- I do see the wishy-washiness in marcistar's posting today that's being called out, the progression from being less trusting of me in 844 to sheeping me in 849 is a bit stilted. I intend to look over her newbie scum game that others mentioned previously as when I skimmed it a week or two ago I thought she played with more agenda there than she did here. I do weigh N_M's vote seriously, and I think if there's scum in the blind spot it'd be her, because I've grown more confident in town!Luke given some of his play today, and Hopkirk is still nigh conftown.

[GuiltyLion]

Well... we really split the vote on this one

2 for Vanders, 2 for Dunn, 2 for Marci

So luckily, we all appear to be on the same page here

FMPOV it's pretty likely (almost ~100% minus probability of scum!Luke) that one of these wagons is on scum, and scum is sitting on one of the other two. I suspect if that's the case that scum won't want to switch their vote here as it would very likely look bad jumping from one miselimination to another, especially if/when both town wagonees are flipped before F3. So we probably need some direction from Hopkirk to resolve the deadlock right now.

Given that N_M is town, it could mean:
1) marci is scum and two townies have correctly solved today
2) scum!Dunn avoided the GL/Vander TvT entirely and opted to push a marci miselimination without any real support yet from other townies
3) I'm right about Vander and

all of

Lukewarm/N_M/Dunn are wrong as town

all this assuming a town!Luke

Could be some fuel for thought about which of these scenarios is more or less likely. Putting it this way makes me feel further uncertain about Vander because I currently know at least

three

townies would have to be wrong for me to be right, whereas worlds where marci or Dunn are scum mean only one or two townies besides me

has

to be wrong.

[GuiltyLion]

maybe we're just completely different people who dont see the same way. but even after that, i still wouldn't change my vote, because i like guiltylions reasoning

this is also kinda bleh, tries to pin me with all the responsibility for Vanders' flip

[GuiltyLion]

man

am I talking myself into the marci scumread

I gotta work for a bit more so effortpost explaining thoughts later but her associatives with Bingle are kinda worse than I had assumed with review and if I completely disregard the pool spec argument her play fits the same profile I suspect Vander for (constantly scumread/discredit Bingle to disassociate with him, but it's even worse in her case as she didn't actually vote him until Luke goaded her to do so)

[GuiltyLion]

I'm not gonna lie the temptation to yolohammer is real, but I'm definitely gonna wait for Hopkirk to have a chance to see the latest

[GuiltyLion]

yeah 893 is also a great point

UNVOTE:

I'm tired and don't have time to lay out the explanation of things in marci's ISO I didn't like on reread but I can post that tomorrow. Want to get Hopkirk thoughts but I'm starting to feel pretty good about a Marci elim. I changed my own mind with the reasoning I posted earlier today about the number of townies who would have to be wrong at this stage for Vander to be scum

[GuiltyLion]

meh I just went through marci's ISO again and I feel like it's not really fundamentally scummy other than passive play especially with respect to the 3p, and a lack of real engagement with Bingle as a direct result.

Some of that I can possibly imagine being from town since we were talking about eliminating in 6p for a lot of D1, but she doesn't talk to Bingle at all in the main thread until 452/454/459 (very soft/NAI type of engagement), but by then she was already questioning his alignment via her discussion with Luke in both the main thread and the hood.

I don't know what the rules are on directly quoting hood posts that aren't mine (especially since we can all see it other than N_M) but in the hood she argues to Lukewarm that Bingle had him pocketed by WKing him. If she's town, that's pretty insightful analysis prior to any flips when she wouldn't be certain of either Bingle/Lukewarm's alignment. I also don't see any indications of why she was suspecting Bingle in the first place, it couldn't be due to any direct questioning and she hadn't shared any reasons given the point above ^.

By 574 she's disagreeing with / engaging Bingle far more substantially, but this is well after the Bingle/Hopkirk throwdown and it's clear she was already prepared to vote there:

is he the best vote for today? i think i dont mind voting him but if hes scum im unsure who his partner would be.

while still giving herself an out.

I'm having a hard time truly finding this scummy because my attitude towards EOD1 was much the same, which is also kinda why I had her just shelved as a townread. But it's not inherently townie either because whoever is scum with Bingle would want to start disassociating by this point, so I think it's mistake to rule out potential buddy behavior on that front.

I also noticed one question she asked to Bingle in that same post

I’m townreading all of Dunn/Marci/GL/Luke. People are aggressively ignoring how obvscum norwee and hopkirk are.

what reasons do you have for the dunnstral townread?

had already been covered via Vanders' multiple posts about it, it was a pretty specific reason that Vander had given for voting Bingle, so with hindsight/more care paid to this question I find it odd she hadn't looked in Bingle's ISO to see if he had explained it already herself. Or that she hadn't paid attention to Vander calling it out.

So to each of you, do you think Hopkirk and Bingle are TvT?

Do you think someone else would be a better Day 1 elim?

What makes you think they are scummier then hopkirk/Bingle?

If you are wrong, and it is a minelim, do you think it would give us more information then a flip on Hop or Bingle, and if so why?

No, i think its hopkirk town with a possibility of bingle being scum, tho im not 100% sure.

I don't have a better idea, but i don't wanna vote hopkirk so I kept my vote here.. I thought we were meant to be voting inside the 6p group?

Still hesitant to actually vote Bingle, and still trying to shift towards voting elsewhere. She then caves and votes him 3 hours later, again not inherently scum-indicative in and of itself but I can also imagine this as an attempt at distancing given the Bingle elim was likely going through by this point.

[GuiltyLion]

sorry EBWOP - I said "very soft/NAI type of engagement" but NAI was not the right term to use there. What I mean more is not-trying-to-sort, like they're just softball remarks back and forth to each other that I can easily imagine being casual scum-scum chitchat theater.

[GuiltyLion]

anyway, I'm still happy with the marci elim today - I realized that first sentence of my long post just now is also a lil misleading, I mean "not fundamentally scummy" in the sense of "I was hoping to bring an amazing case that would make us all convinced this will 100% end the game but wound up being closer to ehhh yeah I could see her being scum". I'm in no way against hammering her here, mostly just want Hopkirk to have a chance at ISOing and giving his thoughts.

[GuiltyLion]

oh damn I didn't realize it was a marathon weekend! I'll def play in some games tomorrow

[GuiltyLion]

I think marci's pivot from "my elimination will be good for the game" to arguing with me about voting her is survivalist

Hopkirk I'm mostly operating from the perspective of "marci being scum could totally make sense and would explain why scum!Vander/scum!Dunn worlds don't feel right to me". Her D2 play has been really passive instead of solvey and her associatives with Bingle are entirely in the range of S-S. Also, I'm kinda going by consensus reads of the town as I know N_M and at least 2 of Dunn/Luke/Vander

must

be townies genuinely scumreading marci, if scum engineered a marci miselimination I'm not seeing where

[GuiltyLion]

man Hopkirk wasn't kidding when he said scum is gonna suffer huh

I'm down to hammer I'll set a self-imposed limit on it for 24h from now, may be earlier if Hopkirk ever gives those thoughts he wants to give or gives the green light

[GuiltyLion]

I've skimmed along and going to read up and reply in detail in a min, but just wanna give my first thought - Lukewarm, it would be terrible play to eliminate Hopkirk today. I really don't buy that Bingle "didn't want the push to go through", it was

very

close, Hopkirk was closest of anyone getting eliminated D1 and it's really only due to N_M, nEE, and Vanders that he wasn't.

It's fair to be paranoid and consider all possibilities, but the odds of Hopkirk being scum are much lower than almost anyone else in the 6p. You reconsider his slot if you get down to F3 and he's still alive for some reason. You don't do it right after the main person pushing him flipped scum.

[GuiltyLion]

i think dunnstrals more likely to be town than not. yeah hes inactive, but nothing hes done is really eyebrow raising. so i wouldn't really look at him.

marci, Dunn is pushing to eliminate you today and has been low engagement/content compared to most other slots in the game. I'm having a hard time understanding why town in your shoes would think he's not worth looking at?

[GuiltyLion]

931 does feel pretty town overall though, I think

VOTE: Dunnstral

[GuiltyLion]

Or was it because Bingle made the "I will hammer Vanders if we speed elim hopkirk tomorrow" post?

No, it was because of those three players voting Bingle.

You're kinda going off the deep end here man. You think Bingle's plan was to push Hopkirk really hard, then gamble that he could make an open-wolfy enough post to draw all the votes to himself instead, even though many of the players were suggesting never to eliminate in 3p on D1? Really?

Stop inventing narratives for why something is possible and just stick to what's likely. Bingle-Hopkirk is S-S in far far FAR fewer universes than ones where almost anyone else in the 6p field is scum.

[GuiltyLion]

I'm fine with this, I think marci's last few effort posts were more likely town and Dunn was always going to be a POE elimination and overall decent odds of scum here

I'm not extremely confident but I haven't been able to feel all that confident scumreading anyone left this game, other than when I was pretty sure it was Vanders

[GuiltyLion]

And you are the one who convinced me of that

Like if Dunn is scum, you have to believe he didn't try to gain any towncred from scumreading/distancing/pushing Bingle, nor did he try especially hard to protect him, and you have to believe he's happy to give flippant low-effort posts in thread even when most players are casting suspicion his way. It's possible but it just doesn't feel like The One True Answer to me.

2) scum!Dunn avoided the GL/Vander TvT entirely and opted to push a marci miselimination without any real support yet from other townies

Yah, I mean I have still have those doubts too, there are good reasons to think Dunn isn't scum but there are good reasons to think everybody isn't scum.

Lukewarm what were your thoughts on marci's last few posts? I felt they were town

[GuiltyLion]

is jumping from popular bandwagon to popular bandwagon something intentional..?

what is the point of this question?

I pushed Vanderscamp for most of the day and no one joined me on that other than YOU. Now I'm tired of this day dragging on, and I just want a flip. I've joined along with townreads (NM/Hopkirk) and clearly been in the process of trying to reassess and land on the best flip for today, taking everyone else's opinions into account, constantly.

This is a pretty bad post especially if Dunn flips town, I'm tempted to lock-scum you for it. Absolutely no point to this except to shade me and try to set up to scumread me.

[GuiltyLion]

like honestly if you're town marci posting that kind of crap serves no purpose other than to make me mad when I've put in far more effort than you or pretty much anyone else other than Lukewarm today

[GuiltyLion]

especially when I literally could have just E-1'd you earlier and let N_M hammer. If you're town, it is literally by my grace that you weren't eliminated today, and your first instinct is to accuse me of jumping onto bandwagons? Get out of here with that garbage

[GuiltyLion]

Marci, if you had to decide the vote today, who would you eliminate?

[GuiltyLion]

Marci, if you had to decide the vote today, who would you eliminate?

imma be honest with u chief,
vanderscamp/u is it imo..

so i would prob do vanderscamp today and then u tmmrw if hes not it.. because u make me confused so save u for later.
but also... theres a doubt in the back of my mind about my bestie lukewarm still, but like we'll see i think.

No worries, this is a fair response / what I'd expect from you as either alignment tbh. I still sorta think you're town but also find you confusing (especially when I put the pool spec back into the mix, I just don't see Bingle throwing a newbie partner in 6p the more I weigh that), but if Vanders flipped town it'd prob be a 1v1 between us cause I agree on Luke/Hop town.

[GuiltyLion]

maaaan I haaaate this gamestate

all three of {marci, vanders, GL} are gonna say/have said to elim the other two and it's really hard for me to tell whether marci/vanders are being disingenuous here because it's exactly what they likely would be saying as either alignment, and I'm struggling to figure out a way to solve in the two because it's a solo scum remaining and neither is notably poor as scum from what I can tell.

I do think Vanders' associatives with Bingle's are better than marci's, the main reason I was locked on him D2 is because I think his were almost

too

good and therefore more likely to be manufactured. But at the same time I can't help but feel marci was certainly more reluctant to vote Bingle, and Bingle also seemed more willing to vote Vanders than marci.

it gives me this uneasy feeling that something is terribly wrong with this game

[GuiltyLion]

the towniest post in isolation from marci is probably 931 because it reads a lot more "last will" rather than "don't kill me", but at the same time I could see a competent scum writing that post, and it does feel like it

could

be set up to chain multiple miseliminations, the main problem is I can see town in her spot reasoning the exact same way

Dunn wanted marci so I do feel some responsibility to honor that as well

[GuiltyLion]

i think dunnstrals more likely to be town than not. yeah hes inactive, but nothing hes done is really eyebrow raising. so i wouldn't really look at him.

this still remains a really weird read

[GuiltyLion]

I think that one of us absolutely needs to go. Me and you both making it to Elo sounds like a nightmare for town tbh.

i think u rlly need to like... do sumn else for a bit and come back with a fresher pair of eyes.
if ur both town this will lead to failure probs.

This is also kinda weird, I don't see how Lukewarm-Hopkirk both being town leads to failure at this juncture

like the failure state for town!marci has to be that she gets eliminated and the wrong one in Vanders/GL gets eliminated, right? I don't think either scum!GL or scum!Vanders have put themselves in a position to capitalize on Lukewarm-Hop TvT

[GuiltyLion]

It's just pretty annoying for me that I'm out of my scum range but no one else here actually knows that and somehow everyone is happy including me in their two kills.

Sorry if this feels like I'm beating a dead horse, but what would you say is outside of your scum range this game?

[GuiltyLion]

yall shouldve voted me > dunnstral yesterday i cause too much confusion

if we had voted you > Dunn, assuming you are town, that would still put us in F3. How would that be better than eliminating you today?

[GuiltyLion]

you haven't exactly been a model of certainty yourself

im so confused on whos scum tbh! r u sure ur not it bestie?

so i would prob do vanderscamp today and then u tmmrw if hes not it.. because u make me confused so save u for later.
but also... theres a doubt in the back of my mind about my bestie lukewarm still, but like we'll see i think.

i keep second guessing my assessments.. should i not be? im so unsure if im right about everything i think

im sorry i dont have good reads this game

[GuiltyLion]

I understood it as a way to scare us off of voting her because no one seems to have a great idea of who is scum were she to flip town, but maybe I misinterpreted

[GuiltyLion]

re: 1059, I don't think that's particularly town indicative. It's not overtly scummy, sure, but I don't see what scum!marci could realistically do differently in that position. The path to her win that was set in motion given our collective townreads on yourself/Hopkirk would be to get Dunn/Vander/GL eliminations, it's not hard to imagine scum!marci not willing to risk exposing herself by awkwardly attempting to develop a new scumread and join the fray in a TvT, especially given she's already positioned herself with a Hop townread. If anything, she's thrown a bit more dirt on you at times, see that part of 1030 I've quoted.

[GuiltyLion]

I also find Vanders' attitude towards me today to be more townie - admitting that he can see reasons to townread me doesn't really serve him any benefit as scum when he would know he needs to lim me after marci, I think it's more likely to be a genuine belief of his.

[GuiltyLion]

I also agree with the entirety of Hopkirk's 1082, I think I'm convinced marci is the best elimination today and most likely scum. I won't do it right away but I don't intend to drag this day like we did last day phase, I'll hammer either late Friday or early Saturday PST assuming no massive developments, so everybody get your last words in

[GuiltyLion]

I never said that I would have expected scum Marci to go along with my Hopkirk push. I said that she was the most vocal about me tunneling being bad.

You can say, "I don't think it is hopkirk" without outright trying to tell me to not tunnel multiple times because you think that could lose us the game at elo.

Sure, but as I pointed out that doesn't even make sense from a town!marci.

If the F3 is marci, Luke, Hopkirk, then clearly your push on Hopkirk is either scum-motivated or correct from town!marci POV.

If the F3 is one of Vanders/GL, Luke, Hopkirk, when both Vanders/GL have already said they don't find it likely Hop is scum, how does scum in Vanders/GL win from there? Is Marci pushing either of us especially hard and demanding we be eliminated instead? Are you so reckless that you'd throw your vote down without even considering that one of the more suspected slots this game was scum?

If F3 doesn't include one of you or Hopkirk, then it's a non-issue.

So it feels to me like a fake concern.

And also, frankly, you

should

keep the conversation about Hopkirk open if he makes it to F3 because if you are in a F3 situation then something has gone horribly wrong with the game and it's usually likely that your reads are off if scum chose not to kill you. Anyone not open-minded to considering both possibilities in final 3 is playing anti-town.

[GuiltyLion]

the biggest reason is that i would've tried a bit more to change my play from last game

are you saying you played similar to your last scum game then? why would you do that as town?

[GuiltyLion]

alright well everyone has given words since I gave intent and I still believe this is right

VOTE: marcistar

fingers crosseddd

[GuiltyLion]

welp

that's not good

[GuiltyLion]

are you sure you're not scum marci? I really don't know who it is if it's not you

[GuiltyLion]

I wish I was scum frankly lol this would be a great performance if I was, as opposed to the terrible towngame this is turning into

the saving grace would be if my pet Vander scumread was right all along I guess but I'm not even confident in it anymore?

vander can you just kill me if you're scum

[GuiltyLion]

lol Luke if you get killed the F3 is gonna be a nightmare, please don't put that on us

[GuiltyLion]

it's all of our fault, including scums

[GuiltyLion]

I kinda think marci is scum and just trolling us

[GuiltyLion]

I know this is self-meta WIFOM but I don't twilight post as scum, especially the way I did D1 and D2

[GuiltyLion]

Welp it's officially time to tryhard

Hopkirk - in twilight you suggested that you thought I was the most likely scum remaining if not marci. This is a difference from most of D2/D3 where you either mentioned being open to the idea of Vander being scum, or literally voting him (967, 985, 1031).

What in my twilight posts changed your mind so significantly, or what in Vander's D3 play changed your mind?

I will freely admit that I've been scared of being eliminated in F3 today, and I could see how that would reflect in 'positioning' in my posting, but that's because I'm town and me being eliminated today would be a loss for myself and my team. I have also constantly been worried about being a game losing mis-elimination, reflected even in my post 119 between D2 and D3 in the hood. Quoted for context:

I'm still confident we win if marci/vanders are the other two elims (I still think it's stupid that Vanderscamp claims he doesn't need to read here and that excuses him from offering any content over the night phase or participating in this subset of dialogue with the rest of us), but idk if y'all can trust me enough and frankly I am having a real hard time feeling good about a definitive call either way with those two.

I'm not seeing what made you suddenly think I was more likely scum than Vanders, and I'm worried that may have been an agenda post more than a genuine thought process on your end.

[GuiltyLion]

Wrt to Vanders, I wish I had something to start conversation with you today, but I'm not sure I do yet. In a vacuum I think I'm still leaning towards you being scum over Hopkirk, but I intend to do a lot of evaluating and playing today I'm not gonna rush to put a vote down. I think the biggest things I have to weigh on your alignment don't really have to do with your posts or thought processes specifically and are more gamestate related (does Bingle make an empty threat to hammer you, or does Bingle push a scum buddy Hopkirk all the way up to almost being eliminated)

[GuiltyLion]

finally, if either of y'all have anything that it would help you to ask me about to better understand my thought process or see that I'm town, I'm obviously happy to discuss anything I've posted or said. And if you're scum and think you have a better chance of winning by pocketing me and pushing the other, please absolutely do that as it will at least make my life easier in solely having to choose between you two instead of having to both do that and negotiate away from eliminating me at the same time

[GuiltyLion]

associatives with Bingle are worse than Vanders/Luke + wasn't pushing/voting Bingle and sounded like he could go along with him

on this, I don't know if this is a convincing argument but I want to say that I absolutely

was

considering going along with Bingle, I thought he was most likely scum in the 3p but I didn't have any strong scumtells on him specifically, and I thought eliminating in the 6p was better than eliminating in the 3p for all the reasons we had discussed. I also didn't trust what Lukewarm was doing trying to force the issue instead of being open to eliminations elsewhere, which made me feel that a Bingle elim was scum-serving in some way.

If I were scum with Bingle, I would have tried harder to disassociate our slots. Like I've said throughout this game, I think this set-up incentivizes the 6p scum bussing/distancing from the 3p scum as much as possible, because it's almost an inevitability that the 3p scum gets flipped. Instead, what you saw from me was tentative and uncertain play that could really have been scum with anyone in the 3p, because I am town and not aligned with anybody and trying to parse the noise to get information rather than playing with an agenda to make myself look good on a scumflip.

[GuiltyLion]

Currently GuiltyLion, Marci, and Hopkirk are all off of the Hopkirk and the Bingle wagons.

So to each of you, do you think Hopkirk and Bingle are TvT?

Do you think someone else would be a better Day 1 elim?

What makes you think they are scummier then hopkirk/Bingle?

If you are wrong, and it is a minelim, do you think it would give us more information then a flip on Hop or Bingle, and if so why?

This feels like a weird post - I just stated in my last post that I'm not really feeling TvT from Hopkirk/Bingle, but I haven't yet had time to feel comfortable throwing a vote down especially since there's been so much action between the two of them. It's also odd to me that you're asking Hopkirk these questions??

I explained what's weird about it, you're assuming I'm "not on board" when I had already suggested I *would* be on board. And it makes no sense to ask Hopkirk why he thinks another scumread "is scummier than Hopkirk/Bingle" or whether his own flip would be informative. Just feels like thoughtless busywork questioning all around, especially since you claim to TR marcistar and myself as well

I wanted him to state for the thread why he was not voting for Bingle, because that is for us to analyze once Bingle flips.

Like this in general is pretty manipulative framing, there are reasons to not vote someone if you don't want the day to end or want to see where other players are thinking their vote might go. How am I to look at this and see it as anything but an attempt to further poison Hopkirk's standing on a town!Bingle flip?

especially since in the hood you gave pretty good reasons as to why you didn't personally think Bingle was likely to be scum, but then here you're championing eliminating him ASAP by telling everyone to vote between the two of them?? Do you see how that raises yellow flags for me?

bruh I've played mafia for 5+ years you don't need to say things like "Picking at peoples motivations is a key way to get a feel for whether or not their actions and motivations line up or if you think their actions are genuine.". My point is that your questions specifically were generic and bad and demonstrated no attempt to infer my thinking from what I had literally just posted.

and if Bingle/Hop is in fact TvT then all of your posts and actions are setting us straight on a path to two straight miseliminations. If you really thought Bingle was town you should not have been goading marcistar/Bingle to eliminate there today

yeah I def think Luke is town on a scum!Bingle (or a scum!Hopkirk) flip, I'm just worried about the TvT world in which case all of these posts are awful

p-edit: Bingle how can you not see what Lukewarm is doing here as bad. I really hate the overconfidence in D1 scumreads as if you're wrong on Hopkirk you've made life so easy for scum

These posts should make it clear that I was skeptical of Luke at the time and was uncertain about voting Bingle as a result. I'd also point out that these were made in rapid fire succession in a back and forth with Luke, which is hard for me to fake convincingly as scum as I tend to be way more paranoid/careful about throwing out hot takes or posts when my thought process is crafted and fake.

[GuiltyLion]

Thinking a bit more right now, I do think I have mostly good reasons to vote Vanders and not as good reasons to vote Hopkirk. I still think Bingle's play with Hopkirk is really unlikely to be theater and props to both of them if it was. I still think a lot of the small bits and pings in Vander's ISO that I've called out or focused on throughout the game together hint at a scum mindset. And I do think it's likely that Bingle's threats to hammer Vander and then self-vote instead were actions to protect Vander as they ensured that he wasn't eliminated on D1.

I don't have a lot of especially great reasons to townread Vander other than he vaguely sounds pretty town when he's playing (outside of the aforementioned pings/yellow flags), and that he did vote and get Bingle eliminated on D1. For most of D2 and D3 I also felt that his repeated claims that his bussing/voting Bingle should be town-clearing were more likely genuine than not. However, these reasons don't feel quite as strong to me when I weigh them against the fact that Vanders is clearly a very experienced mafia player (as I pointed out earlier he's claimed to play over 500+ games of mafia!) - which means none of these town tells are outside the range of a capable scum player who went into this game with a plan to distance from/bus their buddy, in a setup that incentivizes it, and milk as much towncred as possible from doing so.

It's also just hard for me to walk away from pride/vanity that I've had this read since D1 and haven't gotten to see Vanders flipped, frankly

The main reason I want to think/talk things through and get a sense of both of your mindsets right now is out of respect to Lukewarm's Hopkirk read and out of general care for F3 and needing to be open to re-evaluating. But gun to my head I vote Vanders here, so maybe Vanders if you're town we start with why Bingle/Hopkirk is S-S theater and not scum pushing town.

[GuiltyLion]

I can also relitigate a lot of my D2 case against Vanders, I think it holds up especially with Dunn/Marci confirmed town now. To restate the main points:

- Mid D1, Vanders voted Marci for being 'awkward', then spent most of his next few posts giving reasons to scumread/suspect Bingle. I thought the reasoning for his Marci vote was a lot weaker than the reasoning he had to scumread Bingle, so the fact that he was voting Marci and not Bingle stood out as odd. Especially since he also claimed a strong TR on Norway at the same time, which would make Bingle/N_M a 50/50 proposition at that point. And he cannot explain this with a defense of 'better to eliminate in 6p rather than 3p' because he specifically said he would rather vote his strongest read than vote based on the pool. I think a lot of the D2 discussion focussed too much on this last point rather than the fact that his Marci vote was not justified to the degree that his Bingle read was, in part because Vanders steered the discussion more on the pool argument instead of acknowledging that the Marci vote had weaker reasons than his Bingle read (without vote)

- Vanders at one point claimed to forget that Luke/Marci were both in the 6p. I think that's more likely to be scum pretending to have a thought process rather than a real one - no one else in this game ever 'forgot' who was in which pool.

- Vanders claimed that he didn't read the neighborhood chat when I pointed out he didn't respond to me in there. He then shifted the discussion to "there's no value to posting in there", which again steered the conversation away from the

actual

point which is that even if you don't believe in

posting

in the hood as town, you should still be

reading

it. I call this out in more detail in 749.

- Vanders vote and push back on me throughout D2 seemed more focussed on discrediting my perspective and the argument rather than genuinely thinking I was scum. He gave no reasons for why I was scum outside of ones centered around me not 'believing' my case because my case was bad - but someone as experienced as Vanders should know that townies genuinely push faulty tunnels all the time.

[GuiltyLion]

now that I've posted all that, cue the nerves about a hypothetical scum!Hopkirk entering thread and turbovoting me and making me look like a complete idiot as I have to reckon with being wrong about Vander and immediately backtracking everything I posted lol

[GuiltyLion]

Votecount 1.5

Lukewarm (3) - Hopkirk, GuiltyLion, NorwegianboyEE
Bingle (2) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp
Hopkirk (2) - Bingle, Dunnstral

Not voting (2) - marcistar, Lukewarm

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

VOTE: Vanderscamp

VOTE: Vanderscamp

VOTE: vanderscamp

I'll hammer Scamp if he hits E-1 on the premise we turbolim Hop then Norwee after.

VOTE: Bingle

Votecount 1.6

Bingle (3) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp, NorwegianboyEE
Hopkirk (2) - Bingle, Dunnstral
Vanderscamp (2) - GuiltyLion, marcistar
NorwegianboyEE (1) - Lukewarm
Lukewarm (1) - Hopkirk

Not voting (0)

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

VOTE: Hopkirk

Votecount 1.7

Bingle (3) - Not_Mafia, Vanderscamp, NorwegianboyEE
Hopkirk (3) - Bingle, Dunnstral, Lukewarm
Vanderscamp (2) - GuiltyLion, marcistar
Lukewarm (1) - Hopkirk

Not voting (0)

(expired on 2021-05-24 08:40:00) remain until day end

With 9 players alive, it takes 5 to reach a majority.

okay VOTE: bingle

UNVOTE: Bingle

VOTE: Bingle.

... actually you know I'm starting to come around to Bingle/Hopkirk potentially being S-S given how quickly Bingle decided to self vote as soon as he got to E-1. In my mind, Hopkirk was in serious danger as I hadn't indicated whether I'd vote Hopkirk/Bingle, but marci had already said she was townreading Hopkirk so really the only thing that would have swung to Hopkirk was my vote and Bingle made sure I didn't have time to make it if that's the direction I would have gone

[GuiltyLion]

I'm going to reread on Friday/Saturday at some point

I hate that you didn't even acknowledge anything I've posted today, it shouldn't take you more than 10 min to at least skim what I had posted and give some sort of indication of what you were thinking even as an immediate gut take

[GuiltyLion]

also looking back Hopkirk could have always voted Bingle if the situation got more dicey, I haven't really considered the fact that his vote was elsewhere either

[GuiltyLion]

If either of you think it's going to be helpful, I'll respond to this stuff.

actually I'm glad you didn't lol

would it be helpful for you for me to towncase myself in any way? I think I can make a fairly decent one given the level of effort I've put into this game as well as some of the posts I've made. Do you have reasons to think I'm scum that aren't the fact that I've been calling for your head for days?

I recognize that my interactions with Bingle aren't wholly clearing for my slot, but again I'd point to the fact that my play is quite disorganized and could have realistically been scum with NM or nEE had they been scum, and that if I were scum in the 6p I would have tried a lot harder to actually look good on Bingle going down. It's not like me putzing around late D1 served either of us, and if I'm to assume that you're town I think Bingle clearly tried a lot harder to make Hopkirk look not aligned than he did me. Though I'd also go back to how he was asking me about my townslip to contrive a whole fake process to try to sort me, I think if he was scum with me he would be more likely to just ride with nEE "GL is town" instead of acting skeptical.

Also, I haven't brought this up yet this game, but nEE and I have played several games together, as both town and as both scum. Now that this is a critical situation where me getting eliminated would lose the game, I would like to point to him as someone who has seen my scum game and my town game and didn't have any doubts that I am town here.

[GuiltyLion]

I didn't get the progression of

- Vanders is your top scumread for a while followed by doubt for a while that's accompanied with 'but maybe it is just Vanders'
and
- Hopkirk is least likely scum
into 'I really don't know who it is if it isn't you' in 1120.

All of this is consistent with me not being sure about my Vanders read. Explicitly both you and Lukewarm pushed back constantly against my Vanders read throughout D2 and D3, and then Vanders himself has moments where he does feel town. If I were sure about Vanders, I would have said that. I'm not, so I don't know who it is.

combined with a few other posts you made saying things like
- rethink hop if final 3
- the final 3 would be a nightmare
etc
the subtle shade you're throwing at me there rubs me the wrong way and feels like you're preparing more for a final 3 than Vanders (Luke remaining a townread i didn't intend to rethink)

What subtle shade? Do you disagree that town should consider all options in F3? And do you disagree that this is currently a nightmare?

2- the other part is that these end of day posts felt a little performative/over the top- going out of your way to say several times that you'd have no idea the next day, asking to be killed when the kill is always going to be me or Luke, the stuff about you having had a terrible towngame etc, all felt kind of weird and this links to the other thoughts in 1/3 where it feels like you're complaining a bit too much about how hard the final 3 will be for you

Yes, I am complaining a lot, because this sucks. I'm not sure how to respond to accusations of being 'performative', I'm literally just vomiting my thoughts into thread. If I'm scum there's no need to post any of this, at all, what scum agenda is any of this serving? Trying to "look town"? Why is it that instead of me just

being

town?

3-
1120- you have no idea
1124- 'Vanders if you're scum can you kill me' seems to be you saying Vanders scum is a lot more likely
1126- you have no idea again

this specifically is a really weird progression to have. it feels like you're overstating the confusion since you also seem to have a clear most likely scum at this stage and it gave me kind of an impression you were laying out for the endgame with those posts

This is a misrepresentation. 1124 in no way says "Vanders scum is a lot more likely", you're literally making that up. It's me just trying to be funny and ask to be killed because I did not want to be in this position, and scum!Vanders would be the only one who would ever even think about killing me there.

[GuiltyLion]

i unvoted vanders yesterday because i couldn't get over the concerns that his Bingle vote didn't make sense from scum!Vanders.

did you not have those concerns earlier when you decided to vote him? Why did those concerns arise again between vote and unvote?

[GuiltyLion]

another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

you can't imagine why I'd be worried about you being scum and making me look bad by suggesting I'm scum immediately after I just cased and suggested that the other townie in F3 (in this scenario) was scum?

[GuiltyLion]

btw since everyone else is doing self meta i'm 100% clear because i hate playing scum so much that every scum pm i get makes me reconsider whether i want to stay on the site

i don't enjoy playing as scum and any every minute of playing as scum feels like a pointless unenjoyable waste of time outside of rare cases like team mafia where i had to actually put effort in to avoid disappointing Hectic and Flopz. this is fairly common knowledge. there's 0 chance i'd ever agree to a strategy that involved me being put in the position of having to carry the game to endgame as scum since i'd care a lot more about not causing myself the irritation of having to play a scumgame for multiple weeks than i would about winning a no stakes game. see the concurrent game where i was scum (vanders was town) and i did as little as possible until endgame (where i think the mental anguish and why i'd never willingly put myself in that situation comes through pretty nicely). in the scenario where Bingle/Hop were scum going for a toxic 1scumv1scum then i'd never have agreed to be the one who had to stay in the game for a month afterwards.

lol I do 100% agree with you on this - will respond to everything in more detail after I work for a bit

disagree that LYLOs are fun as town though, I feel complete responsibility for winning/losing and usually by this point if I'm included then either I'm a target to be eliminated or my reads are not good

[GuiltyLion]

3- The scum agenda for trying to look town is that town do look town, so scum want to look town. Saying it feels too overstated (and mostly, weird in light of your read on me there) is the bit that feels like it can easily come from scum. The benefit of trying to keep all options available in lylo doesn't need explaining.

4- Appealing to one person as scum gives the impression you think they're more likely scum. Remember this point isn't isolated, it's directly linked to the rest of what i was concerned about where it felt like your read on me was going artificially down at that point to prep an endgame/it didn't feel like your confusion made sense in context of your prior reads.

alright so in response to this, my read on you is/was going down because clearly the game has been going astray and I can't help myself from becoming more paranoid as we continued to be wrong on the Dunn/marci elims. what I didn't grok is why it came across to you as artificial, frankly as scum I think I would try harder to stick to one narrative like "it must be Vanders" and just push that and aim to win a 1v1. I find it's much harder to genuinely fake town uncertainty than it is to fake conviction. I hate being wrong as town and that makes me indecisive and prone to waffle, whereas people tend to scumread those behaviors and I usually try to avoid them more as scum.

even literally just today I'm struggling, when I read and think about whoever's posted most recently I flip flop back to thinking it must be the other one

[GuiltyLion]

another worry that didn't feel like a genuine worry because it doesn't make sense why you'd be concerned about this? if anything, town!GL should presumably feel better if this happens because going from notsure-> oh confirmed this one is great if you are legitimately confused. why would scum!hop ever immediately vote you when you're strongly leaning towards voting the other person?

you can't imagine why I'd be worried about you being scum and making me look bad by suggesting I'm scum immediately after I just cased and suggested that the other townie in F3 (in this scenario) was scum?

i don't understand no, can you explain why scum!hop would ever do?

I dunno, if you're scum here and I've been pushing and casing a town!Vanders all game, it seems like it'd be easy for you to come in and say you're leaning on it being me for whatever reasons you come up with, and Vanders would be more likely to side with you since I was already pushing him. The bit about voting me instantly was not something I would seriously expect you to do, I felt anxious being first to F3 and first to put thoughts down and wanted to lighten the mood or something, idk

But being voted in general here is not at all what I'd want, I hate being suspected and I hate feeling like I've blown this somehow by making myself a game winning elim for scum. You're right maybe it'd at least resolve having to choose correctly between you two, but I don't think I necessarily have bulletproof anti-associatives or things I can point to to outright win a 1v1 against either of you here and I'm not really thinking that's the best path towards winning this game, at least not currently. rest assured I will give it my best shot if I do get voted though

if you're town, I can empathize/understand with picking up a vibe that I'm maybe overdoing it on trying to convey myself town, but I'm really just doing that while being town, it's not something I'm more likely to do as scum. It's fine if you don't see it as town-indicative and I can imagine maybe it came across as manipulative but I don't know what else to do to try to increase my odds of winning by making myself harder to eliminate today, especially because I don't know which of you is scum and both of you have better associative reasons for not being Bingle's buddy than I do. The only thing I can offer is that I've been involved and trying to sort throughout to a degree that's really fuckin hard for me to fake as scum, and hope that my thought processes indicate genuine reasoning

[GuiltyLion]

I think bingle threatening to hammer me should be pretty clearing for me though.
Obviously in a world where I'm scum with bingle, his threat to hammer me is not actually a real one because if he does so he loses instantly.
But even if the threat isn't real, the risk is still real, since if anyone votes me at that point, it's an instant loss since bingle is essentially outing me as his scum partner by refusing to hammer me.
I actually did consider the idea that bingle was planning on not hammering me at that point if I did get another vote, with the intention of trying to make me an autolynch at the cost of his own life (which almost definitely would have worked), but I think this is ultimately pretty unlikely since I don't think he was obviously getting killed at that point in the day and that trade would not have been worth it.

btw since everyone else is doing self meta i'm 100% clear because i hate playing scum so much that every scum pm i get makes me reconsider whether i want to stay on the site

i don't enjoy playing as scum and any every minute of playing as scum feels like a pointless unenjoyable waste of time outside of rare cases like team mafia where i had to actually put effort in to avoid disappointing Hectic and Flopz. this is fairly common knowledge. there's 0 chance i'd ever agree to a strategy that involved me being put in the position of having to carry the game to endgame as scum since i'd care a lot more about not causing myself the irritation of having to play a scumgame for multiple weeks than i would about winning a no stakes game. see the concurrent game where i was scum (vanders was town) and i did as little as possible until endgame (where i think the mental anguish and why i'd never willingly put myself in that situation comes through pretty nicely). in the scenario where Bingle/Hop were scum going for a toxic 1scumv1scum then i'd never have agreed to be the one who had to stay in the game for a month afterwards.

(the exception is short form games and in real life games, in both of which scum is actually fun to play. mafiascum specifically with long deadlines and replace out culture makes it horrible)

like from where I'm sitting, one of these two analyses is a complete fabricated lie, but I genuinely feel both are fairly strong and neither stands out to me as obvious bullshit. I can think of reasons to suspect either of these explanations, but end of the day one of them is 100% true, too.

and so when I put myself into the shoes of whichever of either of you is town, and think about the fact that I have to convince that person why one of these arguments is bull, it feels scary and difficult to me because I can't even convince myself yet which one is bull. the best argument I probably have for myself currently is that scum played this game well and set themselves up to look good for exactly this situation, and that my associative play with Bingle was a lot sloppier and

not

premeditated or agenda-driven, but it'd be much simpler for me if I didn't have to

prove

that and could just look at each of you trying to help me sort out these self-town arguments

does that make sense?

[GuiltyLion]

I guess one other point I can try to make in my favor is the amount of meta work I've done at times this game. I never got around to really doing a deep dive on marci, and that was a mistake, but I don't think I would ever have made posts like 847 or 848 as scum, it'd require me to dig through past scum games of someone

who I know is town

in hopes of finding some posts I could twist to use against them to push them in this game. Especially given that I didn't wind up pushing what I found in 848 that hard afterwards, for me to be scum it would mean I literally dug through Vanders scum-ISO in another game to try to find a post that looks similar to one here, then mention it and decide not to push Vanders and sheep along with Dunn/marci for two straight days after doing that.

And the 500-600 games comment I found came from a town ISO, so that shows I was reading all his games to try to get a better sense of his meta, not just his scum ones to push a premeditated fake scumread.

[GuiltyLion]

I dunno what's useful to do yet right now, given that both of you are suspecting me to some degree and I'm not sure which of you I'm convinced on. I think I'm talking myself back into Vanders again. Another point I'm thinking about is how he suddenly switched to townreading me on D2 when I was starting to get cold feet on him and when Hop had asked me about fake townslips.

Hop, can you try to engage with my case on Vanders again? Is there anything there that you especially don't agree with? I don't know if it will help anyone to continue hashing out the same points over and over again, but those are really my best points I have against him. I truly can't explain the Bingle hammer comment in a satisfying way, assuming they're scum together it would have had to have just been a great bluff. and it's a big part of why I'm trying to be open-minded and consider whether I've been snowed by the long con Bingle-Hop SvS because it's really the best point in favor of Vanders town and if they are the scum pair I'm just not sure what the escape plan would have been for Bingle if Vanders picked up another vote.

[GuiltyLion]

I'll be rereading later today and seeing if I have more to add, but am likely around for quick real time posting if anyone wants real time dialogue, I just don't have new coherent thoughts to bring to the table yet

[GuiltyLion]

Vanderscamp's ISO doesn't lend itself well to being allied with N_M imo. Ping me if you disagree.

Actually, could you explain this?

I don't see anything at all that makes Scamp and N_M unaligned, and iirc you scumread scamp for focusing on mech stuff last game when he's done basically the same thing here.

I don’t think Vander makes this comment if N_M is his partner as he would already know this probably.

Hm.

In general, it means "This post is something I find noteworthy in a way I'm not entirely sure I want to share yet but would like other people to pay attention to." but thinking about this further I don't actually see a drawback to bringing this up.

Your argument for N_M not being partnered with Scamp applies equally well to yourself, but you phrased it in a way to avoid that entirely which leaves me inclined to think you might yourself be aligned with scamp and looking to passively clear him.

If you're town I don't have to worry about whether he's your partner.

If you're scum you almost certainly knew what you were doing there.

My point is entirely that if you are scum, Vanderscum equity rises dramatically because of that post.

One thing we haven't talked about much is this series of posts/argument from Bingle. It kinda reminds me of how I have tried to associate my teammates with townies in the past as scum.

Bingle isn't talking about Vander's play at all here, nor is he really giving a definitive read on Vander. What he's attempting is to paint a picture of scum!Norway aligned with scum!Vander. This would be a convenient move for a Bingle/Vanders team - if Norway flips town first, it can make Vanders

feel

townier to the thread because "well, that reason we had for suspecting Vander/nEE team turned out to be wrong".

Whereas if we eliminated Vander before Bingle, now he's set himself up with a reason to push nEE afterwards on the basis of being scum with Vander.

It strikes me as agenda driven play, the goal here was to associate Norway and Vanders and I think that's more likely to be scum creating misleading associatives between a buddy and a townie rather than something scum!Bingle makes up about two townies. Because if they were both town, then as soon as one flips town it doesn't give him a reason to push the other one. And again, it's notably awkward that all this is done without really talking to Vander, or about Vander directly.

[GuiltyLion]

Sorry, I should be more here in 10 hours or so

[GuiltyLion]

this inactivity does not bode well

I'm still thinking it's like 70% Vander 30% Hopkirk but I'd really love to talk with both of you today and also have opportunity to satisfyingly town case myself if there are hangups on my alignment that I can try to explain or talk about

[GuiltyLion]

Hopkirk you gave this self-meta point about how you hate playing scum and playing it feels like a waste of time and then you don't do anything from Wednesday onward, I'm not gonna lie that's making me a little worried

[GuiltyLion]

although I will grant that you haven't really been around on site since then much so I can buy that this is busy, but before I throw a vote down it would help tremendously to see more town efforting from you in this game Day if possible

[GuiltyLion]

I'm very busy at the moment
I'm struggling to see your progression on Vanders as town from skimming. For example you say earlier you are never voting Marci/hop then voted Marci and are 30% on me over Vanders. I felt the switch away because other people are TRing Vanders was awkward.

So first things you first, you need to understand that I try to play in a way that's building consensus with my townreads, because I think generally the average sum of town's reads is going to be better than just my own. Especially when it's a situation with just a solo scum remaining as there's no room for a team to be manipulating the thread vibe.

D2 I had both you and Lukewarm as town, and you

both

disagreed with my scumread on Vanders:

Overall, I like a lot of your reasoning about Vanderscamp, but this one really give me pause.

I also think Bingle's openwolf 477 may have been meant to scare us away from a Vander wagon.

Because, like when he made 477, You+Marci were alraedy voting for Vanderscamp, and I was so obviously trapped in his pocket, he should have know there was a chance I would follow his lead there. That puts Vanders at e-2, which is often equivalent to e-1 in a game with Not_Mafia. So, if I had followed through with his suggestion, the he would have immediately been put into the position of needing in to ante up or back out of his "I will vote Vanderscamp if we then vote Hopkirk"

For 477 to save Vanderscamp, Bingle would have had to assume I was going to climb out of his pocket at that moment. But from the nice and cozy comfort of his pocket, I saw it was "extreme confidence in his scum read" instead of "openwolfing." So 477 came awfully close to either getting Vanders voted out (GL, Marci, Me, Bingle, Not_Mafia is an Elimination) or essentially a scum partner claim by forcing Bingle to backtrack 477 the moment I follow him and vote Vanders.

IT'S RIGHT THERE IN HIS ISO HOW DO YOU NOT SEE IT

It just seems like you are making a big deal over him have a vote on marci for less then 12 hours.

When he voted Marci, I think that there were valid reasons in the thread to scum read her at that time, and I probably would have agreed with them had I not just witnessed her scum game.

So if he is starting with a SR on Marci, and still trying to sort Bingle, he voted Marci. Then over the course of 12 hours, his SR on Bingle formed, and he moved his vote.

I am not saying that his transition from a Marci -> Bingle vote is a reason to TR him, but it feels like all of your reasonings (not just this one, and not just on Vanders) come from a place of hunting for a reason to make a scum case on someone, rather then looking at someone and actively trying to sort them.

scum!vanders' yesterday would essentially have been planning to either a.) bus, or b.) vote me when another town voted me (Bingle/Lukewarm/Dunn/Vanders/X) wagon. there's not really a credible enough push from vanders onto any other slot yesterday (Marci being too TR to push through), and Bingle's only serious push being me. given vanders pushed back on lukewarm when there were 3 votes on me i'm not sure i buy b, and based on meta i'm not sure i buy a.

stuff from other games on bussing
-https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p12738362 (bringing it up as a defence to self/saying does it infrequently)
-https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p12649297 (anti-bussing coming up in scumchat when partner asks how they feel about bussing)

There's also a lot more to this post ^ that I didn't quote, I didn't want to make this post a bigger wall than it already will be.

So when two of my top townreads are saying they don't buy scum!Vander, especially since at

most

one of you could be scum (and in that world, Vanders was town anyways), it made me re-evaluate. I also convinced myself that I was likely to be wrong using this reasoning:

Well... we really split the vote on this one

2 for Vanders, 2 for Dunn, 2 for Marci

So luckily, we all appear to be on the same page here

FMPOV it's pretty likely (almost ~100% minus probability of scum!Luke) that one of these wagons is on scum, and scum is sitting on one of the other two. I suspect if that's the case that scum won't want to switch their vote here as it would very likely look bad jumping from one miselimination to another, especially if/when both town wagonees are flipped before F3. So we probably need some direction from Hopkirk to resolve the deadlock right now.

Given that N_M is town, it could mean:
1) marci is scum and two townies have correctly solved today
2) scum!Dunn avoided the GL/Vander TvT entirely and opted to push a marci miselimination without any real support yet from other townies
3) I'm right about Vander and

all of

Lukewarm/N_M/Dunn are wrong as town

all this assuming a town!Luke

Could be some fuel for thought about which of these scenarios is more or less likely. Putting it this way makes me feel further uncertain about Vander because I currently know at least

three

townies would have to be wrong for me to be right, whereas worlds where marci or Dunn are scum mean only one or two townies besides me

has

to be wrong.

I also explained a similar thought process here:

- I have not wanted to admit it but I am wavering a bit in my confidence of the scumread of Vanders, I'm not sure if that's more due to waiting it out and just getting cold feet or due to both Lukewarm and Hopkirk pouring some water on the flames of that read. I still think he's best bet for scum by POE and my general philosophy of how scum is likely to play, as well as me still being stuck on the awkward "I remembered Marci/Luke can't be S-S" phrasing, but I'm like maybe 50% sure instead of 70-80%. I'm also a bit flummoxed that my response to Hopkirk about townslips was the thing that apparently changed his mind on me, but I can honestly see that coming from either alignment so I couldn't draw any AI conclusions from it, though I do think it's odd for his read to swing so drastically off of just that.

and another thing in my mind was that Vanders had recently pivoted to townreading me as well, which is something I wasn't sure that scum!Vanders was likely to do given that I had been pushing him really hard for most of the day and I didn't think he would anticipate that switching to townreading me was likely to make me back off.

--- reply to more of your post in a sec, just breaking this up here ---

[GuiltyLion]

D1 I'm also having issues with you not having problems with what Bingle said about me and looking like you could agree with it/might have been planning to vote me

I did have problems with what Bingle said:

yeah I'm not vibing with a Lukewarm scumread, nor the marci scumreads, if whoever's town in Hopkirk/Vanderscamp/Dunnstral could town it up a little bit that'd be great

I read through Bingle's push on Hopkirk but I'm going to reread it now with close attention and think about how much I agree with it

the crux of it seems to be that Hopkirk said Norway has an established reputation as being low WIM as scum and cited players that he thought had expressed that sentiment, Bingle doesn't think those players would have said that and asked Hopkirk about a specific one (FL), Hopkirk gave a jokey response instead of clarifying where he saw/heard FL talking about it.

I generally feel like "Norway has low WIM as scum" is likely to be something Hopkirk felt is true regardless of his alignment in this game (or nEE's for that matter), like I don't think he's going to just make up a complete lie about another player's scum meta, especially when naming specific players as references

. however I do not see why he deflected a question about it instead of just saying where he might have seen FL comment on it, so I can sympathize with Bingle's suspicion there.

If this is a premeditated push from scum!Bingle I think it would be hard for him to continue pushing it if Hopkirk had brought receipts, but at the same time I could envision scum pouncing on a townie's careless remarks about meta, so I don't know if it's strictly a town-indicative push especially since odds are not in Bingle's favor.

I do think this rules out a S-S relation and has decent odds of T-S in some direction given the difference in pools

I have some other thoughts that I typed up and deleted cause they amounted to further wishy-washiness than even the above. I'm a bit rusty at this game and feelin like I can't quite make reads yet with the confidence I used to have in my prime

The problem is I'm a tentative sap who was afraid to make Bold Moves in the early game, so while I felt Bingle came off slightly scummier in the interaction I didn't have him as lock-scum at this point and was also about to get altogether distracted by Vanders.

I'd also like to point out that these posts came roughly 40 minutes apart, about the time it took for me to reread the Bingle+Hop posts together in ISO and reflect on them. If you think I'm scum and that I was completely faking my thoughts in 322, it would mean I posted 321 then sat around waiting for 40 minutes before writing my next Grande Fake Thoughts Poste. I don't tend to do that as scum, I'd be more likely to just post 322 because my process would be to read up on the thread, maybe see if scum!Bingle has an idea on how I should play around his fight with you, and then just go ahead with the narrative.

Later on, when the Hop-Bingle Throwdown continued to escalate, I came to play late on a Sunday night in my timezone. Here's what I posted:

I have read up but it is late and I'm tired and I need to sleep on things before really diving back into this game, I'll be around tomorrow

my current laying in bed hot takes:

- Lukewarm posted a great point in our hood about how scum!Bingle would have hard defended both marcistar and Lukewarm slots away from potential elimination today and to what gain? If it's something like a Bingle-Dunn or Bingle-Vanderscamp team, that's playing fairly awkwardly as it's strictly increasing chance of autoloss. I was kinda waiting to see if Lukewarm would raise the same points in the thread, but he hasn't?

- Overall I do find Bingle scummiest in the 3p hood in a vacuum but I'm struggling to see winning partner candidates due to the above ^. This is one of the matters I intend to sleep on. If you're in this game and scumreading Bingle but townreading Lukewarm/marcistar I need help seeing why Bingle is playing the way he's playing - who is his partner and how do they win after we eliminate a town!Hopkirk?

- Vander's reply to me is alright, I guess. I feel a bit more town vibes from him now that he's actually playing, I still disagree with a few of points, should probably cede a few others

- I thiiiiink I agree Bingle/Hopkirk really doesn't feel TvT, eliminating either way there is likely a good call for D1. I do intend to sleep on this and look at all the Bingle/Hopkirk posts in closer detail so no flashwagons tonight plz

This is pretty clear and self-evident - but to reiterate what I basically say in the post, Lukewarm made a case in our neighborhood that Bingle had hard-defended both his slot and marcistar slots, and it wasn't clear what the scum benefit to that would be when eliminating his partner in the remaining 4 would be auto loss. It seemed to be strictly increasing the odds of a D1 loss, that is why I had a hard time pulling the trigger on a Bingle scumread, even though I did find him scummy.

I also even said this to you at the time:

@GL- why do you see reasons that Bingle wouldn't be aligned with Dunn

It's not that I don't see specific reasons he could be with Dunn, I agree that's a viable pairing, it's more that I don't see why he'd stick his neck out so early/decisively on behalf of marcistar/Lukewarm if those were two viable miseliminations today, narrowing the 6p to 4p with his partner in the group of 4.

Finally, I've said this before today, and I think this is maybe something that's generally wise to take with skepticism as it may be just self-meta WIFOM, but my belief is that good scum play would be manipulating Bingle's upcoming flip to make myself look as un-aligned as possible. It's part of why I've been pushing on Vanders all game, because I could easily see his early scumread+votepark as a planned bus to give him towncred to ride to endgame. My interactions with Bingle weren't Decidedly Clearing, but that's because I made no attempt to try to make myself look good on his flip, because I'm town and don't have any partners or agenda. It would have been great for me (as either alignment) to have correctly solved Bingle early and pushed him and ensured his flip so I could take all that sweet towncred for myself, but alas I did not and could not do that because I genuinely didn't know whether he was town or scum and was late to the game in figuring it out.

I also will highlight a couple interactions with him in my next post that I think should look

less

partner-y, though I recognize these aren't clearing.

[GuiltyLion]

Bingle has been very active outside of this thread but not said hi here yet.

Hi.

Norwee's theory is functionally the summation of my ISO from last game.

Weird that scum would open the thread early, tbh.

Early townread on Dunn, early scumpings from GL.

So first, note that in Bingle's very first reads that he gives, he shades me. You could write that off as planned distancing, but what if I had flailed about and other townies started scumreading me and I picked up a serious wagon? He'd be in a position where he'd have to reverse course on me or vote me, it's dangerous to start himself off on that trajectory at this point.

Next, there's his whole progression on my townslip. (Also, don't forget in general that I town slipped I have not tried to push myself as town on that basis cause I think that's a little self-indulgent, but uh, worth remembering that I didn't realize scum had a NK).

oh lmao you're right, I read that the setup was Mountainous and assumed that meant no NKs for some reason

fully disregard that point then

@N_M do you think this is a staged towntell or genuine?

I think I would like the answer to this question from you and bingle as well.

Full NAI.

I think mountainous->night less is a term replacement equally likely to be misread as town and scum.

His initial take is that he doesn't want to give me any towncred for it. Do you think scum is likely to do that about their buddy? I could imagine maybe you could believe he would think it would look better on him if I were to later flip scum, but I'd wager that the vast majority of scum players on this site would just let their scum buddy be townread instead of trying to take a stance against it. And if he really wanted to position himself to dis-associate us, he could have pushed it harder as fake. Instead, because I'm town, he's walking an awkward middle line here, where he wants to leave room to vote me if it's convenient for him and keep me in the lim-pool, but doesn't want to go too hard down a road of scumreading me when it frankly wouldn't make a lot of sense.

He gets called out on it being kinda dumb that he thought my comment was NAI:

Do you think the same when considering that scum would get a lot of time beforehand to think about the setup and how they are to plan out the neighborhoods/the game?

Fair point. I hadn't considered the intersection of planning NK's and neighborhoods in the context of that post.

I was avoiding bringing it up to see how he reacted to mild questioning, but yeah.

Then is clearly like, "whoops, shit, guess I should do what I would have done as town here and maybe press GL on this to 'sort' him":

GL, when you thought the game was nightless what did you think about game balance?

Why did you sign up for this game specifically?

Also note this - he doesn't initiate with this questioning, he only brings it forward when prompted. If we were scum together, the plan we would have had here would have been:
a) For me to fake a townslip
b) For him to not read anything into it either way
c)

Then

, after his first few posts and 30 minutes and pressure from nEE, decide to give me an opportunity to explain myself.

I think if we were buddies, there would have been more of a plan here. I would have suggested that he interact with my fake townslip in some way, with some purpose in mind, whether to stir up more distance between our slots or to make me look good. Instead, like I said he took an awkward middle road first.

I reply:

GL, when you thought the game was nightless what did you think about game balance?

Why did you sign up for this game specifically?

I really had not thought about the game balance, I thought it was an interesting concept to have one mafia in two separate pools of players but hadn't thought through how townsided it would be to run this without an NK. I was just looking at the setup page again and I believe I can explain why I thought there wasn't an NK, it was this section -

"Night zero, one Mafia Goon neighborizes two of the Vanilla Townies, and the other Mafia Goon neighborizes the remaining five of them.

The rest of the game

is Mountainous."

[emphasis mine]

In my first read through, I assumed the "rest of the game" phrasing was used in a temporal sense to suggest there were no more night phases the rest of the game, since the sentence immediately preceding was talking about 'night zero'.

Specifically, I just signed up for this because it was the next available game in the Micro queue and I've played with a bunch of players here before.

do you really think I came up with this elaborate reasoning for why I thought the game didn't have night kills? Would I have read the wiki beforehand and planned it? Or was I fortunate enough to think of this explanation referencing this specific sentence from the wiki after I already faked a lack of knowledge about scum's abilities? And why does Bingle suggest it as NAI before he questioned me if the goal was to either distance our slots or make me look good?

[GuiltyLion]

A QUICK TANGENT FROM THE WALL OF GL REPLYING TO HOPKIRK AND TOWN-CASING HIMSELF FOR A QUESTION FOR VANDERS

@Vanders,

On reread, I noticed this interaction which I had completely forgotten about:

Does jingle = bingle?

Does jingle = bingle?

Publicly so. Jingle is for modding and is my main account. I played TM there as an anomaly. Bingle is my game account, so that I can have a dedicated ego search/bookmarks for the games I'm playing in.

i remember seeing you quite a lot then. i assumed you were someone else

If Hopkirk and Bingle are a team, then this would almost have to be completely faked and Hopkirk would be aware of who Jingle was from pregame chat.
Do you think that is a) possible and b) likely? Cause this is the sort of thing that I actually would say is almost completely clearing for Hopkirk, I don't think most scum players are likely to premeditate and fake this kind of interaction.

[GuiltyLion]

Have you done any meta on Vanders?

This makes me sad cause it feels like you haven't been paying close attention to my posts I meta'd Vanders on D2 - I didn't find anything I would say was extremely indicative because he only has one completed scum game IIRC, but I read over that game as well as a few of his town games to try to see if I could pick up on differences in his vibe or his play. Here's where I posted as I was doing that:

I'm skimmin' Vanders' past games and continuing to feel validated in this scumread, his towngames feel more involved and insightful than what he's given us here (and what he's contributed D2 has really only ever been under direct fire from me). He also clearly has extensive mafia history, claiming 500-600 games played, which removes any poolspec concerns about Bingle putting a 'newbie' in 6p.

As long as he gets flipped at some point this game I think we win. Y'all can ignore me and vote myself or Dunn instead today but I don't see myself wanting to vote elsewhere, and I will expect you to atone for bad votes and sheep my read if I'm flipped first. Do not let him live through any F3.

This is by no means a slam-dunk scum tell but I also did notice in his past scumgame, he made a very similar post to one he made in this game:

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p12647731

I'm not getting anything from the flea/mena discussion

Also of importance is that Mena was his scumbuddy here.

What do we see in this game?

I got nothing at all out of the bingle/hopkirk exchange

have not found a similar post in his town ISOs yet, claiming to receive nothing useful out of other players arguing/discussing, but I haven't done a full deep dive.

I'll admit I have not since felt as confident as I did when I originally posted 847 - and I've been slowly talking myself back into that confidence, I think I'm pretty much ready to vote Vanders with a little more discussion today - but I suggest you meta him again and see how you feel his involvement and analysis in his town games compares to his effort here, especially regarding any vote or push outside of his D1 Bingle scumread.

I also again would like to highlight that this is a lot of effort for me to fake as scum. If I were scum, I would

know

that Vanders is town and that meta'ing him would be an exercise in trying to prove something that isn't true. I certainly would not have been able to plan that I would find a post from his scum game that is nearly identical to a post that he gave in this game, that is simply something I could not engineer or expect to use against him without having read his scum game in close detail - which I would have had no reason to do as scum.

I also found that comment about his mafia experience from one of his town games which should serve as proof that I specifically was not only looking at his scum game in order to try to bullshit a fake case against him, but rather reading all his completed games to try to look for patterns or differences in play.

[GuiltyLion]

my biggest issue is that most of what I think you're town for (tone and effort) is stuff that I think is fakeable from a competent scum.

The last thing I want to do is reply to this with a brief summary of my effort in my past few completed scum games to show that it simply does not match the effort I have put into this game, but that will have to wait as my partner is about to get home and I need to take a break from this for now. I'll bring it tomorrow

[GuiltyLion]

between 112-254 do you know what Bingle switched on you based on GL? all i can see is that Norway TR you for reasons then Bingle flipped to TRing you for the rest of the game with no clear indication (i don't remember you asking Bingle about his progression on you, but i'll verify that in the iso i'm about to do of you next)

It was the response to his questioning about my townslip

You haven’t really townhunted in the big pool Bingle.

Do you have any reads yet or what?

Disagree. We've talked about Dunn, I'm waiting for a response from Hopkirk, and

I agree with your logic on GL given his response

. Luke and Scamp both strike me as the kind where their alignment will be more obvious if I let them do their thing and I can afford to be a passive observer on marci at the moment.

Sometimes, it's better to know how to let the thread breathe to get reads.

You should read my post directly above yours where I also walk through this interaction

also, on this:

-The scum GL world is one where GL hangs around waiting to see votes without majorly taking a stance beforehand which i don't really see anything on the d1 voting against this?

again, if I were scum with Bingle I basically took the worst possible course of action for myself, did not bus him strongly to buy myself towncred and distance our slots, nor did I push for a counter wagon to prevent his elimination from going through. I was on the sideline without pushing any kind of agenda at all - that's passive play and something I'd like to think I would have avoided as scum.

I think you make some good points about how scum!Vander switching from Bingle to Hopkirk would look tremendously bad after you flip green and Bingle flips red.

[GuiltyLion]

also by "directly above yours" I really mean "several posts above in the middle of a block of other posts" 1190

[GuiltyLion]

I didn't post in the hood during the final night phase because I thought that might give scum too much info or WIFOM to leverage about who to NK. If I had died I would hope that y'all would read through my ISO again where I pushed against Vanders multiple times and stated a bunch of my points already, I didn't have a lot that I felt was unsaid

[GuiltyLion]

Ignoring the hood from Vanders probably NAI

I also just hate this, I really do, I don't see how anyone can buy that.

I asked Vanders why he wasn't posting in the hood after the first night phase and he said he wasn't even

reading

there.

do you really think it's good town play to just completely ignore a neighborhood? I can kinda understand an argument for not posting in there when you're exclusively posting in the main thread, but not even READING it? That's discarding information that might help you find scum for no gain whatsoever. I think it's more likely that ignoring the hood is just a convenient excuse to avoid being forced to provide more content or engaging with players over night.

[GuiltyLion]

Ignoring the hood from Vanders probably NAI

I also just hate this, I really do, I don't see how anyone can buy that.

I asked Vanders why he wasn't posting in the hood after the first night phase and he said he wasn't even

reading

there.

do you really think it's good town play to just completely ignore a neighborhood? I can kinda understand an argument for not posting in there when you're exclusively posting in the main thread, but not even READING it? That's discarding information that might help you find scum for no gain whatsoever. I think it's more likely that ignoring the hood is just a convenient excuse to avoid being forced to provide more content or engaging with players over night.

i'd agree that not reading it is a questionable decision. when i say it's NAI i'm saying it because this is all he posted in the last game's hood as town
-https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... ct[]=20412

which means it can/has come from town!vanders in the past so NAI

the last game ended after D1 and didn't have a night phase

[GuiltyLion]

am i misunderstanding one of the following two things
-you were arguing that Bingle didn't use the townslip as a reason to TR you?
-bingle TR you then didn't ever reconsider it based on that townslip

yeah, my argument is that if he was going to use the townslip to TR me, why did he not open with that to make it look convincing and natural? I find his whole progression with Norway there to be really awkward knowing now that he's scum - he essentially had to be bullied into townreading me, and there's no guarantee that happens. The alternate town!GL explanation is he wanted to keep me open as a viable scumread until he got pushback on that, then he faked a thought process of sorting me, somewhat begrudgingly.

I'm not sure when you would have expected him to reconsider either, given that I didn't really pick up suspicion D1 after that and he was gunning hard for you most of the time afterwards.

Also, when you get caught up, can you look at my post 1177 about Bingle-Vander associatives

[GuiltyLion]

Like scum!vanders means I need to accept that Vanders is willing to break a non-bussing meta that early, commit to it throughout multiple counterwagons that he could reasonably join, and despite that have so few anti-associatives that he got so little towncred out of it that he was considered as an exile multiple times even the next day.

Only by me? No one else seemed to think of Vanders as a viable buddy or consider exiling him, I pushed him a lot and got no traction on it. Like, the entire reason we defaulted to Dunn/Marci eliminations is because people thought they were more likely partners than he was.

As it is there’s some, but the biggest one is the vanders meta. In terms of interactions (from Bingle’s end) they don’t really have anything that I can point to that makes them look super unaligned and I feel like there should be some of that coming from Bingle if he wanted to play it out as theatre to help Vanders coast to endgame

Oh, you mean something like this?

I'll hammer Scamp if he hits E-1 on the premise we turbolim Hop then Norwee after.

Also, please note that Vanders entire case for him being town is his Bingle vote. Every time I have asked him to say why I should see him as town, this is what he has come back to. He doesn't have any other organic participation with other slots, any other truly active attempts to show town thought processes or game-solving to point to outside of his interactions with Bingle to clear himself.

[GuiltyLion]

like go back and read Town Vanders games again, even specifically that game where you were scum against him, and compare how more involved and directed he has played previously. Luke summed it up well when he said his presence in this game is very forgettable and passive, despite having a normal post count. There's also been multiple stretches of him disappearing and contributing nothing for days

[GuiltyLion]

frankly Hopkirk I'm really disappointed you don't see me as town here in comparison. It's a large part of why I still think you might be scum. It's also bullshit you tried to suggest it could be scummy I didn't post in the hood over the last night phase when Lukewarm didn't either and flipped town

[GuiltyLion]

I wanted this LYLO to be me deciding between you two (probably unreasonable, I know , but it's what would have been my preferred outcome) and instead it feels like I am primarily defending myself against both of your slots whenever either of you pop in, and neither of you are even really trying to pressure the other.

I also just don't get how you progress on me Hopkirk. It's like you think I'm more suspicious because I gave up on Vander and went along with everyone else's desired eliminations, when you were more strongly scumreading him than me on D2/D3. Like it feels like you pivot to scumreading me whenever I try to either get you to see scum!Vander or to see me as clearly town, and I don't really know what would have been better or more productive for me to do here, like you are just motivated to continue to keep scumreading me despite any tactic I try to help you solve correctly - assuming you are town

[GuiltyLion]

I guess if I take a breath for a second and try to be fair, pressuring me is better than whatever Vander is doing today. I just hate being scumread and I hate feeling like all this is just leading up to you voting me anyways when I'm really trying to make the best case for myself and scum!Vander that I can

[GuiltyLion]

@GL - in terms of your self meta
- is there any reason why you do/would effort less as scum?
- do you agree with norway's assessment of your scumgame being weak/obvious/low effort despite him bringing this up against town you recently as a reason to SR you?
- are there any recent games you've got where you've approached this level of effort as town (since you mentioned you hadn't as scum)
- did you say that you wouldn't/don't meta read as scum? is that a thing you've never done, or just a rare thing?

right so I'll use this post as a jumping off point for what I wanted to post yesterday about my past scum games, then address these questions. Also sorry for being a little salty just now, I let emotions get the better of me. I think part of what is frustrating me about this game is that I just don't have a killer scumread, I think it's Vander but he does have a lot of decent reasons to be town, and I don't think I can satisfyingly prove anything either regarding him being scum or myself being town so it feels to me like this desperate uphill battle every time you start suspecting me where I'm not gonna be able to pull out perfect reasons why I shouldn't be voted as much as I really wish I could find those. I know I can be and have been aggressive/manipulative and that I don't have a stellar anti-associative with Bingle to lean on, and I get reactive when it starts to feel like both slots in the game are going to vote me and I'm gonna have to shoulder the burden for being a game-losing elimination in LYLO.

Here's my most recent scum games in reverse chronological order:
Open 791
Newbie 1995
Open 767
Micro 864

first, look at my post counts in each of these, as a rough proxy for effort:
Open 791 - 109 posts
Newbie 1995 - 49 posts
Open 767 - 115 posts
Micro 864 - 28 posts (flaked out and got limmed D1)

I don't like making this argument because it makes every future scum game harder but I have a hard time keeping up as scum. I get too worried about plausible narratives, about carefully vetting my posts to be hard to scumread, and about making bad faith pushes that I don't believe I can plausibly justify. I tend to wind up skating by with as little presence as the thread will let me get away with. I think I'm actually decent at sounding town with my thoughts/posts, but I have yet to really find an effective source of energy to emulate my activity and the amount of thoughts/presence I can generate as town.

Second, look at my play around my partners in the non-Newbie games (it's a lot easier to get away with not bussing in Newbies). In Open 791 I explicitly fought with Ydrasse through a lot of D1/D2 to try to disassociate our slots. In Micro 864 I also tried to distance with S_S. Open 767 is a weird example because I replaced into it and scum team had already set up a situation where they were the only players who could be eliminated that day - so I can't really honestly use it as a great example of how I play around partners/bussing - but you can take a look at how I posted about the Titus/nEE slots to try to maximize distance from both of them once I replaced into that situation.

If I were scum with Bingle, and we specifically put him in the 3p, it's really unlikely that I would have just done nothing to try to distance or push hard for a counter wagon, especially once he was clearly the preferred scumread of both nEE and N_M. It's just really agenda-less play that doesn't benefit me in any way. I can probably dig up quotes from my mafia PTs were I emphasize that my philosophy is that scum buddies should take strong stances on each other, whether that's in TR or SR direction.

So to answer your questions specifically,

- It's mostly that it's hard and less fun. Mafia is largely fun for me when correctly finding town to build trust with, and picking up the ways in which people's arguments betray disingenuous reasoning. I don't really like the lie and survive elements to it, and to me playing scum feels like months+ of stress and dread every time I check the thread to see if people are onto me.

- I don't know if I'd carte blanche agree my scum game is "weak" and "obvious" but I do think it's "low effort" and certainly needs a lot of improvement to meet the standards I try to set for myself as town. And I do think nEE saw me as town early in this game because he's seen enough of my town game now to be able to pick up when I'm genuinely invested and involved versus when I'm faking it.

- I'd say the most recent non-Newbie town game where I felt my effort matched this one was Smuggler's Port. Again, nEE and Hectic both in that game too. Philosopher's may be a good read too, is that where you got the nEE question from?

- My argument was less that "I don't meta as scum". Rather, it should be clear I carefully looked through a lot of Vanders old games and posts, given that I found a specific post that matched a specific post he made in this game, and given that I found a comment about his past mafia history. If you are to believe that I am scum, it means I still dug through all his old ISOs just to try to find fake meta reasons to push a slot I know is town. I think in a vacuum this should be pretty clearly less likely, like, is scum me really gonna be looking through Vanders' town games when I'm not convinced I'll find anything that looks substantially different from his ISO in this game where I would know he is town?

[GuiltyLion]

like it wasn't that you didn't post overnight so much as that you didn't post overnight but did make a reasonably long post (followed by a longer series of posts) within 11 minutes of the nightkill. the questions you asked here are things that could have been asked overnight and especially if you're concerned i'm going to die overnight
+ if you are town then and you don't like being SR then i think it's reasonable to assume town you would have wanted to address me sussing you there more immediately rather than doing it at the start of the next day? Like if you do have an emotional reaction to it then it fells a bit weird you waited a while to push back on it? does my phrasing make sense there?

i also was a little spooked out by the sense of direction i got from your posts immediately at the start of the day which felt like you knew where you were going without thinking it over that much at the start of the day. it always takes me a little while to get into lylo, and there it seemed immediate/no break to reread since i think everything you were writing there felt like it was stuff you were already thinking which i found weird/possibly scum indicative

I see where you're coming from here, this is fair I can understand this thought process

I don't think it would made sense to address you sussing me over night, because at that point either one of us could still be killed. I only thought that if we were both alive it'd be time to address it - frankly I still thought you'd also be the most likely NK over Lukewarm, and that trying to defend myself to you only for you to be killed would also just only serve to make me look bad. prior to thread lock I also thought there was a serious possibility marci was still gonna flip scum as I said, in which case you sussing me wouldn't have mattered

what I'm not following as much is the "sense of direction" bit - I had been thinking about some things over night but I really don't think I felt confident about who I thought was scum or who I'd vote? What direction are you referring to?

That's why I kinda tried to start discussion with both of you, and explicitly said as much with my first few posts. The rereading/thinking started happening simultaneously over the course of all those posts, you can see my 1145 and 1146 happened 40-50 minutes after my first post. I'm a fast typer it doesn't take me long to put up a whole stream of consciousness post as town. I may have been too eager to come to the thread and start posting stuff, maybe that was a mistake here. But I think I'd be less likely to do that as scum, not more, let me see if I can dig up some past F3s as scum to highlight whether I played them differently.

[GuiltyLion]

actually Hop you should also check out City that Never Sleeps, this was another one where I high-efforted as town because Auro could not stop stubbornly scumreading me and I felt it was a serious problem. We got rolled by scum that game but it should be similar to my emotionally invested play as town here

[GuiltyLion]

Here's how I opened F3 as scum in Newbie 1995

Here's how I opened F5 as scum in another Newbie

Here's how I opened F3 as scum in another Newbie

I can't find a lot of great examples, a few times I was scum in F5/F3 and townies opened voting each other right out the game which obviously would make my opening different enough to not be worth referencing. I also haven't made it to F-whatever in most of my recent scum games. But I hope at least these three can start to give you a sense of what scum!GL is more likely to do - open composed, very neutral, non-committal. I think one of the weak links of my scum game is I have a hard time convincingly faking my emotional reactions to things as town, and so I opt to try to just seem a little distant and collected as much as possible, unless I get involved in 1v1s.

[GuiltyLion]

VOTE: Vanderscamp

Hop, I'll be around to play more in a bit later today. I think the main thing I want to pose to you right now is to really ask yourself who has felt like they've been ~ present ~ and involved this entire game trying to figure things out. I haven't been a model of perfect reads or consistency but I have been engaging with everyone, trying to form and express my opinions as I have them, or generate content, and work with people to reach consensus and steer town in useful directions.

Vanders on the other hand has a good looking vote on Bingle to lim him D1 and has coasted on that since. I also think it's fundamentally disingenuous to compare this set up to standard games of mafia where bussing isn't as necessary, as I've said throughout the game I think smart scumplay in this set up would be to use the 3p scumflip to make the 6p scum look as good as possible because the 3p scum flip is almost an inevitability if town doesn't get straight up rolled

[GuiltyLion]

Like, you seem to dislike the fact that I've been paranoid of you at times especially once we got to F3 - but do you really think scum!GL is more likely to introduce that into the mix when I'm aiming to lim Vamders? What did Vander even do today to convince himself it's not you, or to sort you at all? What did he do to sort me?