Song Contest U-Pick - GAME OVER

[penguin_alien]

Hey, going to be reading up here for a bit. If there's anything in particular people want me to look at, let me know.

[penguin_alien]

Please don't wait on me. I'm reading the thread back to front, and given some of what Generic said near the end here in terms of claiming, just to be totally clear I'm a VT.

I haven't gotten to whatever claimgate MoS referenced, but I do think his take on the players involved looks odd off the top of my head.

[penguin_alien]

Yeah, I assumed based on the dead list, but I haven't gotten there. Should be done in 12ish hours or so.

[penguin_alien]

Still reading...underestimated my (relatively) high brain power hours yesterday, very sorry.

Leaning Pacschendale and MoS for scum as of right now, town reading notscience and popp. Lovers, hell if I know, although the complexity of a doctor-lover feels out of line with the rest of the flipped set-up. Which I know means almost nothing. Just my impression. morph I'm reserving judgment because I feel like the last few day phases are prime manipulation territory and I want to get to the BP claim.

Mostly a note for myself here.

[penguin_alien]

...and that would be overestimated my hours of coherent thinking. Damn it.

[penguin_alien]

Bear with me for the obvious, but as of Claimgate, I'm 100% on SpyreX being town--zero reason to risk counter-counterclaiming as scum, and the 'I know something you don't know' tone reads really genuine. Somewhere down the line, fferyllt clarifies the BP claim, and that also felt genuine. Like, 'we've had our fun, but town needs accurate info, let's go.' It may also be superficial, but I liked the VCA that morph came up with at various points, and while I'm sure they'd put that kind of work in as either alignment, there was too much raw information there for me to not believe them as town.

The BP claim in general feels odd with two protective roles plus a roleblocker to mess with scum kills. I don't mind the one-shot aspect per se. I don't know; I'll probably just be apprehensive about morph in perpetuity even if fferyllt is taking point.

MoS: I'm conflicted here. 50 was quite convinced they needed to go after Porkens--T-Bone, but one of the disadvantages of reading backwards is not being in the know about the read until I'd passed the post-T-Bone lynch activity. When I finish plowing through all this I want to reread the start of Day Five for how people are approaching things.

...and got off-track. MoS is also going hard after Pasch, and he has been for quite some time IIRC. In a way that's unproductive right after two implosive scum lynches. Going back further, he was hardpushing Porkens before Claimgate. Which is less relevant if massclaim was coming down the chute making the rolecop irrelevant, except bodies are bodies.

...and then there's his recent posts which, while I haven't clicked through the spoilered analyses, but as follows I really agree with his proposed scum team.

notscience: I think he's town. Nothing's making me think scum, and for today that's good enough for me. Every time I read his posts, they feel natural and like he doesn't have an agenda to push. Unless someone wants to try to talk me out of this read, I'm good with it.

popp: I liked him for town in the more recent stuff, but reading earlier game I feel far less strongly about this. The claim lines up to an extent, but I'd consider masons and watcher to be a decent amount of town power for investigative purposes, especially when adding a roleblocker into the mix. Desperado also made a good point somewhere that him claiming one-shot cop as opposed to obfuscating and claiming X-shot is lousy. Also, when he claimed he didn't have a result yet. N3 he gets blocked when there isn't a dead townie to report on, N4 he gets his result. I suppose scum might have prioritized blocking a claimed doctor to try to get kills through and figured they'd let the chips fall where they may on popp's investgation. I also get some odd vibes from his pushes on others, like they're formulaic? I think we overlapped briefly in an open game some time ago, and I want to check that one out when I finish my reading here.

Pasch: Looks really bad in morph's VCA. I get a lot of AtE out of his posts, which generally makes me uncomfortable, and overall I just don't see this turning around to a town read in any circumstance. I also feel like there's an indignation that he's being called out on specific things in his playstyle that sounds like he's annoyed that they're being considered more than he wants to remedy the scum reads on him.

Empking: Fifty pages later and I don't remember anything he's done. I can't decide if his lack of presence is a town lover trying to stave off the likelihood he or his lover get NK'd via a NK on him or scum who doesn't want to do things he'd have to defend to SpyreX in their communication. Since I don't feel like there was a big leap to be useful at a time when he'd figure his days could be numbered as an outed lover (with a very likely town lover) I'm leaning scum.

Reading's going faster now that there are a higher percentage of posts that I know come from scum/town. Unless someone says D1 and D2 have anything super-important, I'll probably skim them pretty quickly. Partway through Day Two, and I should get to the start in just a bit.

Also re: Claimgate, I can see why Porkens might claim a likely-to-be-countered PR if someone was, given his scumminess and that his role would be useless post-mass claim, but T-Bone's claim goes nowhere for me. Even if scum thought they were in multiball for some reason, why reveal the possibility?

[penguin_alien]

Morph remind of something very obvious after PA is caught up.

Still need this reminder?

Not technically caught up, as I'm still reading Days One and Two, but I'm up to speed on the basics of what happened therein from references during Day Three and on.

Finishing up this morning/afternoon since the site so kindly went down last night and switching back to reading in order for D1/2. I go back and forth on popp, but Paschendale just keeps posting like scum. Agent Minnesota doesn't inspire any desire on my part to keep the lovers alive either. (hesitation on Paschendale is that I don't get the sense that anyone's really defending him. Could be scum willing to jettison someone rather than reveal themselves on a mislynch push, not sure)

Prana seems OK, nothing to condemn morph for. notscience is good enough.

MoS looks townier for his early push on Porkens that feels very sincere. Him pushing the Mafia rolecop Day Three when mass claim was in the air might have been a bit questionable as coming from town, but there's zero reason to sacrifice a role cop if at all avoidable on Day One.

At the risk of linking unflipped players, if Paschendale flips scum I'll be quite convinced on popp, given popp's reaction to suspicion on Pasch, namely how he wants to hear the specifics of the cases without giving his own opinion at the same time, like he's afraid to come down on one side or the other before hearing how strong the case against his buddy is.

Basically all of page 11 makes me want to lynch popp irrespective of Paschendale. (went and found previous game with popp, was indeed Masons and Mafia, but as we were both masons and I think I was there for around two game days, during which popp spent a lot of time fighting with Wisdom, his style and tone are completely different and not enough for me to supplement my read really)

notscience...is probably not going to wave a red flag at 50 Shades of Purple as scum. Just a hunch.

If MoS is scum he has me snookered.

morph, how much knowledge/experience did you have with Hiraki at the time of his lynch?

--End Day One--

popp continues to ping with his take on Day One and suggesting going after a lurker despite having information from the previous day's mislynch.

OK, wanted to stay on track here, but Day Two off-topic amusement value > Day One off-topic amusement value. Occasionally horrified at self for laughing and yet. Just saying.

I get the sense that scum came into Day Two seeing town being aimless and having missed their NK and decided to keep their heads down. Unfortunately that characterization fits a lot of the unsorted slots left alive.

MoS, you make a point about DV coming in and having no advocates to help against the scum reads. Who do you see as Paschendale's advocates?

That's me caught up entirely. For whatever it's worth.

[penguin_alien]

Yeah, I can see that. I was hoping you might have some ideas of whether there were specific buddies helping him dodge, but that works too.

Sorry it's taken me so long to catch up with everything. Final bit of thoughts going back to reread the start of Day Five...

Living people's opening posts:

notscience: casual eagerness to lynch more scum. I like it for town.

Paschendale: Also casual, but more resigned than eager to keep up the momentum. His 2915 particularly doesn't read like someone who's trying to keep up the scumlynching pattern.

MoS: comes in with giant wall of :figuring things out: Still reads really genuine to me and like he's trying to capitalize on the momentum.

morph: OK, and sticking to the town read on Garruk, claimed town roleblocker, would be an odd choice to defend as scum.

popp: opens with NK commentary, agrees with MoS, but doesn't vote, even though he specifically agrees with others on Paschendale. He gets there later, but I'm not altogether sold.

SpyreX: on V/LA, but comes back in with a plan of action. Doesn't really hurt or help my town read of him.

Empking: ...there's nothing there. I'm sorry, I want to comment on his approach, but there's basically nothing.

That's all I had planned for catch-up. Obviously I can't speak for Generic, but if there's something in the game you want me to address that I didn't, ask.

[penguin_alien]

I agree with you on Paschendale and Empking. I'd say the Paschendale lynch is too easy, except it's demonstrably not. Through reading all of Paschendale's posts, I just don't get the sense he really scumhunts as a first priority. It's as though he throws out reads in reaction, but he's more concerned with going on the defense. Empking, yeah, his two dozen posts just don't work for me.

Third person, I really do lean popp. Reading page eleven put me over the edge. Morph's one-shot BP claim feels townier. That being said, if we lynch Paschendale and he flips scum, we get more info to sort with.

Short version, yeah, I agree with your reads. Paschendale and see from there. I'd like more responses from the rest of the players, but I don't see myself talked out of read

[penguin_alien]

Still need this reminder?

Nope, its the everyone in seeming agreement on Pasch problem.

So as discussed above, do you think that him not being lynched for days on end is a matter of scum sneakily saving him for an endgame mislynch or him being scum whose teammates have stopped trying to rescue him? Because for me the problem with the latter theory is that Empking can hardly be said to have exerted much influence on the game state, and popp was actually pushing for Paschendale at various points. Which tanks my scum team theory.

[penguin_alien]

P.S. - You're welcome for un-tanking your scum team.

Wherever are my manners? Tank you very much!

Seriously, thinking on this, and I'd like to hear SpyreX's concerns too.

[penguin_alien]

Probably my PoPP read.

PA you've been hedging about us to some extent. What's that about?

I don't think you've done anything particularly scummy, but I don't trust my ability to read either of your heads, and I'm surprised that things in this game went down as they did with you two here. I realize that it's not logical and going all burden of proficiency isn't fair given the pretty experienced player list, but I don't have much first hand knowledge of most of them. Things like the lovers not being sorted sooner, really odd mislynches.

Overall if you're scum you're playing a hell of a game. I don't want to lose this game due to my own paranoia, and I'm hoping that a scum lynch today will make things clearer.

[penguin_alien]

...yeah, and that went oh-so-well. I'm trying not to reach that level of hubris again.

Not to mention that reading along with 1526 made me pretty sure that was an aberration rather than some mad new skill. I was right in 1516 for all the good it did anyone IIRC, but I had some info from the mason QT left by Desperado and mollie to work from. Toss in that I didn't always know who was making which posts here (yes I know you said fferyllt-head has been doing most of the posting, still get confused sometimes) and I'm just not comfortable writing you off as town right now. Doesn't mean I don't want to work with you or anything, just that I have reservations.

Do you think you've played an obvtown game?

[penguin_alien]

heh

I always think that as town I play an obvtown game while at the same time feeling I have no idea how to obvtown in ways that are meaningful to most players. I know that for some types of scumhunting I'm extremely ambiguous, but to the extent I know how to obvtown, I did it in this game.

We replaced into this game shortly after 1516 and I was way too drained to deal with a nacho-level interrogation. If ever I was going to fail one as town, it would have been this game. By day 3 he was appealing to my mollie-read as evidence T-Bone's seer-result was fake.

That was both an endorsement of my ability to read mollie (I haven't been wrong about her at MS so far), and an indication of his opinion of my alignment. He's been wrong about me once (xenologue), and he let me slip by once while being quite suspicious of me (the pinnipedum game). I don't expect to pull off another game like either of those until something quantum happens to my scum game.

Obvious solution is obvious: resurrect Nacho, let him tell us we're both town, profit.

Have you lied about your read on town-mollie as scum in the past?

What do you think went off-kilter in the game as a whole after the Porkens--T-Bone lynches?

Peng your job is to smack me upside the head if ffery starts acting like she did in 1526 and I don't realize it.

I can see popp-scum.

I kinda want empking blood more than anyone else today tbh.

...I'll get right on that, notscience.

The thing about Empking is that if he's scum (and so lynching him doesn't end the game) we lose access to SpyreX as well. As much as having to deal with the linked deaths is annoying, if we can lynch scum elsewhere today it would be nice to have SpyreX's input for follow-up purposes.

[penguin_alien]

Other point in favor of trying to lynch outside the lovers is that Empking flipping scum gives us approximately zero information. If Paschendale (or anyone else) is scum we have an ISO worth reading for info/connections/whatever.

So yeah, notscience, no lynching Empking today, please and thank you.

From what I can tell, I think it mostly comes down to me or Paschendale. No one's seriously scum reading notscience or morph, and we're not lynching SpyreX or Empking. Paschendale's the only one who doesn't like MoS, and popp is better sorted later, especially with the cop claim. And I'm not sure why I'm processing the one-shot cop claim differently from the one-shot BP except that BP frequently shows up as X-shot where cop doesn't.

I can't speak to Generic's thoughts, but we have just under a week for people to grill me as they'd like before deciding on a lynch.

[penguin_alien]

I don't know, as much as I want to vote Pasche right now I prefer empking blood.

Do you disagree with any of the points brought up about this?

SpyreX, anything you wanted me to address before the lynch? I'll be holding off voting until morph-Empking-MoS finish their convo.

[penguin_alien]

Yeah, I was right about you, with Cabd whispering in my ear. Hard to count that as an achievement.

As far as Nati goes:

But quite frankly fuck all you people.

Cabd you can bitch to me on gtalk later, but I think you know where my consternation is coming from here.

Get fucked town.

Anything new on your reads?

On the gamestate?

I think we're fucked.

If generic is scum, give him the win.
MoS or you is the bait tomorrow.

Pasch is scum, as is one of the lovers. I'd guess SpyreX there.

I lost my whole town read on formerfish today and kinda think that he faked the whole roleblock scenario to help get me lynched.

Notscience is not a factor I guess and will fuck up LyLo again.

I'm getting here that Natirasha was town reading you (and presumably thought either formerfish or popp was scum via PoE given the rundown) but thought you still looked iffy enough to be mislynched if town.

Well, ffery is willing to give you a free pass nati, but your 180 is still giving me whiplash. We're only scum if scumreading you, but the second ffery townreads you, you're sure we're both
A- town
and
B- the ones who soaked the N1 kill?

Incorrect. I read ffery not by what she actually says, but through tonality/cadence/whatever you want to call it. And she passed, for now. Moreover, you should have enough experience with me to know I can hold two paradoxical views. For example, my literal next post said I pointed towards you being scum IF Empking is scum and Spyrex town. Yes, I'm going to flip back and forth on this and force scum to NK me.

This whole situation is like, pretty much the same as the Nautillus-Garruk dynamic in ASoIaF, with the insinuating factor being there are no fake guilties here.

And here, if Empking is scum in the lovers, Natirasha says you're potentially scum. So I think it's worth keeping in mind from that perspective. I'm pretty sure he went back and forth in earlier posts, but last thoughts when he didn't give a damn what anyone thought of him, as evidenced by the self-hammer, and he was basically strong leaning town. Push comes to shove, like I was told I either had to dayvig you or make you lynchproof today, I'd probably make you lynchproof. But I'd be happier doing it with another scumflip or two under our belts to get a more complete picture of the gamestate.

In terms of getting the data, some of that will come if we survive and have more scum flips to analyze. That all the recent NKs have been from claimed PRs that were utterly unlynchable or threats also make it harder to tell how scum are seeing the game state.

Although it's interesting that the NK order went AJ, Desperado, formerfish. Obviously scum have a roleblocker as per town claimed results, and I get killing the mason who's less likely to be protected. But why not start with formerfish: block Spyrex, NK formerfish, kill with impunity via blocking SpyreX? Only thing I can think of is if scum was afraid their roleblocker would be blocked by Garruk. Which...Garruk was recently consistently suspicious of Empking. Putting a town PR and a scum PR as lovers, hm. Also the question of why the lovers stay alive in that case, I know, but people didn't really seem to want to pull the trigger there anyways.

Sorry, offtrack. That you're encouraging conversation here is a good sign in my books. Scum planning a mislynch on Paschendale has little motive to keep up the act, scum planning to bus Paschendale has little motive to keep conversation going where someone they're planning to kill gets to go on record some more.

Also, did this happen:

ok. Remind me I have more thoughts about VCA.

[penguin_alien]

PA I already suggested town/scum pr lovers

Was my lead theory for a while there

I see Spyrex's point.

I don't like the pasch wagon, especially the fact that my two strongest townreads aren't on it and it's already at L-1.

I don't like it.

Not one bit.

Sorry, missed that. Who's not on the wagon that makes you uncomfortable?

[penguin_alien]

I'll hammer in eight hours if no one objects.

[penguin_alien]

Actually, I object, come to think of it. I'd like to hear about notscience's misgivings, and I'd also like Cabd's read of me on record. Given that he determined my alignment in Open 541 off one post, having his read of me on record , even if just based off my rambling catch-up posts, would be a useful piece of data for me.

[penguin_alien]

For Paschendale to be town and scum not to have hammered, the team would pretty much have to be MoS, morph, {SpyreX, Empking}

notscience, do you see any way that team makes sense?

[penguin_alien]

Actually, I object, come to think of it. I'd like to hear about notscience's misgivings, and I'd also like Cabd's read of me on record. Given that he determined my alignment in Open 541 off one post, having his read of me on record , even if just based off my rambling catch-up posts, would be a useful piece of data for me.

[penguin_alien]

Paschendale, why do you only have two scum reads?

[penguin_alien]

How does our supposedly bad play impact your opinion of how many scum remain?

[penguin_alien]

Maybe two scum left. Would have to be a heck of a lot of scum power though I'd think.

SpyreX, do you think there's any chance of a MoS-morph-Empking scum team in play? Because I'm inclined to hammer since notscience and popp are absent. I don't see any other lynch happening. Yet as notscience said, scum have to be bussing somewhere if MyLo.

[penguin_alien]

OK then. If this is a mislynch that ends the game, well-played, scum.

VOTE: Paschendale

[penguin_alien]

Crud. Sorry, town.

[penguin_alien]

Thanks for the game, Matias and quadz08!

Nice play, scum team. Really wouldn't have gotten you at all, MoS.

Odd play in places--even after reading the whole game I have no idea why the lovers weren't policy lynched before LyLo. I mean, I get that scum was working to avoid that, but just hard to fathom. But then it's different being in the middle of it, I know.