Open 843 - Divide & Conquer - Game Over!

[Prism]

By all means if you actually think I am scum take your time and make the case for it.

[Save The Dragons]

i don't think we would have ever deadlocked i mean unless i was scum and decided not to switch to IV

all three of us voted IV he was definitely designed to be bussed and was unlikely to make it to day 3 again unless i was scum and decided not to switch so one of you bussed him and probably came in with that intention

remind me of blitzing dunnstral when was that

[Save The Dragons]

i can hear the dead thread screaming at me

[Save The Dragons]

i guess it's possible whoever is scum could have switched to esther and would have towards the end but i still don't think we deadlock

[Prism]

I put Dunnstral at E-1, IV had literally just posted 12 minutes before.

Perhaps he did not see it and it's null, but I swapped my vote basically immediately afterwards when Dunnstral gave real content again.

[Save The Dragons]

not sure that's clearing either

[Prism]

The town wouldn't have deadlocked because they

would have gone in 6 by default

. Myself, esther, Dwlee makes 3 votes on IV.

We literally couldn't flip him and he was completely safe, and I specifically called this out.

[Prism]

Spoiler: god fuck this game

Okay I did a bit of skimming over the past few pages - I remember why now I haven't been posting that much in this game. Maybe I'm just too detached from it at this point since I was doing other things on the weekend during that time, but if you actually look at the past few pages as a whole it's just a whole bunch of fucking nothing - arguing over G6 from person X's perspective, or "this person wants to go G3 because Y" - just dumb, super speculative things that you can talk about and fake all day

I could just have zero reading comprehension skills but honestly at this point I'm so done with the "We should go G6" or "We should go G3!" circlejerking that seems to dominate today's discussion - there are so many arguments for each scenario and it's kind of unclear which one's better objectively. I'm back to just wanting to flip whoever the fuck is scummy irregardless of group especially now that it's clear to me that people don't really want to flip esther anymore, and I really think that's the approach we should've taken from the fucking start of D1 and D2 instead of just inviting scum to posture around it forever - maybe I was partly complicit in that discussion with my vote to go G3 but I digress. But my point is partaking in this ridiculous discussion doesn't make you town.

The bottom line is what I see fmpov is scum taking advantage of the fact that I wasn't posting nearly as much as D1 so they felt emboldened to use this for esther to try and spew and pocket people with white noise participation. I'm just reading these posts and a lot of me is just going "what the fuck has esther actually contributed to the gamestate"? Like she's just here sort of loosely in the conversation and giving loose statements here and there totally relaxed. I don't know how you could POSSIBLY be relaxed as town in this case - yes I was the favorite for town going into today and the start of today but even then I was FUCKING NERVOUS about this and ready to go. Esther's demeanor here has NONE of that - it's just her being flat and present because she's already outlasted expectations by getting Todoroki killing early on D1 (which, I know there was a decent amount of discussion around this - NS gets townier as it goes on so I believe it was in scum's best interest to get on this wagon. Could the wagon have been all town? Objectively, like almost no fucking way given how much it benefits scum. Yes fmpov that scum is esther. Yes I was parked on esther during that time - and no I didn't do it because I was trying to chain her elim today, which is a really dumb argument because no scum actually cares about doing that.) so she's literally just freerolling this elim and lucked out that, OH NO, innocentvillager WASN'T HERE for like TWO RL DAYS.

Also the way that esther keeps tiptoeing around/talking to me and asking me questions is really rubbing me off the wrong way - like what is the fucking point? What is she trying to accomplish? To me the explanation is pretty clear - posturing. She's engaging everyone and pretending like this is just some normal day posting as if nothing special's going on, "oh yeah I'm scumhunting here, I'm participating in this discussion, asking everyone questions, etc." She's obviously not trying to discern my alignment so to me she's just going through the motions.

I'll add as an addendum that this 1v1 is fucking with my mind in a weird way, and I think it's not happening to esther because she's scum and/or maybe I'm just a very particular kind of person. I can't remember the last time I've been in this situation as either alignment - specifically, I mean that it's severely coloring my view of the game and how I interpret esther's posts. I'm seeing all the crap in her posting when it's like "oh, it's so fucking obvious she's scum" but in reality/objectively it's probably NAI to maybe slightly scum!indicative at best - even town!indicative stuff at worst. So yes some of this is probably forced/stretchy but that's just the way the fucking cookie crumbles I guess. It's just really tilting to see her be present and keep saying "lmao I'm going to get misflipped/I just get snap voted in melo" when it's very clear she's been continually swaying people to her side just by being present with people at a given time. IT'S FAKE ATE AND SELF DEPRECATION TO SEEM RELAXED GUYS I don't know how else to put this. I don't know why I'm not online with any of you at the same time but I guarantee if I was around with the same presence and times as her it'd be extra easy for me to "be involved" - this is me trying extra hard to try to compensate for that.

But my point about her headspace just being totally wack this game still stands. I'm not sure how many of you have been in an intense 1v1 situation but what esther's doing is NOT it, and I can tell you right now I can't even fathom playing the way she has been - the easy explanation here is that she is scum and in the wrong headspace here.

The other question here I have for people: who is my scumpartner?

It's not Puppies or Faker a) because they are obvtown b) there's no reason I'd be trying this hard here if either of them were scum especially when I HATE being scum. I can point to self meta examples where I just give up at this stage in the game (okay take 2175 Normal as an example) because I think my partner is going to win but wifom etc etc. If in some world you think I'm scum here, I could like maybe see myself going this hard if my partner is actually in danger of getting eliminated.

It's not Dwlee because as I've already mentioned our approach would be way different.

It's not STD because I don't shade him for the Todo hammer like I did. I'd be pretty sussed about hammering in general and doubt I would let STD do that. We'd also try to be way more distanced with each other rather than just me loosely calling him leantown for some dumb reason on D1.

It's not Dunnstral because he's been calling me scum with 0 explanation for the entire game.

I don't see how I'm ever scum with any of these players so if someone would like to posit one of these solves involving me then PLEASE enlighten me.

I wish I had a solve for us but I honestly just don't know. I'm still fairly confident it's in {dwlee, dunnstral, STD} but that's nothing new or surprising. If Prism/Fire aren't the next two nightkills then something really weird is up and I would reconsider them again. I'm GOING TO LOOK more into this on future days I promise but right now my priority is defense against the bullshit that I'm seeing - it's getting late and I'm cutting into my bedtime by the time I'll be done with this post.

Honestly, if there are particular reasons that people do townread esther's posts, can you just quote them my way and I'll explain why scum!esther makes that post? I'm simply not seeing what is towny about her posts

Okay I originally was typing this to respond to random quotes that I saw but now that I've typed all this, this almost feels like somewhat of an afterthought but I think it's going to emphasize my earlier points better.

Although maybe it is not as likely Esther/Dwlee.
Since Esther seems to be really naive about the possibility of bussing here.
Still leaves the option of IV/Dwlee though.

- Norwee

I've mentioned why IV/Dwlee is a bad solve.
But gee, I wonder what scum!esther would do if Dwlee and esther were bussing - she'd totally say that bussing is NAI for them! That totally doesn't defeat the point of it in the first place!

Idk if my sarcasm is getting the point across but what I'm saying is that if they actually were bussing it's very conceivable to me that she would try to push some towncred/antiassociative angle there.

how the fuck does maf!dwlee win if their buddy dies today?

like I'm being nitpicky but this tone is really weird - it's really not that hard to envision a scenario where anyone here endgames.

idk maybe it's just being ignored because, "

why answer questions from maf

", but i'll post it once more

inno, pretending youre town for a sec, when did you start actually believing that the team is me/dunn (as opposed to, merely pushing it for reactions)?

Okay first of all, you literally scumslipped with the bolded - you just called yourself maf. And it's not like you confused it with the other direction because at no point did I ask you a question even remotely like this, so the maf refers to you in your sentence, not me.

Yes ik it's a wording nitpick and last like 3 times I tried to explain to people that these came from scum no one listened to me - maybe fine, because at least one of those times I was wrong. So whatever I won't complain if people don't buy this.

Second see my above argument for why esther's attitude doesn't make sense here.

But I don't know why you think I was ever set on a you/Dunn solve - I might've mentioned it a bit ago on like page 8 but that was largely joking. To put it in context, that was really early in the game when I gave out shotgun reads and had you two in my lowest tiers, and it makes like zero sense to me why you're still bringing that up

Probably by convincing people to go dunn->std

The last few pages have sold me on Esther being town. I will want to meta but the last two pages are very, very sharp if she is scum.

I strongly prefer going in 3.

I know I have things to answer later, will get to them.

Explanation: mc esther scum should probably hammer me there but didn't

I think dunnstral is scum

I'm kind of back and forth on this but reviewing how high esther's wim has been the page 10-15 pages I'm back to thinking this isn't really true. I was kind of gone for a bit/not posting nearly as much on D2 and esther was clearly fighting on D2 - it wasn't at all clear that she was going to get misyeeted at that point in time. Maybe at the start of the day, but not at that point in time. If she's scum with like Dunnstral or STD I think it's really risky for her to hammer you because it could easily just go esther -> Dunnstral/STD for a town win.

I think maybe IV should be flipped

This turnaround is bad because a) completely unexplained b) very convenient timing right when popular opinion was for some magical reason shifting away from esther and onto me. I think dwlee/esther is a real possibility but again I could see the other pairings too atm.

i think iv expected to coast by today lmao

I wouldn't say coast but yeah I wasn't expecting such a big fight from you. Regardless you gave me a challenging 1v1 experience that I'll never forget, so thanks for that at least <3

Brighter can you explain the esther scumread?

Hammering last page isn't guaranteed but is fine play from her point of view depending on partner

I think my previous pages summarizes our scumread of Esther pretty well.
I agree on you that they have levelled up their play considerable in day 2 though. And especially recently.
So i'm not as sold on them being scum anymore, especially since IV has been pretty lacking by comparison.

- Norwee

Again this is kind of a ridiculous attitude to take in terms of reading but I'm not really faulting you in particular for it because I think many people (myself included) have used similar arguments. But it seems like this site is turning into a "whoever's been here more recently gets more townread" meta. Somehow everything that happened before gets like exponentially deweighted and forgotten while the recent posting is the only thing people seem to remember about creating reads. I think it's really easy for mafia to get by - if I were scum here for example I would've been intentionally posting a lot more frequently to remind people that I'm here and contributing shit. So let's stop siding with whoever happens to be "present and posting" in a given moment and actually try to figure who's been scum/town this game

By "clean" play, I mean I do not think esther has been even slightly opportunistic today, and has not been hesitant in hunting in 6, selling her case, and ruling out others (eg. on Dunnstral). Her points have all been natural to me, her realtime interactions too, and the only one I thought was out there was the one about me pushing to go in 6. If she hasn't played with me before she also will not understand my scum POV on strategy.

1048 in particular I want to highlight as a very, very good post. I took a very different angle on the IV post that I will discuss in a second, and it definitely has scum incentive in trying to nudge me along, but is more likely just chewing seriously on the partner question and what motivate IV to give that read.

I saw your tonal point, but I didn't find it persuasive. I talked about it earlier. I do similar as scum, but I copied it after losing to town players repeatedly. They're also very open about the approach, which again might just be the next layer of scumplay, but it is again extremely clean if so.

I think IV's day leans on the scum side, too. I again think the cut-off check-in and how little fight in him he has is indicative, and if I am wrong then okay. I read through the wall, and while it may have been the tilt, I did not find it cohesive or convincing, particularly in points like "Why is esther so calm?" when as scum she has more reason to be nervous and struggle to post, while IV's "calm" has been in the form of lost energy at a time when I expect he would have gone harder. He does not like playing scum and gets very demotivated even if he can put up a good fight when needed, and I think the wall lines up with that. His defense of me today, when I was not on the table but IV was, really suggested to me it was an attempt to win my vote back before it slipped.

She hasn't been outwardly opportunistic, sure, but not all scum play with that "evil opportunistic" mindset. Maybe you do or think that's what good scumplay is, but to me it's clear she's just going through the motions and trying to appear townie - that is a totally plausible scum approach even from an objective standpoint. Her points can be natural because she is just talking about setup spec with everyone else in realtime and that's not too difficult to fake.

I don't know why you think her being more open to hunting in 6 is townie, especially when some people have already made it clear that they think hunting in 6 is better. It's just so much easier to see from my perspective that killing in g3 is better (note that this is now g2 and g5) when I know it's better to just yeet a confirmed scum ASAP, whereas she's more interested in survival and appearing townie/posturing.

I think you like 1048 because it aligns with what you thought was possible I was doing. But why doesn't this come from scum trying to nudge you along as you mentioned (spoiler: it does)?

I thought at that point it was getting increasingly clear that you were emotionally invested in going between us and it seemed like you were really trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. It's maybe not the easiest to describe concretely, but I would be very surprised if you as scum could fake the energy that you have been giving off this day. Also in general I think "opportunistically winning your vote by hard TRing you" randomly is not really a thing scum do, much less me - I don't think it actually does much to pocket the other person because they might just get paranoid.

I don't know why you keep using the word clean - earlier your usage suggests it means non-opportunistic, but to me clean just means consistent. It's not difficult for scum to be consistent, but it is difficult to for scum to be in an appropriate headspace and emotional space at all times - I think scum!esther has the natural white noise participation part down but not the former.

My check-in frequency is a bit reduced lately because of me needed to balance RL better - I even had to go as far as to do a self-imposed ban. I understand that you think my posting timing can be indicative of alignment and I can't fault you for using that - however just keep in mind that there are out of game things influencing that in this instance.

The man literally wrote me the Principia Scumhuntica because scum is actually fucked if they were in the pool of you/Dunn/Dwlee, town gets two guesses.

There is theater and there is making me feel like I am about to put his wife and kids out on the street if I foreclose the house

[Prism]

Maybe now I'll have time to revisit the game from scratch/actually meta, I didn't get much from ISOs so yeet.

Maybe I should have just bluffed and hard scumread someone.

[Prism]

hey fuck nobody vote please

I'm pretty flummoxed that you even think this is possible from me, presumably this is in fact to both of us and not just Dunnstral.

[Dunnstral]

I didn't want to answer with my thoughts during the night.

Basically, I don't think it is Prism at all, could see it being Brighter, but ultimately still leaned towards it being Save the Dragons.

Prism is just too invested and could have played this differently - no reason to push on IV

Save the Dragons voting for InnocentVillager was not a horrible move like it's being made out to be if their plan is to eliminate both myself and Dwlee.

[Dunnstral]

Why does Save The Dragons scumread me?

[Prism]

I don't disagree on the strategic points but I'm a scum specialist and have been wanting a scum flip for years. It's unclear to me why I don't get

invested

as scum, especially if esther nails the team Day 2.

I also have a bad habit of outright abandoning games if I feel the town isn't worth playing against, which is arguably what happened the last night and day.

[Prism]

Tracking back through, you haven't been in any games where I flipped scum. You've definitely seen plenty of town games, but I don't recall you ever having an easy time townreading me.

In Warehouse 13, it was actually pretty difficult for you to get a read on me early, even with a hard-townclaim early with the mechanical gambit. When I forced mastina through, your read on me still seemed to be based on that flip rather than anything about my qualitative play/process.

Where does this conception of my scumgame come from?

[Prism]

Bonus quote from Warehouse-13:

I am a sore fucking loser who cannot stand being wrong

And Spiffeh is way up there as most likely to be outplaying me atm, and I am about to pore over every fucking game this dude has ever played onsite to find out.

Ah, to be young again

[Dunnstral]

I'm not comparing to your scumgames or previous games. I think you are too invested in arguing about things that wouldn't matter to you for you to be scum.

[Prism]

Not completely sold on that but meh. Will revisit.

[Dunnstral]

I don't usually meta unless it's to prove a scumread.

[Prism]

I have a bunch of other questions for both slots but I'd rather just see what Dragons comes up with first.

[Save The Dragons]

Why does Save The Dragons scumread me?

Are you asking me or rhetorically asking prism

[Save The Dragons]

Like I really dont understand why you would post that

[Save The Dragons]

Save the Dragons voting for InnocentVillager was not a horrible move like it's being made out to be if their plan is to eliminate both myself and Dwlee.

How could I possibly have known this would work especially with suspicion on me

Why wouldn't I just keep pushing esther and try to wait out the deadline

[Prism]

...You literally answered a question esther posited earlier suggesting that it was possible I

knew in advance

I would get universally townread for miselimming Todoroki. These aren't exactly the world's most comparable scenarios but bussing=towncred is not the hardest prediction in the world to make.

[Dunnstral]

Why wouldn't I just keep pushing esther and try to wait out the deadline

Because then the next eliminations are IV and then one of Dwlee/You, and you didn't know how that was going to shake out.

It's not much different from our current situation, except that you look better for voting IV.

This is where I disagree with Prism: I don't think Save the Dragon's chances of winning changes that much based on voting out Innocent Villager

[Dunnstral]

Why does Save The Dragons scumread me?

Are you asking me or rhetorically asking prism

I permit you to answer