Hawk
-- His post volume has increased substantially and can no longer be considered a minimalist poster. His initial push of Guille was very good and very pro-town with the excellent "any last words" statement. From that statement he was able to identify 3 posters that had strange reactions to it: Mala, Mollie & Shrimp. He pointed out that Mala was only concerned about the speed of the lynch & Shrimp had earlier town slipped but Mollie had used it as a reason to vote him. I agree with his assessment it also appeared opportunistic to me and not just an isolated case. I like how he simultaneously tunnels players but yet addresses every other player at the same time. People have questioned his motivations and I have agreed with and supported his explanations; Guille hammer statement was a tarp, people need to be voted to get reads on them even without solid logic, hunting <> tunneling, a scum lynch of one of two mutually exclusive suspects will clear the other, etc. I did disagree with his stance on Bork but his calling out of Bork on content was very good nonetheless. Same content thing with Levi, Hawk is protecting the game state. I did note his mistake on Guille's case concerning Mollie where he went ott and said Guille was making a case out of his grooming meta lookup but upon questioning him and reviewing his posts, it is clear that Hawk actually believed what he was saying there. I agree with his vote of Mollie for the opportunistic vote of Levi with the terrible "those of us who are scum" debacle and it lines up with her earlier opportunistic vote of Hawk for the Guille "hammer" post and with her selectively answering Mantis' question and not even mentioning Levi in her response; it is clear she knows that Levi is an easy lynch. His calling out of Mala was very good and again shows that he is protecting the game state and his pursuit of her content post because of broken links is consistent with that. There is no doubt that Hawk is a strong town read.
Levi
-- Levi is obviously a highly inexperienced player. By now so much was made of his initial claiming, scum surely have noticed it and of course it was terribad. I think it is clear that he lacks the sophistication to pull off a scum move like that which indicates that he is pretty much obvtown. However, he seems to drop scum tells like a pigeon drops slimy white stuff which requires discipline and experience to refrain from acting upon; i.e. voting him and pushing a case. I would expect people that have experience to be able to exercise that discipline and hold Mollie as suspect for not doing so especially in light of her question dodge/misdirect of Mantis' question concerning him. Levi is just an example of the usual scummy D1 lynch of a townie and again I would expect experienced players to recognize this. The N0 chatting issue is pretty clearly showing him town again because a player with enough sophistication to make a case out of it would already know there is N0 chat & especially because the Mod posted it on post #3. The Blacksmith issue could be a newb-scum attempt to claim town but upon further thought, I really think its a null tell and could be done regardless of alignment unless there is something that we can point out that shows a specific sign of scummy action. Obviously his "those of us who are scum" thing is just semantics and Mollie of 90+ games experience jumping on that is just bad. Levi shouldn't be the lynch today unless we are entertaining the idea of a policy lynch; we are better off lynching scum.
Mala
-- I don't like Mala's initial case on Hawk and vote for him but I think I can least understand her subsequent explanation that it was basically a meta case which she ultimately understood to be weak, thus retracting her case and vote. Her overreaction to Hawk's Guille hammer statement was bad as it interfered with a push for reads; Hawk points out that her primary concern was with the speed of the wagon which would be a town sentiment which I guess is acceptable especially with her concern over Code not having posted which shows her protecting the game state. After that however, she goes hardcore overboard on defending Guille which I can only explain as a personal affinity beyond the scope of this game. When Mantis votes her for the ott defense of Guille, bad case for Hawk & lack of scum hunting, she responds that she is normally quiet D1 and was reaction testing with her vote on Hawk which was weak; I find that response a little too convenient but based on the reactions of other players regarding her scum hunting abilities & previously cited D1 playstyle, I guess it is genuine. She then pretty much goes VLA. Upon her return she posts a large catchup post but I was unable to analyze it due to bad links; I think we all need to see a fixed version from her. She ultimately ends up voting for Levi for inconsistent reads on herself, early claiming & speaking as if he has his mind made up that she is scum. Based on the current game state I think I will decline to comment on this & just say that I do need to see a fixed catchup post from Mala before the day ends. I will hold Mala as null until I see that post.
Mantis
-- I like Mantis' overall process of examining every player with a genuine desire to scum hunt; she seems to be always re-reading & re-assessing. However she tends to make many general non-conclusive statements and waver back and forth on reads & votes; I think this is more a sign of a town-aligned paranoia, especially with her expressed "gut-feeling" playstyle & lack of objection to such from Mollie who knows her best. I think her not liking Mollie's Levi vote for meta reasons is a very strong point against Mollie for reasons that I have already expressed. I think her approval of the initial Guille wagon is good even with her honest mistake about him missing my pullback of Shrimp. It was not easy to call Shrimp town when she did & I think that shows genuine scum hunting; she believes it to the point of asserting that Mollie is scum for her interactions with Shrimp. Her point about examining Myself vs. Shrimp to see who fed it & who ignored it again shows in depth scum hunting. She backs off Mollie "blindly" with the expressed reason of avoiding tunneling her which again shows excellent pro-town sentiments. Again though, she points out Mollie mudslinging on Levi which I find especially relevant due to subsequent events as I have already mentioned. She again withdraws from Mollie (forcing herself) and she starts examining & questioning every player in the game. She means it when she says "blindly" because she starts examining the entire game with the understanding that Mollie is town and posits many theories of alignments of various players based on this; the most prominent is that Guille is scum because of his case on Mollie which was a real stretch that I think everyone noticed but she again re-reads because "even her read on Mollie isn't certain". Then she has the famous back off of Levi/Guille being a scum team because both players are low posters; at least one player would be active and even posits that they both can be town. She then completes the full-reverse and declares them both town and starts to suspect Mollie again. That's when she queries Mollie on Levi/Guille being both easy lynches and Mollie selectively deflects & misdirects the question. She of course lands correctly on Levi "those of us amongst us who are scum" & even says it twice. Since then she has been away. Mantis is a very solid town read for me.
Mollie
-- Overall Mollie is the strongest scum read for me in this game. The town-like elements of her defense that I have found are few and are literally surrounded with cog-dis & AtE. Upon analyzing her defense in detail, I feel like I am being constantly manipulated and at first it really brought doubt to my mind because of Mollie's skill level. Ultimately, I think she fits the profile of opportunistic & manipulative scum that will use any means possible to survive, including preying on the weak & innocent. She says that her initial Levi suspicion was only a probe and that her interactions with Shrimp resulted in him being newb-town; this was in reference to suspicion from Mantis and I think she can add Shrimp to the list of "easy lynches". Her support of Mala's RVS vote for Levi was good and garnered an early town read from me. Her initial vote of Mantis just seemed out of place and weak for reasons of "not properly querying her" and "jumping to conclusions"; it just sounds kind of arbitrary and compared with Mantis' reasons for initially voting Mollie, its obvious who has the better reasoning here. I think Mollie was genuinely concerned about Mantis and that is the reason for the attack (remember back in RVS she was "Mantis get in here so I can get a read on you!"). I have already mentioned in detail all of her statements about knowing she is going to be lynched and repeatedly stating its good for town so I don't need to mention it here, because there is alot of it. She then switches her vote to Hawk with no explanation. In #247 she posts her last will and testament where she clears Mantis due to meta (invisible to us) & then directs the tracker/watcher & doesn't explain her Hawk vote but posits a Shrimp/Hawk scum team. She took exception to my read on her where if she is scum, she is calm and collected to the point of inserting a secret message into one of the quote posts about it. I will also not mention all of her repeated statements along the lines of "I am town" & "I am not scum" because there are very many of those as well. Again all of the self-meta that she does has been mentioned elsewhere. She seems to overreact to Guille's initial suspicion of her when he first expressed it as "gut" before he posted his case or if it was even certain that he would have a case on her and she calls it bad -- before there even is a case and yet she piles onto his initial argument that my questions were scum loaded. She posits more Shrimp suspicion would be good & Levi is prob scum for playing the newbie card. It is in post #355 that she claims that the "scum perfume" hasn't worn off from her last 3 scum games to explain why she looks scummy. I have explained elsewhere why this is so bad for a player of her experience but if she had simply admitted it as an off-the-cuff comment I might of believed her. But instead she repeatedly defends that statement even by bringing an example from another player who is from another site into it but never once does she say it is a behavior that she can ascribe to herself, in her defenses its always "a" player or players in general or this particular player that has scum perfume but never herself. This shows she really doesn't believe that it is a genuine reason for her scummy behavior and was using it as an excuse, especially in light of the fact that a player of her skill level wouldn't actually have this problem anyway. Then she goes over the top on Levi stating that people not wanting to lynch him are scummy. Her "blending in" argument about Hawk's logic was just bad, trying to use it to make him look bad, while trying to make herself look good. She posits a Hawk/Levi scum team. She went over the top about how I was supposedly treating her as town. She also says that scum fight for survival and tries to pass it off as if she is not trying to survive but her over-defensiveness, opportunistic voting & scummy manipulation show otherwise; this is additional evidence to show that she doesn't believe what she is saying. I understand her logic about suspicious players making it to lylo which is why as town pressuring players that are suspicious and voting them is a pro-town thing to do but I have never seen someone use this argument in their own defence for why they should be lynched; this is so over the top AtE and is a "too scummy to be scum" defense, which I personally detest. At this point she declares her scummy posts as deliberate and +town; I just can't buy that. Posits a bad case about Hawk apologizing, it was pretty clear he was being sarcastic. She votes Guille which is not bad at that time because he was hurting the game state. She asserts that Mantis' town read on herself is the fruit of 50+ games over a 2 year period which is the best evidence she is town; I think she delilberately tried to create this read from her and began manipulating Mantis from her first post in this game. She then says that Hawk's apology was scummy; again this is obviously not true as he clearly was being sarcastic. I didn't agree with her argument that Hawk was trying to line up lynches, it was pretty clear at least to me that he was trying to clear a town player if one (Mollie, Guille) flips scum. Her assertion about Hawks scum theory concerning "blending in" is cog-dis since Hawk suspects her was just bad. She incorrectly states that the RVS case against her is because she "sheeped Mala"; it is actually because she queried Mala, in a sense asking permission, before voting which showed an overly self-conscious mindset however her understanding of the RVS case indicates the understanding she would have if the RVS case is correct. She then votes Levi for "for those of us who are scum" which is pretty much unbelievable for a person of her skill level; I think everyone in the thread (except maybe Mala) saw that. Then Mantis questions her about Levi/Guille being easy lynches and Mollie goes into overdrive first selectively answering the question by not mentioning Levi at all (a true easy lynch) but also not even addressing the point about easy lynches at all which is scummy deflection. Mollie is a solid scum read for me.
Shrimp
-- Well it looks like Shrimp was right that my early case on him was crap and he definitely points that out and even correctly points out that my first summary post was bad for having too many town reads with my PoE scum reads in low-no posters. I disagree with his interference in the Guille push by Hawk but ultimately our reads start to match on Guille once its over anyway. He very accurately points out that Mollie went into over-defensive mode with only one vote on her (actually I believe it was two votes though) which helped me to consider Mollie in a different light. I believe he was also the first one to point out Mantis' error in reading Guille's assessment of my Shrimp case. He accuses me of not being genuine in supporting Mantis in voting for Guille; unfortunately we cannot agree on that as the Guille push was very good. He is incorrect that I voted him for the same reasons he voted Mollie; wagoning is not bad if its properly justified. I ultimately agree with his Guille appraisal of his first major post, I liked it too. I have to disagree on his negative view of Mantis; I think he might be focusing a little too narrowly on only certain aspects of her play vs. the entirety of her play. He is critical of the second Guille wagon which I myself did not participate in but when he said both scum are on that wagon, that sounds ott as I only think he had 3 votes maximum. Ultimately I think he is overreacting on Guille wagon #2 but asking for reads from the wagon is +town. He is correct that Mantis really went over the top in defending Mollie but I don't think he realizes how much she needed to so that she would avoid simply tunneling on her; I think it worked in her favor as she was able to examine each player and generate reads. I think he is correct in questioning Mollie's Levi scum read, especially taking into account everything that has happened in this game. He also notices that even though Mollie accuses me of being scum, she doesn't actually vote me. He also noticed her self-meta. He clearly misunderstood Hawk's intention in clearing a town player re: Guille/Mollie. I can understand his view concerning Bork but I still support my initial vote and push on him. I think Shrimp is really getting ahead of himself with accusing Mantis of being scum. I can't agree on his Levi scum read at all. There are very many things that Shrimp has posted that I disagree with for various reasons but with diligent effort, it is possible to find gems of wisdom in his posts. I still agree with Hawk's town slip for Shrimp and have no problem holding Shrimp as town.
Guille
-- Guille's sample size is quite healthy which is excellent for the game state. I generally agree with what he has done so far, taking into account his limited time and access. Thankfully he seems quite thorough. Yes he was correct that my PoE scum list was flawed along with Levi's. He accurately noticed Mantis' error in evaluating his first post. Of course he was correct that I used the term RVS incorrectly and apparently even had time stamp confusion. He is also correct that even though his first post was light in content, it did contain enough information to at least justify his vote. He very thoroughly analyses my ISO and ultimately unvotes me which I of course am in favor of. He supports Mala's RVS Levi case and I like how he holds Levi to be town and he does make note that Mollie is voting Levi. I also like how he has Shrimp as town. I actually liked his new take on the RVS where he pointed out that Mollie's jump from Levi was too quick to allow pressure to form and she had no follow-up with Shrimp after she switched her vote to him. I don't see how Mollie was trying to make "Blacksmith" relevant and I guess I should of asked Guille to explain this but I think he saw it as a bad case; I didn't get that from her posts. Pointing out that Mollie's vote for Mantis was really flimsy was helpful to me because it got me to think along the lines of her trying to manipulate Mantis deliberately for advantage. He was also the one that showed me the secret text about "calm and collected scum"; I would of missed it if he hadn't of pointed it out. I like his conclusion that Mollie & Mantis are not scum together and I think I am more inclined to believe that than Shrimp's version where they are both scum. He also pointed out that Mollie's read change on Mantis was hidden from view. He also posted how she overreacted with all those "gut" posts to a case that hadn't even been made yet. He points out that Mollie overreacted to Hawk's tarp re: himself and that her vote for Hawk was bad. I especially like his choice to withhold comment on his wagon under pressure; this is the kind of town-aligned thinking that catches scum. At one point Mollie was advocating a policy lynch on Levi and Guille points out that since everyone believes Levi is town it would result in an auto-loss for scum in lylo if he was kept alive. I also especially liked his assertion that Molly saying that I was treating her as town was cog-dis & self-defeating; I didn't see that on my own. He also agrees with me that Hawk seemed to give Bork an undue "town pass" early on. I like his questioning of Mollie and how he asked Mala to meta Mollie; this shows a town-aligned concern over Mollie's alignment. I have to disagree with Guille that we are unable to read scum intent by who they vote or why; that is a major aspect of scum hunting and is the basis for all VCA. He lands correctly on the "those of us who are scum" issue and I like his query of Mala on this; I also noticed she appeared to want to support Mollie on it. Guille is also a solid town read for me.
Bork
-- I like how Bork queried Mollie on her vote for Levi but yet voicing suspicion of me. I disagree with him that the majority of my case on Mollie is personality tells but I think the list I posted lacked requisite explanation and was badly labeled. Then he drops the bomb about being as caught up as he is going to get; I think its anti-town to not want to read the thread. The first thing I want to do as town is read so I can catch up to everyone else; as scum however, I find myself tempted to be lazy since I already know everyone's alignment kind of like it doesn't matter as much. His initial reads post looks like it could of been skimmed and I disagree with him that my Mollie case is based on AtE; the one portion of the case that involves AtE also involves cognitive dissonance which when found in a player's defense can reveal their hidden motivations. Bork actually says that logical inconsistencies are not scum tells which is patently false; of course some logical inconsistencies have no bearing on alignment but when scum motivation can be found, logic-fail is definitely a good indicator of a scum alignment. Then he says the only thing that Mollie has done wrong is her voting (and that won't be relevant until after we get a scum flip)!? Don't like this at all. His vote for Hawk was horribad; for pressuring Guille. He also completely misrepped Hawks voting intentions while switching from Mollie to vote Guille. He then admits he hasn't read the entire thread and therefore won't be offering opinions on the day's events. He then explains about how flips are necessary before he can get maximum benefit from reading all of D1; here is my response to that:
I still don't like his "I don't want to reveal my thought processes" post as an excuse for not commenting on the major events of the day. He starts to look a little better with his reads post #558 and he also backs off his original Hawk case but even though I can understand his view of Mantis at that time, I cannot support his read on Guille. Then he votes for Mantis and I don't like the timing of it or the reasoning; he berates her on multiple fronts with much of his case revolving around her playstyle and her attempt to solidify reads. I also don't like how he attacks Guille at the same time and disagree with his logic there. He agrees with Mala's interference on the Guille push which I have trouble even explaining but at least he points out that Mala doesn't make it clear what alignment Guille appear to her as. I can get behind his Levi town read. Definitely leaning scum here.
Ok I think scum reside here: Mollie, Bork, Mala.
With a Mollie scum flip, I think we will be close to cracking this game.
