In post 200, Shadoweh wrote:I know we haven't, that's why I thought it was weird that when Tierce asked, you scrambled to have some kind of read on me. Would it really have killed you to honestly say you don't know? Also, is Vi really that hard to read? (honest question because I don't think it is). Again though, you don't feel like someone who feels like he has 3-6 townie buddies to win the game with. Do you not value hard town reads?
Well,
#32 was supposed to be me saying "I don't really know but if I had a gun to my head right now, I'd say she's probably town". And yes, my experience with Vi-town is that he tends to vary between obvtown (
Micro 59) to largely unreadable (
Castle Zar) so he can be pretty hard to read, though there are some meta markers I've been using (see below). And of course I value hard townreads, I'm like a (diet) version of Regfan where I feel like a better "townhunter" than scumhunter, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still early and I can't exactly make miracles happen. For me to act all confident right now would be completely disingenuous and dumb posturing (and this is coming from me of all people).
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Alright, so while writing this, I realized this thing was going to be way too long so I decided to break it up into two posts -- first one here will contain my (unfortunately few) townreads and the next one will contain some unfinished thoughts on some of the players that have posted thus far. If you guys need clarification or elaboration on anything, let me know.
TOWN (Strongest to Weakest):
Tierce:
I’ll just skip the part where I say that I’m pretty confident in my ability to read Tierce and say that she’s hitting a lot of the markers that I know of her town play (e.g., her activity level, the way she's been thinking about her reads, and her general attitude). Her early attack on Konowa in
#40 for meta related reasons is something I buy from her completely and matches how I know she thinks of reads as town -- I also think Tierce-scum would have coasted on that read rather than attack for it since she has a very low opinion of her scum play and would take all the townreads on her she could get. Her sarcastic response to Benmage in
#44 and her snarky responses in her back-and-forth with CES starting with
#119 matches her town attitude to a T, Tierce-scum doesn’t have the self-confidence to reply to both players that way and would likely have been much more toned down. The questioning/conversation DV starting at
#58 comes off as her genuinely trying to read him, no BS mafia theory or jumping to conclusions about his alignment as is the staple of Tierce-scum cases. All in all, fairly confident she's town here. For more Tierceology, read
this post.
Benmage:
Expanding on what I brought up in
#156 -- reading through his town games reinforces for me the idea that the less intense Benmage appears to be, the more likely he is to be town (
Mini 1394 and
#190 there being a particularly good example of town Benmage putting off reading/getting too involved in the thread for a while even after coming back from being busy) and that's the impression that I get throughout a lot of his early play. In contrast, reading through his play in
Heroes of Comedy, he's a lot more aggressive (like, A LOT more, the difference is really significant), and he seemed to spend most of the time he was alive deliberately antagonizing MoI and not really giving a shit about his motivations but trying to discredit him as much as possible. I'm not getting the feeling he's doing that at all with Llamarble in this game, his questioning seems a lot more geared at trying to gauge his alignment and tonally doesn't come across as super aggressive as it did in his scum game, especially given his frustration in
#194 with Llamarble not being upfront with his reasoning -- haven't read through Winvitational yet since I'm about to be hauled off to a friend's BBQ, but I'm strongly leaning town here based off what I'm seeing.
DV:
Already mentioned this before, but my experience with DV is that he tends to be a lot more image conscious as scum and a lot more concerned with "proper" town play, as town he has no qualms about throwing himself into the limelight to get reactions from people -- in light of that, his explanation for voting CTD in the early game in
#63 +
#64 and I think scum-DV would probably have entered the game by doing something more "typical" (for lack of a better word). Tonally, DV as town is a lot more self deprecating and very wishy washy since he seems to tend to get caught up in the many ways to interpret something and the kind of second guessing he does on Johhog and Llamarble in
#161 +
#204 matches that aspect of his town play to a T. Also, I generally get the sense that he's genuinely finding it hard to get reads this game (
#205) but I guess I could be biased here?
[gap]
Vi:
I've been taking largely a wait-and-see approach with Vi this game given that it seems far more like trolly, unreadable Vi from Castle Zar rather than obvtown Vi from Tierce's Micro. That said, I think the small summary Tierce provided in
#196 is pretty accurate, but to add onto that -- scum-Vi appears to have a different mentality, is more interested in discrediting people and making them look bad (largely by taking quotes out of context -- see:
Black Flag Nightless for a decent example of what I mean) and I don't get that impression this game. Weak read, though.
Tammy:
Another very very weak read, mostly based off her reaction to Konowa in
#98 -- that kind of snarky, passive-aggressive reaction is far more likely to come from Tammy as town. Still waiting for her to come back with some :content: and :effort: so I can be more comfortable with this read but that's where I'm at right now.
