In post 423, Empire wrote:Alright, fully caught up with the thread! Here's a compilation of all my reads with reasoning. I know this thing's rather long and unwieldy but please take the time to go through all of it. Let me know if you have any questions or if you need me to elaborate on anything. As an aside, a lot of people in this game look really town and it feels really nice but there's a lot of TvT-type arguments going on that need to stop ASAP (looking at you, Kaze / SKrew / Garmr / notscience). It's cluttering the thread with a lot of nonsense at this point and the votes could very well be served elsewhere.
fferyllt:
Consider this read to be very largely meta based -- from what I'm aware of her meta, she hates being scum and tends to be very lurky / image conscious, which is very unlike her play here. She feels comfortable posting, is generally very engaged with the thread, and has bits of cheekiness that I don't expect her to post as scum (ex: the second line of
#66). Another little thing I liked is the way she locked horns with notscience in
#215 by telling him to "give it a rest" -- I think, as scum, she'd be more likely to encourage notscience's "false positives" or at least just altogether refrain from talking about it and let town self destruction happen (which was her approach in Xenologue). Her meta analysis in
#349 and the level of detail she goes into breaking down Kaze's linguistic falls in line with the meta analysis she loves to do as town and I think she's not as inclined to do as scum (in Xenologue, she basically took my word on LLD's meta without doing any visible work of her own). All in all, would be really surprised if she were scum this game.
Kazekirimaru:
Really not understanding why this dude has votes on him. Pretty much all of his posts and the way he's approached arguments with various players have a "I have the higher moral ground"-type tone to them (ex: "you're being stupid" / "you're just wrong") which is far more likely to come from town than scum -- town are far more likely to have a greater attachment to arguments like the one he's having with SKrew because they want to be right / feel vindicated; scum just see these kinds of back and forths as a way to contribute but as nothing more. His progression from
#62 to
#100 based on the reasoning he provides in
#146 is something that makes A LOT of sense from a player with his experience -- a lot of newer town players do tend to take into account interactions with their scumreads in this fashion / consider what other people have to say. His abrasive playstyle is something I consider a towntell as I'd expect him to conform to expected behavior as scum. His reaction to the wagon + his frustration that people are not listening to him in
#337 reads incredibly genuine. The more and more I read this guy's posts, the more depressed I get that he was wagoned to L-2.
notscience:
He's another player who I think has a very abrasive / annoying playstyle and just get this 'ugh' feeling reading through his stuff. That said, his play here fits the skeletal model I have of his townplay (he's another play I'd expect to conform to expectation as scum). He's not afraid of throw down cursory dismissals of suspicion against him (
#124) and his repeatedly calling himself obvtown is something that checks out with his townplay in
Open 527. I think he'd be a lot more self conscious as scum than to fuck around with posts like
#147 /
#149. Overall, the abrasive, rough-around-the-edges attitude he displays here reads strongly town.
Plum:
Need to double check the meta of her (from what I remember she's another player who dislikes being scum) but she's shown strong signs of gamesolving given the level of detail behind her reads and her lines of inquiry. Mostly, though, I really like the indignant attitude undercutting all of her posts and the bits of introspection sprinkled throughout her reactions to others (ex: her reaction to Smudger's 63 in her
#157 -- "This one really stupid thing is keeping me from voting you and I feel so dirty for that"). I also liked her paranoia of SpyreX in
#263 and the way she goes about ruminating over his posts. There's an element of looseness to it that I wouldn't expect from her as scum.
Garmr:
He's another player who feels more invested in the arguments he has against certain players than I'd expect scum with his experience to be. I like the way he stands up to notscience in
#125 and his being indignant over notscience calling himself obvtown when he thinks he hasn't done anything worthy of the title reads as genuine. I liked his reaction to Kaze's vote in
#303 as it almost feels like he's taking the vote against him to heart which is something I see far more from town. The level of detail he provides for his scumreads on notscience and Kaze reads like legitimate / genuine scumhunting.
SKrew:
He's someone that I don't fully trust myself to read for some reason but I do like a lot of what he's posted. His reaction to the whole argument / line of questioning with Kaze reads very town, particularly with his frustration that Kaze is doing "nothing" with his votes in posts like
#207,
#209, and
#220. I also like the way he calls out SpyreX for the shift of read on his slot, I think he'd have just taken that and ran with it as scum rather than probe into turnaround. I like what I see here but will probably do a meta check whenever I get free time just to be sure.
CTD:
Reading him as town mostly because I think he's playing differently than from what I saw of his scum play in
/in-vitational 12. In that game, his votes lacked conviction as he placed them on all of the major wagons of the time with weak / lazy reasoning and he seemed more concerned with following the crowd. The votes he's placed this game have a lot more meat to them and him being shocked early on that people are believing Brian's miller claim wholesale is something I don't really expect from his scum game -- I'd have expected him to drop the issue entirely and move onto something else, not continue to pressure Brian. Need to do a full-on meta check here too, though, as I know he plays a very strong game as scum and I don't remember having read his town games too deeply.
NULL
LolWagons / Smudger:
I had to go over Smudger's ISO a few times to try and get a more firm read and I still feel really conflicted over the slot. I don't like
#114 where he questions how people are forming townreads too early as it doesn't read genuine to me and it just feels like he's trying to discredit those reads at the risk of getting boxed in by them later on down the road. His votes on Aeronaut and Maestro do fit the scum-on-the-wagon / "hey we can make this mislynch happen" role given that there's not a whole lot of meat of them. There are also some places where it feels like he's deflecting certain questions by responding with something to the effect of "other people are doing it too" that just rubs me the wrong way. At the same time, some of the things he says do read genuine to me at a gut level -- for example, I really liked his response to SKrew in
#178 where he basically says "it's my vote and I do what I want with it". And I do remember his playstyle being hard to read, as some others have mentioned. Hopefully, Slaxx's replace-in will help out here.
CDB:
Liked his entry into the game as that seems consistent with what I remember of his early game play as town, but the fade out really worries me as I know he has a tendency to get lurky / inactive as scum. Expecting more content to hopefully make the slot more readable.
SpyreX:
I really disliked his treatment of the miller claim early on in
#88 -- his argument that "he's not throwing it up as a shield" makes no sense given that 1) miller claims are mechanically "shields" as it is basically claiming immunity to cop investigations, and 2) Brian
did
initially treat his claim as a shield by telling people to "look elsewhere". He also claims the miller claim is town and wants to win without having to lynch it but then mentions in
#335 that it will have to die at some point. The two positions seem mutually exclusive to me. It feels like he's keeping his options open to lynch Brian down the road. I also don't like his progression from AeroSK to Kaze either -- it doesn't make sense for him to feel so confident that Aero is scum to the point where he's willing to hammer that lynch without deliberation (and want that slot's blood all over his face) but then move onto Kaze. In that light, the vote on Kaze feels oppportunistic.
Brian:
I don't like the presentation of the miller claim in
#12 with the "look elsewhere" bit on a gut level mostly because it does feel like he's coming into the thread hoping that the ensuing attention on his claim goes away. The main thing that bothers me, though, is that it feels like he's laying the martyr act way to thick -- all throughout his ISO, there's plenty of mentions about how he's ok with being lynched / killed (notable examples include:
#18,
#43, end of
#347). It almost feels like a WIFOMy dare to get him lynched. As far as his scumhunting goes, it's all very surface-level / cursory and I just don't get a sense that he's strongly engaging with the thread.
YYR:
Very weak read here, but I didn't like his cursory mention of the miller claim when he entered the thread in
#57. Aside from that, the attacks he's given on Kaze just feels like he's hitting things that look bad on the surface but not aren't actually scummy. Still waiting on more content from him though.
Vote: SpyreX
