Dels, I'm sure you know this, but when I'm looking through your scum game with Amy, you jumped in and defended her, and she did the same for you, exactly like you two did here.

 

@Cobalt pretend you're a wolf for a second. Who would you have shot n1?

 

I don't think Gemma explained her townread on me much. I think she was following Reg for a lot of it.

There's basically nothing about me yesterday. She didn't say much.

From day-Vaimes:

(About a theory you had about Amy's EoD1: )

Think this kind of shows she was just townreading me from Reg:

Going further back...

She wasn't townreading me before that, basically. So I'm stopping here. She got there from Reg and I don't think I missed any part where she explained an independant read on me. I do think there were some on days 1 and 2 but you've covered that.

 

Also, Dels, if you could maybe talk about where you went wrong this game, that would be helpful.

 

I actually didn't remember that, but yeah. I know I defended her, I don't recall her doing anything with me, she just sort of rolled over. I mean, this is the reason why defending wolves is bad: because it's what wolves do.

Something I was gonna say earlier but forgot: Amy was always going to townread me in this game. Outside of that game, we've been v/v a few times and she's townread me every time. I'm sure she felt that suspecting me was off the table because I'd be like "wtf, amy, you know me, why do you suspect me" (I wouldn't, I don't do that) and also it's just. She just naturally townreads me when we're town together so she'd just emulate that.

 

yeah i'll put it on the list

though the amy stuff is. like. a lot of it, i guess? i think you know why i townread amy and you certainly know why i townread cobalt, but i can give more of a rundown. also, i went right in the end i'd also argue that if we yeet cobalt here, the game was like, always going to be a win regardless of anything. that said, i'm aware it's far from being that so i'm not being flippant, just.

 

Like. My post to Cobalt there was because he made a specific argument for why he's town and I was saying why that argument was flawed.

But his posts to me are like:

aka "you know you're a wolf, you woooooolf. stop pretending" which is useless shit, and he says I should be making more posts like his?

>_>

I'm over it. lol. It's just. It's more annoying than I thought it would be.

 

This isn't me being like "Cobalt's a wolf for that" it's just me saying how stupid this situation is because it's not like I have anywhere else to say that

 

I keep getting stuck on these.

@Cobalt. You come into the Day, presumably feeling bad about misreading Jari and say you feel dumb and need to reconsider. And then instead of reconsidering, you just say you'll do what Reg wants. And instead looking back at the people calling Jari/Cuth w/w and thinking there might be scum there, you just say "I wasn't alone in thinking that, I'm town!" Like, you had an opportunity to hunt and instead you just defended yourself.

 

Ignore the quote about Dels, that's not supposed to be in there.

 

Okay, so. I'm not sure if there were any moments of this that I didn't post about in thread.

Your EoD2 stuff did remind me I had a ping from Amy that I didn't talk about in thread. This was around the time when she was voting Cuth but then moved to Jari. I did feel a little bit of worry from that, because it felt like her "EoD anxiety" was a bit over the top there and that it could have an agenda. I didn't say this because, it wasn't enough of a concern for me to change my vote. I think you've noticed by now but I try to work very practically as town, particularly at EoD. It's not about "what is every possibility of who the scum are" for me so much as "who am i realistically going to vote for here". Having some concerns about Amy there was not going to change who I voted - I was not going to overturn a townread on Cuth and suddenly move off of the person who I otherwise thought was the best vote (via PoE, because the options were, what, cobalt/cuth/jari and i just townread the other two) just because of having paranoia about Amy there. She also had been scumreading Jari as far as I recall so it made sense, and I'm not sure I even thought "Amy moving would mean Cuth wolf/Jari town", just that it seemed weird.

I don't think it came up again because the next day was the Cuth day and we were just doing that, and then the next day was the amy/tom counterclaim scenario and by then I'm pretty sure I had forgotten, and I just. Again, I was always believing Amy there over tom. Any doubts I had about Amy, which would've been just that and being worried about her omgus vote, were never going to be more than me feeling tom was scum for days (because of a warped worldview i had based on trusting cobalt/cuth, which amy was a part of sort of but she wasn't anymore after EoD2)

I'm also just trying really hard as a towny to not post every thought that goes through my head. I try to stick to the things I feel best about, or the areas I have unique views, so you're not gonna see me ever being like "oh X is towny but.... oh man this one post pinged me... but they're probably town..." etc. This is just playstyle stuff at this point, idk.

I honestly never saw what made Cuth scummy, so, no, I can't say I had any doubts there. The most I ever felt was just that, like, his posts day 2 (and certainly 3) weren't super townie, but I excused that, because. Okay, we're getting into the question you just asked, "where did you go wrong".

So this comes back to playstyle as well. There are... various feelings I have about how to play the game of mafia, which... you won't see in that past scumgame because I didn't feel them then, but you'd see in my more recent games. And one of those is that I really, really, really do not like to read people based on effort or activity, or IRL circumstances. I hate when someone gets scumread or becomes the yeet just because they don't have time to post. (Or for playstyle) And it's why I've always made sure to say that my reads on people were not based on that.

And when Reg was scumreading Cuth, I felt a large part of it was just because Cuth had not been around for, what, most of the second half of day 1, and then wasn't around day 2. And when he was around, he said he was dealing with things IRL and wasn't able to focus on the game. And I think I felt some sort of... I mean, I think you get what I'm saying. I did not want to scumread him for that. I didn't think any of his posts were scummy. At most, they were lacking, but that could be perfectly explained by not having time for the game and not being in a proper mental state. And that happens. Townies can be in that state, and it can mean they come in and suddenly have boring/bad takes because they're just not invested. And those townies often get lynched for it. I chose to rely on the townread I had on Cuth day 1, because I felt that was something a lot more reliable to hold onto. I wasn't holding onto it strongly, I didn't veto Cuth day 2 or anything, but that townread meant I just didn't wanna yeet him when I had a better choice. He probably would've been my #2 behind Jari purely by default, and I'm pretty sure I said at the end of that day that I'd move if needed.

Of course, the other thing that came up at that EoD, you're aware of, which was me forming my worldview based on feeling that tom was scum and that Cobalt/Waco had been correctly pushing him for days, as well as the fact that tom had been pushing Amy and therefore seemed unaligned with her.

...I'm not sure if I'm answering "times I doubted Cuth" anymore or just "where did i go wrong". This post has gotten really long, I'm splitting it up.

 

You or Vaimes. Out of familiarity fear.

 

I did feel pretty defensive after the Cuth flip. I don't know how to respond to this. You're right, I had the opportunity to hunt and solve and I was too focused on defending myself. I'm guilty of that.

 

*Jari flip

 

It was sort of just, I was willing to do whatever if I wasn't going to get yeeted, because I was wrong so I'd rather defer to the people who seemed to know what they were doing.

 

I'm not sure how much more I can type.

So. What went wrong EoD2? Why did I think tom was scum, and why did I therefore have cobalt/waco as town in a way that led me to vote the way I did at EoD2?

Uh. Well. Let's examine that!I don't know the answer to this so we're discovering it together.

To put it simply, do you remember how on day 1 I voted Fluff and I said it's because I thought Fluff was toeing the line between seeming active by posting questions and occasional comments, while not actually doing anything?

That's where I look for scum. I operate based on the idea that the scum are not the towniest players, but they're also not the scummiest players. You can probably give the high-effort high-post super townie people a pass for a while (look into them later, or if they start having questionable posts), and I also do not like to assume that the scum are just the lowposters or the people who look "traditionally scummy". The scum style I look for the most early game is people who are in that sweet spot, they wanna post to seem townie and engaged, but they can't have enough genuine thoughts to be top poster and their reads aren't super committed. "Posting just to post", essentially.

Fluff seemed like that. tom... didn't really seem like that day 1? Because his posts were sort... I mean, they were unconventional, and they were tom-y. We know he's town now so he really was being tom-y.

But near the end of the day, Cobalt came in and quoted some tom posts that he found weird, and I looked at tom again and was like "oh, yeah, i've kinda been giving him a pass, but he really hasn't done much", and tom basically fit in to exactly what I'm looking for. Beyond that, I'm always a PoE player, and you recall I said that I agreed with almost all your townreads (besides Rubi) and I even had some reasons to townread some of your scumreads, and without a reason to townread tom, he fell into my PoE.

From there, it helped that Cobalt/Waco continued to make arguments against him, the strongest one for me being how he handled EoD1 in the way that he, like, called the wisp wagon bad, but didn't do too much about it. Tom later said this is because he believes townies shouldn't have agendas and try to make people follow them, which, uh. I mean, whatever, he was telling the truth. And after looking at Cobalt for a bit day 2, finding him townie, looking at you for a bit day 2, feeling unreasonable for it, I just... meh. I just had tom as scum. And if I had tom as scum, that meant I had Cobalt and Waco as town, and that meant I had Amy as town, and those people wanted Jari dead.

I'm just rehashing what I said EoD2 here but I think my view was, if I have Cobalt/Waco/Amy town (and Sloth), then that means I have a lot of townreads, and not many places to find scum. Jari can be one, by default then, okay. But there would have to be 2 more, and if there's 2 more, that means there's a good chance that someone in Reg's "towncore" is a wolf, and that means I'm not sure if that towncore wanting Cuth is a good thing, combined with me having a townread on Cuth.

This is where it sort of fell apart because I wasn't even sure who that person would be. You're asking Cobalt this as well, I think, "who pocketed Reg". I don't know, I didn't know, I was tired af, I needed to go to sleep. I think at the time I was still holding on to the idea that it was you, but I didn't know if I believed it. So "where it went wrong" is that I literally had a half-baked theory and based EoD partially on it and it went wrong the moment I was born as an idiot. Uh. This isn't what you want. But I hope that explains that.

And where else did things go wrong?

I mean, I voted tom over Amy. You know why. I wasn't there for the EoD. I did not want Waco yeeted. I did say I suspected Ruby. By your own logic of who would've been a better yeet, I went "wrong" here, but I wanted tom so I was already wrong. I'd say the fact that I was townreading Waco there was right, at least. I probably would've voted Rubi if I was there, but I would've insisted staying on tom. Let me say something: Even though I was wrong on tom, I 100% stand by my saying "We should yeet in the joats, because if we yeet elsewhere, we're gonna suddenly go somewhere that we haven't had enough discussion about and there's a big risk of it going wrong". I was on the wrong joat, but that statement was true. The last game I played in with this setup, the town got a last minute JoaT claim day 2 from a top wagon and had to just scramble elsewhere. This wasn't quite the same, but the scramble started at like 30 minutes to EoD, 10 minutes only for Rubi, and that just... wasn't going to get a scum. It was just very unlikely to. I'm not sure why it didn't go on Cobalt then, I wasn't even there to defend him, lol. But anyway.

And then after that, Amy died, and what went wrong from there is I townread Cobalt for all the same reasons you did so I don't feel I need to explain this. Your case on Vaimes was fantastic and the read of him feeling sympathy for the townies but suddenly having no sympathy on the days he voted scum, or when scum were in danger, was too good. I also was just. Correctly townreading everyone else except 1 person. When you misclear the scum, you're gonna constantly make bad yeets, and the part of those yeets where you say "I'm scumreading this because I townread everyone else" is going to be mostly correct except 1 person.

Same with Waco yesterday, except I was way less sure on that. But at the time, I thought you were the next most likely scum, so I thought that if Waco was town, we could get you tomorrow. Funny how things turn out. Whoops.

Oh and what went wrong with Wisp on day 1 is just kind of the same. You saw my day 1 post about why I wasn't voting elsewhere. Did I have full confidence on Wisp? No. But again, I wasn't voting him because he was weird or for playstyle or whatever, I was voting him because he was showing inconsistent thought processes and doubling down on things in a way that looked like he didn't have a real thought process. It was wrong, but I was never voting Amy that day and I was townreading Cuth, so it is what it is.

tl;dr when you ask a townread-based player what went wrong, the answer is just "i townread the scum"

 

and the tl;dr answer to "why did you townread the scum" is

a) they were towny day 1 and looked like they were trying to really solve wisp, and then day 2 they became lacking but i didn't wanna scumread them for that due to my biases so i held to it, and then day 3 they needed to die so that was that

b) they played in a way that seemed to fit with the confident solve-y "i can snapread people as town off 1 post i'm just that good" town meta i thought they had and not the "i get frozen/awkward as wolf" meta i thought they had.

and

c) because i scumread tom and fonti and they scumread tom and fonti and it just made sense and it stuck, and because they reached out to me EoD2 and i thought that meant we were vibing (but look at us now) and by the time days 3/4/5 finished with their stagnant days, we reached day 6 and you know why from there (twtbaw basically)

that's it. that's what happened this game. there's something very liberating about knowing that it's just up to you to decide if these reasons were understandable, or partner defenses, but i know they were bad and that makes it fair either way. I like it when my game's result is in my own hands. If I win here, it's because I put everything on the table and got there in the end, and if I lose, it's because I committed to bad reads, and I just can't complain. the only part that feels bad is that it means the rest of town loses, but gemma is right, that... isn't all on me.

 

oh, and moments i had doubt on cobalt?

uh

i mean, day 2. literally the first half of day 2. i was basically trusting your PoE there and that meant he just seemed like a good place to put a vote.

second half of day 2, no. it was solid there. days 3, 4, and 5 were about non-cobalt things and i wasn't thinking about him. days 6 and... was yesterday 7?

the only time i had a personal doubt was at the start of day 6. i talked about this in-thread a bunch. about how cobalt's EoD4, strongly pushing for people to go through on tom, could be a wolf agenda out of necessity. i.e. if cobalt's a wolf, he felt he needed that yeet to go through, or he could never win, and that's why he risked being blatantly wolfy to do so. in retrospect, this was correct. if cobalt doesn't get the tom yeet there and the yeet goes on waco? that's bad! amy flips scum eventually anyway and cobalt looks bad for it, and then is Rubi still on the table? Maybe I'm on the table there, but either way, Cobalt at the time would've thought he needed to make sure tom went through, because otherwise there wouldn't be enough misyeets. Remember, at the time, Vaimes was still townread! He wouldn't have thought that could happen! We're bozos because we somehow turned that around! Sorry, I'm getting carried away but this does line up with your reasoning for Cobalt as scum doing these blatant plays because he felt he had to. You may not yeet him here, but he'd certainly have imagined he could never survive a game, so he'd need the tom yeet, and that's the worry I had at the time, but it wasn't enough for me to overturn my read. He just kind of joined us on Vaimes after that and, off we were.

And on day 7 I had doubts not because of myself but because I knew it's what every other townie in the game had wanted, and I felt I may have to give in. That's some personal doubt, because if my townread was stronger I wouldn't have considered it at all. Again, it helped at that point that there did seem to be a lot of reasons for Waco and you (Fonti) to be town, which is moreso what made me feel I could be wrong, less than anything about Cobalt himself.

 

I also apologize again if any off-hand comments come across as flippant. I'm just feeling so much less stressed at this point but I'm aware you're not, I know you're basically feeling the way I felt for most of the day, and if it's unhelpful I'm sorry.

 

Whooooooaaaaaaa there, pal

Buddy

I'm not responding to most of your posts but I caught something here I can't let slide!

This is so not true!

What day was Amy's Joat claim? Day 4? Reg was basically saying on day 2 that he thought the wolves were in a PoE of like, Cuth/Cobalt/Dels! And I don't think anything really changed day 3. I know this because Fonti quoted the post where I said "Reg thinks the team is Cuth/Cobalt/Dels and I don't think that's true." (lol @ think, but you know what i meant) I'm pretty sure I was still very much in the PoE at that point. Fonti hated me for a while as well. Gemma dropped me. I don't remember the rest.