Fuck, where is everyone? I feel like I'm the only guy playing here.
I've been going two people's posting histories like I've said. Screw meta - other people can do that.
There are several things about
zombie urist's play that stick out to me.
Zrk2: I believe you're wrong. If Alamoes was scum, he'd have teammates coaching him. He doesn't look coached. Freshman is (was) far more likely to be scum because of his relative silence. There are things missing from his posts that I would expect to see, and I feel like I'm only hearing part of the conversation.
Personally, I find a lot of noobtells and towntells in his posts. I've not seen a single thing that makes him scummy in my book.
Why are you defending him? Captain Ford
(I've fixed this quote to show what he actually meant.) This one sticks out because he's voting Captain Ford rather impulsively, with his rationale being that Ford is defending alamoes by stating that he reads as town.
Why this is interesting? Firstly, because he never had any suspicions on alamoes to begin with, and didn't question him in the game at all.
Now, buddying accusations only make sense in two situations: One, you're convinced that the defendee is scum, and thus the defense puts the defender in suspicion - in this case, the second suspect is weaker, but the vote is placed anyway to pressure or to question. Two, you're convinced the defendee is town, and you're already suspicious of the defender, and the defense looks like the defender is trying to garner support.
There isn't really a good case for the first explanation, because he hasn't said anything to alamoes before this post, and despite ranking him as second to Ford in scumminess, not only did he not explain that, he didn't pursue this supposed suspicion in the game at all. Why doesn't he actually give us reasons? Because they'd be bad and not doing so allows him to change things and warp this as he sees fit.
If it is the second case, what he gives us is an extremely weak argument. Firstly, he's not already suspicious of Captain Ford, so he doesn't know at all whether it is in earnest or a ploy for approval. Second, it's pretty clear he doesn't generally think this behaviour is a scumtell in itself, because he didn't react when anyone else expressed a town read on people. I, for example, just now rather emphatically stated that I thought IG is town. Notice that this is essentially the same situation: I'm stating my town read of IG and expressing that to people who vote him, as Ford did to Zrk2. Zombie urist, in turn, says two things: That he has no over suspicions of IG, and that he wouldn't be surprised if he was scum anyway.
So why doesn't he say anything about my treatment of IG, and why doesn't any of these explanations fit?Because he doesn't
really suspect Ford at all, and it's just a bullshit reason to jump on someone and get his vote in.
Let's examine the case he later presents:
ZU, for what reason do you vote Captain Ford?
1. Passiveness
2. Defensiveness of alamoes
3. His reason for voting Fresh was most BS (almoes is a close second)
4. He didn't respond to the scroll of mail I sent him.
I'm going to go through this in reverse order.
A scroll of mail allows one to become Lovers with another person. For town, this really only has utility value if you have a strong town read on someone and the other feels the same about you. The scroll would then allow you to cooperate (to a certain extent). For scum, everyone outside your team is confirmed to be either town or a third party, both of which you'll need to eliminate, so really they're all lumped together. In this case, the scroll has immense utility value, because it allows you to do two things: Gain the trust of the other party to see if you can get him into your voting block, and if you're good enough, you can also rolefish and alignment fish.
Ask yourself: why would you want to use the Scroll of Mail in early RVS as town, as ZU did? You wouldn't, because in RVS you really don't have any idea if the receiver is town or scum and you're just wasting a Scroll, and using it to have a private channel to determine the other's alignment is of limited value at best: A sufficiently wary townie would avoid accepting a chat from a stranger precisely because the townie can get influenced, and as the chat likely won't be posted in much, it's a lot more productive to question a subject in-thread as it ups your chances of getting a reply and lets other townies see it.
ZU's use of the scroll doesn't align with town motives or strategies. The explanation that remains, then, is that he as scum tried to curry Ford's favour or try to get a grip on his role without alerting other wary townies - then, when he failed, he used that point as an argument to attack him without really expounding on why it makes Ford scum.
His own rationale is that he sent a gibberish message and didn't expect a reply in return. Then, when he used that as a point, Ford would reply if he was town. Note that no part of this converstion between ZU and Ford is shown, so really the entire thing would just have devolved into a my-word-against-your-word argument anyway, and ZU would be able to keep his senseless point regardless of what Ford did.
So what's the logic behind that explanation - that a townie would be sufficiently concerned about his appearance to pull a point out of the air when threatened? I don't think so.
Point 3 refers to this:
What item would you be most worried about scum having?
Why do you care about that? Perhaps maybe you're asking me to get that specific item and worry me.
I don't think it's been said yet, but this is incredibly paranoid. You can only acquire items randomly in this game (aside from starting items), so the idea of acquiring a specific item is absurd. (unless I'm missing something)
Also "perhaps maybe" is redundant. Which comes off really weak.
Showing contempt for the question and for RVS in general is not exactly a winning strategy, Freshman. Until I see something better from you, you really deserve this vote.
This is claimed to be a BS point. Frankly, I dont think so at all. Besides avoiding a rather standard question being rather suspicious in and of itself, I find the confused sentence structure Freshman displays to be pretty revealing.
Note that he says "you're asking me to get that specific item" and "worry me". The question asked what item
scum would have. The change in subject implies that he thinks of himself as scum. And if he were a townie, why would he be worried if he himself had the item? It's not like there is any imminent danger of having it stolen when it occurs.
Freshman slipped here. He's scum.Point 2 I've already discussed - it doesn't make sense.
Point 1 cites passiveness. Why doesn't this apply? Because "being passive" essentially means either doing nothing or very little, or being unaggressive and not pursuing cases. Now, I agree that this is true for Ford's first two posts, which may not have existed at all for all the good it did, but look at his posting history up until then - he's been questioning freshman, he declared alamoes town and disagreed on the zrk2 lynch, and pressured IG. For having only survived D1 he's sure got a lot of posts - more than anyone else's D1 save for Vector and more even than some people's entire posting history. Passive? Hardly.
So that's his "case".
He stated D2 to The Soldier that he was pursuing a real suspicion, so it's not just a vote with asspulled reasons for pressure - it's a vote with asspulled reasons because he can't come up with any good ones. Then, when nobody paid any attention to it he decides to switch to NQT. His primary reason? First explained as being because of NQT's post-lynch hypothetical question (without rationale). Note that he then very subtly changes his primary reason to being "he didn't vote for me". Here are two quotes to show that:
ZU seems to me the most scummiest: his curtness is a mask for evasiveness, and his predecessor Fresh was dropping scum tells like they were going out of fashion. But since we've been granted an extension, we've got a little more time to form our reads.
ZU, Zrk2, if we lynch you and you flip town who do you think we should be suspicious of next?
Then why aren't you voting for me? NQT for the second part.
You didn't say that at all. You said "ZU seems to me the most scummiest" Since your English is pretty good, you should know about superlatives and stuff. In no way do I see the implication that you were comparing me and Zrk. Also, good job tunneling IG. To me, not wanting to vote anyone else seems like you're afraid of being part of a mislynch.
This is taken out of context, of course, but the point is that he stops doing anything with the point he voted NQT on, and doesn't even explain why it's scummy. Vector did a good job of blowing a hole in the argument he switched to - keeping a vote on someone who refuses to answer your questions is pretty legitimate.
His other suspicions are also pretty weak. Let's look at Vector: He started that by arguing with her once she voted for him. His primary argument seems to be that meta is bad, but little else - it's actually pretty funny how his later argument reg. NQT is based on meta, not citing any games, while simultaneously discounting Vector's own meta argument. Even so, there aren't really any damning scumtells that he offers up. The Soldier? Presumably because his understanding of the NQT argument is mistaken. Doesn't seem strong.
He then votes for me (well, really Deathsword) for reasons that don't hold up as I've mentioned in an earlier post.
So, in conclusion:
- He jumped on Ford without really having seen any tells. Later, he gives some arguments that really don't make sense if you think about it.
- His behaviour and logic is makes much more sense for a scum aligned player.
- His case on NQT is similarly weak. It's primarily based on one weak point, and his meta argument is not only weak, his own point against Vector discredits himself.
- Freshman slipped scum. This is very clear.
- He pulls a lurker lynch on LYLO before voting me/Death for similarly weak reasons.
- Note how he doesn't really "go for" someone by trying to question them. He votes with his short reasons, as soon as he sees a tell, and leaves it at that - he defends them if need be, but he doesn't try to incriminate his suspect further or fish for alignment. It's telling of someone who just wants a lynch instead of a scum lynch.