Alright, so. I'm somewhat hamstrung here my total newbie status meaning I have zero insight into the SV meta and no experience with the forum Mafia playstyle - I can gutread nearly as well in ToS as I can face-to-face because I'm very familiar with it, but here I'm rather more limited. Especially since gutread is what generally wins me games. And I'm fairly rusty besides, being brutally honest.
That all being said, here's my current impressions. I gave the thread a sitting-back readthrough to see what jumped out, then searched each poster by name to examine in more detail. I've added a New Posts paragraph to each poster's subsection where necessary to cover stuff that popped up while I was working on this.
Shadell
Initial memery aside, made an excellent point about the use of "obvious memes" to slide ideas into the thread, then continued to offer fresh analysis.
Nonetheless, something about their more recent posts (meatspace-yesterday in particular) overall doesn't quite feel right in a way I can't wholly pinpoint, beyond my agreement with mesonoxian's
#525 that Shadell's first post this game-day seems like distancing and the seven-minute turnover from Cyricubed's
#580 to Shadell voting mesonoxian. I'm not sure there's enough here that I'm willing to really push it, though, especially lacking confidence in my gutreads without having played SV Mafia enough to calibrate. In all, moderate side-eye.
I'm going to go back and take another look at their posting soon, but I want to get this post done when I said it'd be done so I haven't the time right now.
New Posts: I don't like Shadell's apparent habit of not looking into the implications of potential white pieces, as mentioned. Obviously there's a line one has to draw before you're just computing permutations and not actually contributing to the game, but "this one piece in the current context" is well within that line.
99L
I echo concerns about the amount of effort 99 seems to put into things. What I don't think has been brought up is the self-awareness demonstrated in
#451 ("And day just ended. I didn't contribute anything.") and
#563 ("[...] I'm too lazy to reread all 18 pages of day 1"), the latter especially when a thirty-second search-and-skim on Shadell's username would have answered the question. This reads as scummy to me, knowing your posting habits are suboptimal for Town in an easily-corrected way and making zero effort to implement that correction - especially when making votes based off the information you admit to being too lazy to look up.
Strong side-eye, double especially in combination with QT's reasoning for 99's scum potential in
#613 and the subsequent clarification in discussion.
New Posts: I strongly dislike the vote on Shadell, my suspicion of them notwithstanding. However, Usili outing does make scum!99 less likely.
Shalmoa
I'm having a weirdly hard time getting a grasp on Shalmoa. Meta commentary and a lot of short posts, has mentioned IRL issues, but several on-the-ball comments spaced in there. Nothing feels particularly scummy gutwise, but I can't state with any confidence that I read them town, either. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time here. Reserving judgement.
Scia
A limited number of posts, rather light on both length and definitive statements, especially with more than one post that's just restating stuff the thread has already talked about. Moderate to strong side-eye depending on forthcoming activity.
Projject_Delta
I can sympathise with a fellow ToS-playing SV newbie, but Delta has all of six posts, having last spoken at #158. They haven't yet responded to the prod, but it's not even a full day yet, so that doesn't really add or subtract anything for me. Would definitely like to see more engagement.
New Posts: some talking! I'm not sure about the mesonoxian push, as I note below I gutread them (mildly) town. 'Allied Queen' feels like a townslip to me, though.
Zaealix
Open pawn claim.
Immense quantities of wine re: -Rosen's spirited defense of them; though this is apparently expected in meta, I'm given to understand that -Rosen is a skilled enough player that that doesn't actually mean much. I do agree with mesonoxian that some of their play has been... odd.
#526 in particular feels strange to me - "why is nobody voting me?". It seems too blatantly obvious for scum!Zaea to be attempting a lightningrod play, but that's wine again, and in town!Zaea world there's the consideration where they're right that scum could be hesitating to drive the wagon for fear of drawing eyes themselves.
Could also just be twigging my ToS instincts about Jesters
PRE-POST EDIT: While doing some of my other research for this post I some context I'd missed before clicked for me, and that post now appears to be more "why is nobody but Shadell and hailcapital pushing me". I will leave the original text there as those were my immediate impressions, but annotate that if one or more of hail and Shadell are scum there is potential for that to be a case of them wanting someone else to start the wagon.
Regardless, wine abounds, and if I wanted to get drunk I'd go and get the Bailey's. I'm going to leave it here, but I am strongly side-eyeing the entire situation.
hailcapital
One of the big talkers thus far, with a lot of strong analysis. Still, if I'd been around game-day 1 I think I'd have joined their wagon at least until hugh's fateful post, and I'm with Nictis on side-eyeing their following of -Rosen's wagonomics. Plus I'm well-acquainted with the dangers of townreading someone just for being talkative/contributing analysis. Nonetheless, as it stands I don't think I'd go for hail first if I were handed the power to hammer anyone I wanted.
Worth noting that given -Rosen flipped scum, it's possible to look at their memevote on hail under the light of setting up a potential wagon, especially given the actual wagon that formed, but at the same time I would have joined that wagon myself so I'm naturally inclined to look at it as NAI.
Overall, moderate side-eye.
Cyricubed
Up until the last day, had basically not posted anything game-relevant at all except one post talking about how the extended meme phase is NAI last Tuesday, and didn't post at all Thursday through Sunday (for me, remembering I'm in GMT). It's a fairly clear inference in some of their earlier posts that IRL is/was interfering, which happens, and since I would assume it to be terribly poor etiquette to fake IRL issues to cover for lying low/not posting, I'll take it as NAI despite not explicitly mentioning ongoing IRL issues. Has contributed pertinent analysis in the last couple of pages, which is nice. Reserving judgement until I see more from them.
QTesseract
Clearly outed themselves as scum in their first post, case closed
More seriously, the entire first page of their search results is pretty much just memes, with a couple of meta digressions on D1 play and
#85 speculating on scumbuild for this game. That post did correctly predict that a 'face' member of the scum (-Rosen) would choose a pawn, though we've yet to see the rest of the scum so how accurate the rest of this post is remains up in the air.
Occurring to me at
#414 and solidifying at
#464/#465, it's hypothetically possible in scum!QT world that their ongoing
memeing about being scum could be a subtle attempt to discredit the idea of them
actually being scum. I'd want more solid supporting evidence before considering actually pushing that, though, given how wine that is. Mild side-eye, would be different if I were more confident in my gutreads here and/or knew how QT usually plays.
Having typed that as a placeholder, I immediately move on to
#468 asking a redirecting knight to come out if they exist. I don't like that.
Their posting thereon is pretty solid, but in some ways that only makes me squint harder at the bits I do have issues with. Mild to moderate side-eye overall.
Nictis
Apparently has A Reputation. Also someone for whom IRL has been interfering. A lot of meta/mech discussion, a lot of NAI. I don't really have much to say here, for two and a half pages of search results. Reserving judgement and keeping an eye, as per Shalmoa.
mesonoxian
Has made some solid analysis, advancing new points. I don't know how far I agree with them that the push on hugh felt manufactured; obviously there's some of that given -Rosen's involvement but at the same time hugh's later posting felt pretty scummy to me and I would 150% have voted on the post that got them the final wagon. Echoes my thoughts 99's Shadell vote, which is nice.
I'm leaning town on gut, but not super confidently.
NemoMarx
Slipped(?) a pawn claim in
#196.
A bunch of meta analysis I'm not equipped to judge. Some mech probability analysis that's since been discussed enough I haven't anything to contribute. Some more mech discussion. Pretty sparse on anything related to actual play other than a couple of hugh posts and a couple of questions about mesonoxian's push on Zaealix. Did turn out to be correct that hugh wasn't scum.
Mostly NAI so far as I can tell, I'd like to see more before deciding. Which is to say I'd like to see more activity, acknowledging that Nemo has also mentioned having IRL stuff. Mild side-eye.
Usili 2.0
During game-day 1, it stood out to me that when hailcapital asked them for scumteam speculations, they changed their reasoning for not answering from 'not locking us in too much' to 'I'm still thinking' when I would expect to see that the other way around, if they changed their answer at all.
Reasonably active, but a lot of those posts are memeing. A couple of posts pushing other people to talk, the disagreement with hail over whether or not to speculate on scumbuild and the later suggestion that double-Bishop is possible. I think I agree with Projject_Delta that the signal-to-noise ratio here isn't particularly inspiring, but Usili's hardly the only one in this thread so I don't feel it particularly stands out. Mild side-eye.
Other Considerations
- Zaea's #497 throws some suspicion about coordinated posting between Shadell and hailcapital.
- mesonoxian's #535 mentions that Rosen seemed to push hugh when Zaea and hailcapital got attention.
- I didn't see any followup to hailcapital's #549 suggesting potential additional avenues for wagonomics on hugh's lynch.
I have not gone back to check on any of this in detail, because again, I want to get this post out when I said I would, but it's on my list of things to do.
Why...also did you reveal you were a rook specifically. If you had simply stated you were attacked but survived that would have sufficed but you know...
Scum already know they hit a Rook, because they get told if they hit someone Rook-protected or who gets healed, so by process of elimination no feedback means they hit a Rook directly. Stating "I was attacked but survived" = "I am a Rook" to scum, so that's just bringing town back up to information parity. Assuming Usili is in fact a Rook, of course, but if they're not scum there's no reason for them to lie.
Also, can someone explain to me the definition of "pocket" in this context? I've figured out wagonomics, I think, but this one's eluding me.
