XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Mafia Game Thread

[MK Kilmarnock]

I meant the sudden push on Jace, Zetsu.

[Zetsu]

Swood. Who you scumreading, then?

[Grand Moff Hissa]

So yeah. Hard committing in one direction and then hard committing in the other direction tends to need to be planned out by scum, just because, well, if you're committing one way as scum, usually it's because you've figured that there's a distinct advantage to committing that way. Unless suddenly the advantages/disadvantages shifted, that is, which is...possible, but doesn't gel with how much work would have to go into faking the change in opinion that Paige makes, since these kinds of advantage/disadvantage shifts aren't something that scum can usually predict or control. Tl;dr this only makes sense as a scum play to me if it's been planned out to a ridiculous degree, and, like...you'd have to trust a lot of things to go off perfectly in order for such a plan to work. I wouldn't dare as scum. Paige is much more audacious than me, but still......not that audacious, I think.

So I'm gonna lead with I agree with the town-read on Paige. And that's saying something! We're often oil and water.

BUT there is one little other piece of the puzzle here: in the post where I pointed the thing out, I also quietly alluded to some some sketchy feelings about folks moving the narrative away from Jace. And honestly, at the time and until Paige about-faced, they were just starting to ring my warning bells the tiniest bit. A scum!Paige who's in theory chilling as part of a Jace/Yugi squad could potentially see the writing on the wall with the slip and leap ship in hopes of landing better.

Note that I do not think this is the case, but I'm just extremely leery of going "Oh, there's no benefit!" when there was a benefit indeed--getting out of the boiling pot Jace and Yugi were about to find themselves in. The manner in which it played out makes me think it legit, but /shrug Paige is very very sneaky scum and I always like to keep one eye open.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Yeahhh I'm not seeing the benefit of doing reads into people anymore under the circumstances. Do your worst fellas

noted pro-town move, giving up

I'm curious whether or not you're suggesting that you already KNOW I'm town or just suspect it, unless I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

I'm pretty sure it was sarcasm.

[MK Kilmarnock]

I'm mostly about to catch a gromit. Anyway... who do I read as scum?

If you're just asking for scumreads, it's kind of nobody right now. I have no real basis for a hard read on anybody. Toben is just a policy read because of the same reasons I state every game (including this one) so I'll spare you. More relevant to now, neither Jace nor Yugi are reading as scum. Yugi is a hard townread for me, Jace is flailing a bit and that's brought him closer to town-null but I go with my gut and my gut is typically strong.

Paige is also reading town. They're proactive enough at the very least that they bring more value to the table living more than dead no matter actual alignment, which is making me look at quieter people; MS for example, though he's started talking a little bit.

Everybody else who's quieter than me are the ones I'm side-eyeing right now because silence NEVER looks good.

[MK Kilmarnock]

EBWOP: Seconded on Paige being very sneaky scum. I'm keeping an eye open and mostly harkening back to my experiences in, say, Buffy Mafia (... I was also scum in that one but like, opposite teams, so we were still at odds). I'm not getting those vibes yet.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

But like if I'm gonna sum it up again you coached his roleclaim down to the same flavor change, you backed up that error by claiming your own VT role to back him up, you diverted that with a gambit you can't explain and immediately abandoned, and you keep calling attention to how you're Totally Not Supporting Him through all this even tho the only reason for any of the play you have reasons for is to help him out

I'm gonna pile on here that, like... the gambit thing I was willing to let go as a joke but as soon as it's not a joke it's... fairly baffling. And ditching it immediately is also fairly baffling. I think scum often trip over themselves making stuff too much wheels within wheels. It's always a brilliant trick or cunning ploy or whatever, but that's so easy to trip up on.

Also, Yugi has a noted history as someone who likes to play cute and then gloat.

[Latin For Dragula]

It's also entirely possible Yugi and I are both scum playing the hell out of Jace's misfortune since right now a Jace flip would let me strategically back off Yugi and I've crumbed other suspicion targets for tomorrow. Got the ol' dog and pony show of laying out all the ways my client is guilty around the slim ray of hope they ain't because I know all the facts of our case lie in that seemingly tiny possibility. That would be the ideal shake out for me if I was scum right now, two mislynches in a row followed by good townread clearance for me and my scumbuddy.

Is scum!Paige crazy enough to try and pull that scam then lay it out in broad daylight?

You tell me motherfuckers

[Grand Moff Hissa]

I'm going to stop posting for now because there's not much more I particularly feel I can say (+ do not want to be a hypocrite about having 50+ posts and hyperfocusing the discussion entirely down to one topic) but otherwise hi @ Methodical Slacker I keep forgetting you're in this game, mind talking about things

I do appreciate this but like not enough to save Yugi off a Jace scum flip.

[Zetsu]

It's also entirely possible Yugi and I are both scum playing the hell out of Jace's misfortune since right now a Jace flip would let me strategically back off Yugi and I've crumbed other suspicion targets for tomorrow. Got the ol' dog and pony show of laying out all the ways my client is guilty around the slim ray of hope they ain't because I know all the facts of our case lie in that seemingly tiny possibility. That would be the ideal shake out for me if I was scum right now, two mislynches in a row followed by good townread clearance for me and my scumbuddy.

Funnily enough I was suspecting Murder of doing this >.<

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Blizz I haven't really been paying much attention to if I'm honest, but I was planning to read back once I get home from work so I'll answer that later tonight if we haven't hammered by then.

Whatever we're doing (say it with me) let's not hammer until the phase is mostly over, yes? So we have time to talk through as much as possible.

[Latin For Dragula]

It's possible that he is, or we are, or we both are but in independent factions!

Mafia's fun

[MethodicalSlacker]

You tell me motherfuckers

This post would set off alarm bells as scum playing coy if you weren't Paige.

That was an explanation for why I’m town reading Paige. Is there some part of my explanation that was confusing?

Y'know it felt like more of a neutral read at first but now that I go back and reread the post I see what it ended up as. There's a bit of a flip flop in there, I agree, but with open discussion of hypothetical gambits by people under pretty intense suspicion I think some level of convention has been thrown out the window.

[Latin For Dragula]

It's cool i'm always scum playing coy especially when i'm town

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Jace gives me a scum read. He could also be flailing because he's a power role that hasn't attained any useful information yet, and thus is afraid to say as much because he doesn't have anything to back it up.

I'm gonna give some light towns points here honestly off the woefully out-of-touch direction of this musing given that we've been talking about Jace's VT claim on, oh, every single page since like 4? I mean I guess scum could be tuned out enough to go on this sorta of tangent but like... I dunno, I see scum who get pressed even a bit usually pour more effort into shoving the suspicion away and this reads as pretty "Oops I got called on while I was texting under my desk uhhh..." to me.

Re: Toben: he did the same thing of laying low last game and wound up flipping scum (I'll never stop being proud of the fuck-around-and-find-out-combo I pulled off) but he's had a good deal more presence this time around. It doesn't come in the form of quantity (he has no reason to care about post count smh), but of quality. The catch with the syntax difference between Advent Trooper and Officer made a lot of sense to me early on, and I think it could use more investigation once there's more cards on the table.

Also this, I've been talking a lot, I had the fifth most posts in this thread even before I got rolling tonight, what more must I do to be not laying low? ;-; But like seriously this feels out of step in a way I don't super see scum being. It's light because hey, the thread's moving obnoxiously fast for everyone and I guess scum could get buried too, but... at a glance feels odd to me.