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Popcorn Mafia 4 - Game Over, Village Wins

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no i completely understand why me and celever would fight as scumbuds, i just dont understamd why you think im scum for considering you and phoopes as possibilities when you also scumread me for (in your mind) taking someone out of the poe

I don’t think you’re scum for that reason
 
Main thing in my mind is both townread each other early (which is how you prefer to play scum) and both pushed the inactives mindset

Idr minutiae differences but they almost don’t matter bc the overall mindset of shoot all inactives was shared, which makes order irrelevant

Besides that you shared reads on eg me Texas Evie joey all at the same time, idr phoopes’ DBD progression at all admittedly, but some relevant players that spring to mind (I’m p sure phoopes scumread joey when the rest of us did)

idt we had consistent/the same read on you and Texas throughout the game tbh but yeah not a big deal tbh
 
Once I'm satisfied with y'alls yapping I'll post my night cycle reads and give you some time to freak out about my shot plan, then shoot after that. Nutso day at work though so I haven't really read much today.

Everyone do a pairs analysis
 
I’m going to play video mafia soonish and also my anxiety is now kind of spiking it’s tough situation I feel like yeah I think phoopes is towniest I’d shoot Evie rn

Is my thoughts here anyways
 
I don’t think you’re scum for that reason
oh my bad, it was this part that led me to believe it was part of your reasoning
You and celever spent two pages arguing while also pushing for another person, you are trying to keep all options open and widen poe

Phoopes is trying to tighten the poe, while knowing he’s in a vulnerable spot and even if Texas shoots his partner today, the way he’s played might doom his team to lose regardless if he survives today as mafia

He also has done a massive re evaluation and in the limited posts he’s had in the thread (not saying they weren’t good content before he gets mad) he has shown more interest in actually solving the game and evaluating than you or celever who just look to be antispewing to me

Sorry if wrong but ultimately it comes down to Texas anyways
 
oh my bad, it was this part that led me to believe it was part of your reasoning

My problem there is not who you read it’s that you’re not really committing to a read or you don’t find anyone really town you’re like shading everyone which implies to me you’re setting up for solo wincon and thinking that you’re going to have to be last person standing

Rather than trying to hopefully chain shoot 2 mafia and ending the game tomorrow

It’s fine to have doubts about everyone I do and I’m sure Texas does and whoever the other town is - but there should be some essence of trying to find town at this juncture imo and I don’t see that I see you bringing everyone down to become shootable rather than seeing a wincon in finding the other town and having them NOT shot
 
I will say that no matter who mafia is I’m like very unsure and you’ve played great lmao

I’ve had fun especially towards the back end of this game it’s great to have like an active game and difficult decisions because people have been active and played well, it really beats like trying to pick through inactives with no content to judge
 
My problem there is not who you read it’s that you’re not really committing to a read or you don’t find anyone really town you’re like shading everyone which implies to me you’re setting up for solo wincon and thinking that you’re going to have to be last person standing

Rather than trying to hopefully chain shoot 2 mafia and ending the game tomorrow

It’s fine to have doubts about everyone I do and I’m sure Texas does and whoever the other town is - but there should be some essence of trying to find town at this juncture imo and I don’t see that I see you bringing everyone down to become shootable rather than seeing a wincon in finding the other town and having them NOT shot
okay i understand this reasoning

my thinking was that finding town is going to be harder than finding scum because scum gameplan is to appear towny so as a town player its hard to discern whos actually towny and whos scum pretending to be towny. In my head it would be easier to find and shoot scum this cycle and then win once the game becomes significantly easier than to find someone whos conftown and shoot everyone else. not saying theres not merits to trying to find town fwiw

i do feel like phoopes is most likely to be town just based off of how your and celevers posts have felt agendad to me (although i feel like celever has improved a bit), which is also how i would expect both of you to play as scum. And i do agree with you that phoopes’ wallpost and opinion flip felt natural
 
okay i understand this reasoning

my thinking was that finding town is going to be harder than finding scum because scum gameplan is to appear towny so as a town player its hard to discern whos actually towny and whos scum pretending to be towny. In my head it would be easier to find and shoot scum this cycle and then win once the game becomes significantly easier than to find someone whos conftown and shoot everyone else. not saying theres not merits to trying to find town fwiw

i do feel like phoopes is most likely to be town just based off of how your and celevers posts have felt agendad to me (although i feel like celever has improved a bit), which is also how i would expect both of you to play as scum. And i do agree with you that phoopes’ wallpost and opinion flip felt natural

So do you want me to be shot today now?
 
when would someone who wants to take part in this be able to join?

You can’t join midgame sorry, unless there’s a sub (shouldn’t be at this point) but this game is probably going to end in next few days most and then shortly after there will be a signup thread posted for the next game shortly after

You can join this discord server and signups for next game will be announced there:

https://discord.gg/2svvTzv5

P.s. non players shouldn’t engage here so if you have further questions please direct in the mafia channel there!
 
Pairs:

Celever/Tommy: had the very long interaction where it started with Tommy gunning for Celever and ended with Tommy backing way off. As said before I think this is a play by scum to try and clear Celever via someone who was read as very pro-town by most people (Tommy). I flipped this to my solve based on…

Celever/Evie: this was my initial solve but the way they interacted earlier this cycle made no sense to me if they are both scum. Why would they put the heat on each other so thoroughly if they were both scum? At this point in the game if I were scum I certainly wouldn’t be doing a mutual buss like that. In this scenario, Tommy has been super cleared so it would make more sense to deflect the shot to me (easiest target) rather than going for each other’s throats. That’s why I’m thinking Tommy pulled the wool over my eyes all game and is actually scum himself along with Celever rather than these two.

Tommy/Evie: this is the pairing that I haven’t mentioned yet and it’s the one I’m most worried about because it would make me hella wrong lol since I’m pretty well convinced about Celever and have been. This would mean that Tommy pulled the wool over my eyes AND Evie hung back enough to slip under my radar all game, meaning that I misread Celever as powerwolfing. The interactions between these two on the previous pages have felt pretty inconsequential as far as pairing goes to me tbh, like I read them and just came out of them thinking Tommy was more sus than Evie, in part due to posts like #1893 and #1913. Tommy seems (to me) like he’s coming in and being a savior by explaining different strategies from a scum perspective but then framing it such that it could never be him because he’s too good a player to partake in “average intermediate level” play (1893) and also doing a kind of gotcha with “you’re talking the talk but not walking the walk” (1913). I’m reading these as Tommy being a little too confident of being in everyone’s good graces and coming from a place of town authority when in reality he’s just a scum player pulling the strings.



At risk of seeming like a Texas parrot, I was confident that Celever and DBD were a pair and so far I’ve been half-right. Celever is in my top two pairs (even if Tommy/Celever is now my solve) so I feel most confident in shooting him, then Tommy to close out the game. But I’ve gotten even more sus on Tommy actually because in addition to the above, last page my mans was quoting my posts from August 19th trying to pair or unpair me. That’s such a reach, so much has changed in the past two+ weeks and all the cycles that if you have to go back that far for something I think it’s just a reach to try and frame me as scum. I have to give props to Tommy, he had me fooled for most of the game but I’m starting to see through the cracks now and the last few pages have solidified him alongside Celever as my solve.
 
Alrighty. I'ma start by saying that I think all four of you have played excellent games and it's truly very difficult to determine who the mafia is. If I miss the shot here, sorry town and gg well played to the mafia.

I entered the night cycle thinking the scum team was Celever and Tommy. Considering DBD's flip, I felt it was very likely I would be given the gun as I can then claim two hard scum kills and it's difficult for anyone still alive to dispute my town cred if I'm left alive without the gun. So I began to re-read, which let me tell you is so much more pleasant when I can ignore the majority of the posts as towns who don't know what's going on or pick out the point where realiti loses the plot, and just focus on the posts from the dead mafia and the players alive to figure out how they interact with each other.

Now going into this re-read I had Evie as my strongest town read, and the posts I've come across have reinforced that time and again. Consistently throughout the game I found their posts incisive and targeted, progressing the game forward to pointed and unexpected ways. Posts like #462 stood out as powerful solving posts - at this point joey wasn't on anyone's radar and here's Evie pushing this read at a point where there's no benefit for scum to do so, and tying him to the clouds read that eventually sunk him. Throughout the game I've felt they have had good reads and had their finger on the pulse of the game - however I have also felt at various points like they were almost too on the ball, their posts have been genuinely good town solving, but I cannot shake the feeling that they could be deep wolfing and simply playing an excellent scum game. I was prepared to stake the game on their being town at the start of the night cycle - I am now merely content to let them live until the end.

In contrast to Evie I've been trying to get Celever shot the entire damn game, and I was fully expecting to be looking for Celever partners throughout the thread. Skipper's interactions in the thread, using Celever as a safe haven, then DBD hard bussing them, these were the damning conclusions that arose from my previous re-read that caused me to catch on to DBD in the first place. And yet, as I read through I found myself engaging with Celever's contributions to the thread. I observed that previous versions of myself had been actively townreading him and pushing him higher in my town pile as the game progressed. And as I observed DBD's behaviour in particular I was confronted with the reality that my scum read on Celever was heavily caused by the flipped interactions between flipped scum and Celever - but not by the interactions between him and them. Re-evaluating DBD in particular they took an almost hard-line stance against bussing. They aggressively pushed their reads on town all game and would waffle on scum, but almost never commit to a push on scum, preferring to deflect, or "re-evaluate" a slot as time goes on. Yet Celever they pushed with impunity. And once I noticed that it took me to consider Celever in a vacuum and I just found myself time and again engaging with their posts and finding their solve attempts genuine. The times they would pop in when they were expecting to be busy felt genuine, their chaos looked less and less like scum flooding the zone and more like a town genuinely trying to figure things out. And then I started finding reasons they couldn't be paired. Phoopes' death tunnel on them over the last two cycles is a game ender if Celever is town, and suicidal if they both are scum. But the coup de grace was post #757. Not only is this post independently towny in the sheer depth of thought it's putting into the game theory assessment of mafia motiviations, it's functionally unpairing for Celever and Evie being as Evie prompts the analysis out of Celever. That degree of insight is something that would always have occurred in scum chat if the two were paired mafia.

And so as I'm re-evaluating Celelver I am similarly re-evaluating Phoopes. I gave a lot of leeway to Phoopes on tone throughout the game. They were genuinely putting in effort and doing their best to stay engaged in a difficult game to keep invested in. And so it came as a mild surprise when I found their form of content production to be consistent throughout the game, in the sense that they were regularly involved, continually giving their perspective on the situation but not taking particular strides to push the game forward until prompted...to death tunnel a fairy. Which, fair enough! Plant a flag in the ground and follow it. But it was remarkably convenient that it happened to be on a town, and that aside from this push, the rest of their game stayed the same....right up until the point they decided that I was the towniest town to ever town. And from that point until the current point of the game that's where phoophes has been, hard backing me, and then Tommy, and tunnelling Celever.

Which brings me to Tommy, who I genuinely couldn't get a read on on their content in the game. Emotionally he's been the town's heart throughout the game, pushing things forward and trying to keep the game engaged...but where this falls flat for me is that I believe he would feel the same way as mafia. I think regardless of alignment Tommy wants the game to be a battle and wants people engaged, he and I have both played with tables that the scum actively used killing interest as a strategy and we know how much it sucks. I believe he's emotionally attuned to the table in a way where he's happy with the outcome as either alignment, and believes he can find the win regardless. And yet when I consider who the available teams can be who is at the Nexus of them all? Celever+Evie and Celever+phoopes I have ruled out; leaving Celever+Tommy, phoopes+Evie, Tommy+phoopes, and Tommy+Evie alive. The gun starts to smoke. And then I notice some of Tommy's posts throughout the game in relation to phoopes, and in relation to some of the inactives. Consistently through the game Tommy protects phoopes - when others start to question phoope's depth of solving Tommy is there to defend him as clearly trying his hardest. When Tommy is pressing forward on shooting inactives joey is noticeably absent from the pool and phoopes is nowhere to be found.

And so when I consider why I have the gun today and what scum is looking for as their path to victory one narrative emerges to me from the evidence: knowing that DBD is vengeful and likely gets shot, and knowing that I am consensus town read; I am highly likely to be given the gun at some point, in the event that I am the scum wants to position themselves such that either I shoot Celever or that if I reconsider they are right in my shadow where if I turn my back to shoot the other is there cheering me on. And thus, phoopes and Tommy, my two loudest voices backing me, give me the gun hoping I shoot Celever, and doing their utmost to both stay in my good esteem and distance from each other to find their end game shot.


I am shooting Phoopes today, and chain shooting Tommy, and if Tommy is town then I think Evie is the last scum. I might be wrong, and I apologize if I am, but this is where I believe the game to be.
 
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