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.
