TWG 187: Senpai [Game Thread]

[the sun fan]

honestly like
there's just not a 2nd wolf team when there's a lost wolf
its not a thing that exists

[Gradiant]

I want to like that reads list but it doesn't help that half the stuff is paired with 'interactions but i haven't read them idk', and then random bragging about how good and right you are.

[Gradiant]

like, if you kept to a certain number of games where you can read stuff, and leave out the unwarranted bragging, you'd be such a more likeable player

[funnier6]

Originally Posted by flashflash account

I just want to make sure everyone knows that I have not read every single post in this game and in fact I am missing a lot of context for a lot of things namely whatever went on with haku/Soundwave and the random game show crap that people are talking about, as well as just not being up to date with wagons and people's reads and some of my reads are going to come across as uninformed cause of it

It's hard for me to care or be as invested in this game as is par for me but I'm still putting in effort and it's not like my slot is unreadable or anything remotely like that so I really would appreciate if people cut the crap about that thanks. Daikyi is borderline obsessed with me (understandable, I'm amazing) but it's not remotely helpful and if he doesn't cut it out I'm worried it's just something that he's gonna use as a scapegoat for all kinds of things (will he call this point out as stupid? I don't doubt it) come late game.

Moving on.

This is the first time I've seen devonin play twg and it's like, interesting I guess someone pointed out his focus on mechanics and I dont know why that's the case but it isn't going to get you very far especially in a game with so many hidden elements like this. It's easy to misinterpret the mechanics behind an end result and if you rely on it to solve you will probably get burned. I have seen in some of devonins posts a kind of eagerness to solve though and it especially shined through in that point he made about wanting to hide info from wolves, so overall pretty confident town read on devonin

I am still assuming sharkfan is town but there are a few issues with that, his read list like I mentioned isn't what i expect from a sunfan who just dunked a wolf d1, point about being lost is fair but I haven't really bothered to consider how that knowledge actually changes the wagon's behavior. Some of his reads are quite bare as well when you compare the time he spent on dragonmega trying to get him lynched. Other reads that fall into this category include funnier and svaz

Speaking of svaz I entirely disagree with sunfans analysis, she had great posts in the manhunt (well, it looked like she had a towny thought process and was just arriving at wrong conclusions) and so I don't see "oh she is making actual posts she is town" as a read that anyone can fairly make. Her use of the word "bus" was unnerving and then instead of saying "I meant wagon" or something which I expected she doubled down on it then even brought gs into it while giving an overly verbose explanation. Her behavior today just doesn't sit well with me at all.

My gs read is a bit tempered now by the fact that apparently changes are noted in bright yellow so it isn't actually that hard to figure out what's different if you know what you're looking for. He's still a major wolf read for me because when he isn't spamming he really does sound like he knows what he's talking about and in the jtwg had I been playing I definitely would have been willing to sheep him, here not remotely feeling the same way and that's bad.

I have a singleminded wolf read on shadowgod because I do think his play this game is identical to the jtwg or at least identical enough to start identifying a pattern in behavior. Sharkfan says he's playing different and that's something that pings me wrt sharkfan.

I haven't bothered reading storn at all but he has me in his wolf reads iirc. Not surprising in the slightest, I think he's always sucked at reading me specially if you look at ltwg. I'll bother solving storn later, this game is 20 players after all I don't need to solve everyone day 2

Nothing dafty has said is game related so I officially need to give a NAI read on the slot, but I think were he a wolf he would be getting coached in wolfchat and being told to give content, I consider that a little on the angleshooty side and I don't often see wolfchat reads pan out.

I think Soundwave alignment can be figured out by going back and looking at his interactions with haku, again I haven't had the pleasure of reading any of it. It's baseline suspicious that he claimed not to have been given an item but without knowing what the item does you can't really read into that. He's a null for me.

Antori claimed to be 3p? If his wincon doesn't override town's I think he is trying to play as towny as he can. I really really disagree with everyone who wants to kill him. We can get antori to cooperate imo. In my mind it's apparent he isn't a wolf at the very least and it makes me suspicious of the people who are trying to paint him as a wolf (because it feels like extra justification for a lynch that townies wouldn't need to justify themselves on) like goldstinger.

I trust haku completely

Funnygurl trusts me but in a previous game she immediately town read me and like she already mentioned I wolf read her for it because it is unnerving to be town read that quickly. To make things worse before calling it a soul read she tried to justify it by linking games where I was town and she linked a game that I didn't even play in. It looked really bad for her. Now I'm realizing that it's more of a different strategy and part of the town read is also a "I want to be town with you" which clearly means she's town. I think she's also willing to drop the town read if she needs to after the game where sunfan got red checked. Tldr funnygurl isn't stupid and she knows what she's doing this game, flak isn't warranted.

Funnier is still a wolf to me atm, his low post count isn't quite a dead giveaway because new place but his interactions even with the people he knows doesn't feel quite right, like iirc he was like "fg you're breaking my heart" or something and he's on record for hating appeal to emotion so it's just little quirks like that that are adding up to the wolf read. It's also worth noting that in my entire zd career i have correctly read funniers alignment 0 times, but I try to break the streak anyway instead of wifoming myself. This wallpost is for you bb

Gradiant made a post about lynchers and jesters that pinged me and I'm giving him a neutral 3p read for it, kind of like the elementary sk read. This read is hot and spicy and I won't be surprised if it's right.

Roundbox had a bunch of really towny posts probably over 50 pages ago that I have long since erased from memory but I have a good meta read on roundbox anyway that I'll break out if need be.

Last time I played with daikyi he tunneled me and I figured he had to be a wolf because like why else would he try to lynch someone who was so blatantly town and the answer is it's because he's actually just a terrible person so I'm glad that's solved and I'd prefer it if he never spoke to or at me again without it being game relevant reasons, it's very obnoxious to be tunneled by someone who doesn't care about the game. If he keeps talking about me he's probably a wolf and using it as an outlet, he seems to smart to actually be this hung up over me

I have never in the past been let down by town reading xel and the only wolf game I remember from him was way back when he was using the Wendy's avatar for the very first time. Sunfan can make fun of me for tone reads if he wants but xel sounds towny thanks for coming to my ted talk.

It's possible I'm missing exactly one person in this read list and that would be funny but the rest of it was off the top of my head

Wayward
Yes
I remembered

Wayward is wolfy but not a wolf with gs, I believe that much.
There are a lot of associations I have (like above) that just don't work in a one team world and since multiball seems like a pretty likely conclusion my individual tone and behavior reads support that conclusion pretty strongly. Nothing that was revealed in dragonmega's flip implied it, but there was still a few hidden spots iirc. I'm not sure if there is a way to determine whether multiple teams are present or not but I'm not gonna back down from lynching someone if they were gunning for a wolf (this includes sharkfan). Multiple wolf teams cleans up my reads a bit, making gs and wayward both antitown and sunfan antitown as well. It also gives like, a point of inception to gs wolf read of antori if the wolf teams do know there's another team. The individual reads on players make more sense to me if there is a second team but I dunno how to figure that out unless we lynch like both gs and wayward

Discussion about dragon wagon seems fairly normal and probably accurate, either unintentional bussing or the potential second wolf team. Antoris choice of nightkill seemed reasonable to me and I'm assuming he's telling the truth about believing Raeko was a pro town shot. I think he would keep shooting pro town in the future, honestly. There's already 4 or 5 people reading this prepping their monocle about to cite the Big Book Of Proper TWG and I am saying the book is wrong.

Overall out of my handful of wolf reads I probably hit half the wolves or more, and the ones I missed are like in sharkfan/Soundwave/storn/dafty

My eyes glazed over

[flashflash account]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

honestly like
there's just not a 2nd wolf team when there's a lost wolf
its not a thing that exists

The carousel of number nine doom isn't a thing that exists either

[Gradiant]

I'm a piece of shit who hasn't posted much this phase though so ignore me.

Not a whole lot of motivation this phase due to seeing some stuff at work i wanted to respond to but now not being able to find it trudging through the unnecessarily large amount of pages. With the shitposting continuing from last phase as well, it's a huge chore that i'm not up to tonight after a shit day and something i'd rather do on my day off tomorrow. Prob gonna just leave a list of players with leans fully knowing that i'm a hypocrite in regards to a lot of what i said last phase. Acknowledging that at least though instead of bragging.

[flashflash account]

Originally Posted by funnier6

My eyes glazed over

I wallpost when I'm emotional

[the sun fan]

looking forward to maybe having a real lynch tomorrow

[the sun fan]

no one has been claiming mtamburini's item or raeko's
but soundwave has claimed senko-san's fox fire
note this

[roundbox]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

no one has been claiming mtamburini's item or raeko's
but soundwave has claimed senko-san's fox fire
note this

This has been on my notepad:
Soundwave is town everybody!!

So yeah, more town cred for Soundwave. Idk, I haven't seen anything tying him too closely to other players and his activity rules just like everyone else's. I will be sad if he's lynched this game

[Svaz]

What's the benefit of using "wagon" vs "bus," I mean they're both wheeled vehicles? I don't understand the distinction FFA is going for here.

[roundbox]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

honestly like
there's just not a 2nd wolf team when there's a lost wolf
its not a thing that exists

This happened in TWG: Boats, so no, this is quite possible
Source: Xel was a lost wolf aligned with me

[Not devonin]

This is the first time I've seen devonin play twg and it's like, interesting I guess someone pointed out his focus on mechanics and I dont know why that's the case but it isn't going to get you very far especially in a game with so many hidden elements like this. It's easy to misinterpret the mechanics behind an end result and if you rely on it to solve you will probably get burned.

I'm fully aware that the way I play is not especially suited to this game mode. That's a failing of me as a player, not a choice of actions that should be read as suspicious. I like...not just don't do, I largely -can't- do gut reads / soul reads / tone reads whatever. That is literally how my brain functions.

I -have- to have some kind of logical underpinning to my views. It's why I play this game largely never. I periodically get talked into it, sometimes get rope-a-doped by somebody who is lying through their teeth convincingly, sometimes get tunneled onto an innocent person because they aren't taking enough care with how they speak, and then I go away again convinced this game isn't for me.

So just for the sake of checking back in with it later, I'm going to groundlessly gut read the whole game just so we can all laugh later about how wrong it is:

Wolves: DragonmegaXX, Daikyi, XelNya, Dafty.Pixel

Town: Hateandhatred, Me, Gold Stinger, Roundbox, Soundwave, Mellon, Haku, Sunfan, Storn, Gradiant, Funnier, svaz

3p: mtamborini, Antori

Misc: Wayward, FFA and Funny are, between them, a wolf, a 3p and a town playing weirdly, but I can't discern which is which. shadow_god_10 is some kind of anti-town, maybe 3p, maybe wolf and if that's too many wolves, maybe XelNya is the anti-town 3p

If the end of the game proves more than 50% of that wrong, I will likely just not play TWG anymore :P

[Not devonin]

Originally Posted by Svaz

What's the benefit of using "wagon" vs "bus," I mean they're both wheeled vehicles? I don't understand the distinction FFA is going for here.

From my mafia wiki searching of terms I think their distinction is that a wagon is something you jump onto by going along with the easy thing, and a bus is something you get thrown under when people want to distance themselves.

You wagon on somebody because they're going to die and you want to look in with the cool crowd. You bus your own wolf teammate to establish yourself as town-looking.

[Svaz]

Originally Posted by the sun fan

no one has been claiming mtamburini's item or raeko's
but soundwave has claimed senko-san's fox fire
note this

Circulation, sure, but the only item distribution mechanic I know of so far is Haku's, so unless there's a specific acquisition ability it's pretty much entirely riding on Haku's RNG distribution (I didn't understand the ability to have any user volition over what's distributed).

[roundbox]

Originally Posted by Not devonin

From my mafia wiki searching of terms I think their distinction is that a wagon is something you jump onto by going along with the easy thing, and a bus is something you get thrown under when people want to distance themselves.

You wagon on somebody because they're going to die and you want to look in with the cool crowd. You bus your own wolf teammate to establish yourself as town-looking.

For clarification:
Wagon can refer to two things that are very similar
1) "bandwagon" for hopping on the bandwagon and voting someone because others are voting for them and you'd blend in
2) simply the list of voters on a specific player. if someone asks how a wagon develops or talks about a term like that, they're asking about who voted, when those voters voted, and why those voters voted. It's kind of the whole package of breaking down each vote

[Svaz]

Originally Posted by Not devonin

From my mafia wiki searching of terms I think their distinction is that a wagon is something you jump onto by going along with the easy thing, and a bus is something you get thrown under when people want to distance themselves.

Alright, that makes sense at least. It seems like reaching for a slip pretty hard. I'll make some attempt to clarify that here.

Originally Posted by flashflash account

Her use of the word "bus" was unnerving and then instead of saying "I meant wagon" or something which I expected she doubled down on it then even brought gs into it while giving an overly verbose explanation.

I'll be as blunt about this as possible: while I used "bus" as a term, I never thought it was a theory worth reading into, nor did I personally perceive the situation as such at any point

First, let's examine this key information from the flip.

Originally Posted by Xiz

Also, you are a lost wolf, and you will need to rejoin your team. Wolf aligned.

You are a wolf with [REDACTED].

From this, it's easy to conclude that while Cocoa knew a wolf, she was unknown to the rest of her team; why else use the adjective "Lost" here? OK, easy.

Next, my initial response.

Originally Posted by Svaz

…having been got this way several times myself, if it's not obvious: to determine alignment of any voter here is fallacious; unlike a normal wolf kill, not even wolves could do it for town cred…

I'm really just putting good faith in you not trying to make this into a slip, something like "you only know this because as a wolf you didn't have that in your PM" which is ridiculous, it's easy to extrapolate from the flip itself.

Next, let's look at this bit you're hyperfocusing on:

Originally Posted by Svaz

9. I don't really know how to feel about roundbox, but I think people are overassigning importance to the Cocoa bus, I don't think he's necessarily Anti-town just for being on that lynch, especially if it's not immediately apparent if it was known by anti-town teams that they had a lost wolf/who they were (I couldn't find anything on wikis expanding the concept, so I suppose this is generally based on supplemental village knowledge).

Why would I use "bus" so casually here? I mean again, use some context clues; am I saying "wowee totally not a conspiracy guys heehee" or is it meant more like "group of people that subsequently voted on a target near EoD" (what I initially took the term to mean, but different if it's an action to someone ie "Svaz bussed the master wolf in the Christmas game.")?

[Daikyi]

Last time I played with daikyi he tunneled me and I figured he had to be a wolf because like why else would he try to lynch someone who was so blatantly town and the answer is it's because he's actually just a terrible person so I'm glad that's solved and I'd prefer it if he never spoke to or at me again without it being game relevant reasons, it's very obnoxious to be tunneled by someone who doesn't care about the game. If he keeps talking about me he's probably a wolf and using it as an outlet, he seems to smart to actually be this hung up over me

holy fuck you have your head so far up your dick that you must get off to your narcissism wow. if you seriously are trying to attack my frustration at you being a fucking horrible player then like ok. that previous game over half the game voted for you because you were playing like crap. "blatantly town", more like trump levels of self importance jesus fucking christ.

if you're calling me a terrible person, then you're a terrible person for thinking you had the skill to be in the mafia championships, especially after you got pocketed like fuck easily and then went on a salty tirade, because you refuse to ever acknowledge how you can better yourself. keep talking big shit kiddo, there's been a lot of people who don't ever want to play with you because of the way you play.

[Daikyi]

i'm actually shaking rn, i got baited really hard sorry, i kinda regret hitting send on that.

will check in later maybe.

[flashflash account]

"Reformed player" everyone let's get some applause