Alright, I'm here. Let me finally address that post from Zack. It sucks that he's not here to actually debate or clarify some points, but his posts are pretty through so I think it will work.
I first started getting weirded out by Skull when rereading stuff on early D5. The main reason for it was, funnily enough, the absolutely nonsensical Jason D1 vote on them (
#101).
After following Mini Mafia IV, one of the big things I've been on the lookout for is a very focused D1 bus - and that's what the Skull push against Jason made me think of. Not because Skull didn't sell it well enough, but because Jason's initial vote itself was
so fucking bad that it felt forced, fabricated. This is me presuming some amount of skill on scum's part, yes - but not a whole lot of it. That vote was basically the first actual thing Jason did in the game, at a point in which players were basically just throwing random D1 start votes at each other, and it ended up killing them. That's just straight-up bizarre in my eyes.
If I understand this right, Zack's idea is that my vote for Jason D1 was an elaborate scum plot to gain points right off the bat with me already bussing Jason after his very first (horrible) post. I can't argue much against this, other than say it sounds like a bad plan. First, and I think we discussed this in this game already with Zordon x Rita, artificial pushes between scum mates at D1 is a stupid idea and almost always gets ignored or outright backfires. Who cares about those first votes? That wasn't even why I stuck into Jason, it was because he didn't do anything worth noting for two whole phases and both lynches were extremely close even so. Second is the fact that Jason was a strongman. Why would scum just start the game with something so dangerous as putting a PR as important as a strongman on the line for maybe some townie points when he flips? I wasn't even that hard on him, he was just the only player really on my mind at D1 and then at D2 because of how messy D1 EoD turned out to be.
In the same post, they said they were townreading Yellow, and that they didn't want to vote for Alpha (
#2680).
After that, Yellow and Alpha ended up becoming the leading trains. Skull spent the time close to EoD active in the thread, but not really taking a stance between those two, and instead making innocuous posts like this:
In the end, they ended up voting Alpha (
#2784) against their earlier reads and only
after Yellow had already been hammered.
Skull could argue that, between Alpha and Yellow, they felt more comfortable with the Alpha lynch.
But the thing is: why would they feel the need to take a stance between two lynch trains they didn't agree with
after the hammer hit?
Sooo, did everyone know at the moment that Tommy had just hammered Yellow? He had quite a bit of discussion before Pedro came in and ended the day, with no one pointing out the hammer. I know I didn't, I hadn't even finished typing my vote when he did it, since when I voted for Alpha the vote count was 6 x 5 to me.
I really didn't realize we were so near to the end of the phase before that too. I even said I would reread White to confirm my vote or remove it before that, but didn't get the chance at all (
#2680).
Zack wasn't there at D5 EoD, so I can understand this, but others were there and saw how lost we were when the day ended.
If you're a townie in that situation, you just sit back on your White vote, which you actually feel strongly about, and watch what happens. Especially if you're someone who's been laying low and mostly townread the entire time - you have nothing to prove. Why go for that vote - one that meant nothing to the actual results?
If you're scum in that situation, though, you don't want to be one of the few who sit out of the main lynch trains on D5. You don't wanna lynch your scummate either, though - and it was a very close race. Not a comfortable situation to be in.
If Alpha does flip scum, Skull will start looking very bad because of that vote.
I think I have to justify this every single game, so this took some time to show up.
Sitting on an useless vote at the end of the phase is bad play as town. If you're alone at your vote, you're avoiding picking a side and the discussion. It's impossible NOT to lean towards one lynch instead of the other, and so it's important to show everyone else your side on the lynch. My push for White didn't lead to much, but that doesn't mean I should accept that and just ignore what the rest of the thread is discussing. This is why I felt the need to go for Goldar at D1 too, when Jason's wagon deflated.
I did vote late, and that was because I wasn't feeling neither lynch. I was wrong about Alpha. Like I said some half dozen times, his vote for Green after rac claimed was really townie to me. But I was right about Yellow.