This is an explanation of my approach to scum play in Myst Mafia. First off, I want to thank flerp for being absolutely helpful behind the scenes. I came up with flawed plans and he worked with me to make better ones. Without his input and ideas we never would have pulled off the win.

As I already acknowledged we were so very lucky all the way. This isn't really an explanation of my strategy because luck was a huge factor and we absolutely did not chessmaster everything somehow. The most important bits of our strategy went explained in-thread already. Instead this is more a reflection on my mental approach and writing.

1. Never, ever use distancing language from town unless I am talking setup spec/theory. We, us, these are words I would live and die by.

2. Do not obviously waste town's time. For instance, on d3 Natural20 indicated that he didn't suspect me. I did not ask about this even though I was curious. Why would I ask him to explain to the town why I'm innocent? Nobody was pushing for a vote on me. It is a waste of town's time and would make me look bad. This is different from when on day 2 when we started discussing the idea of motive behind the night kills. I got others to contribute their thoughts first, then chipped in my own to support a case. This indicated thoughtfulness and showed that I was really thinking about the topic.

3. Don't respond to baseless accusations. Don't show any interest in whether or not people think I am town! B-minus in particular loves to prod people. I had a mental image of him as a person standing in the corner of the room asking everyone who walks by "hey, are you scum?" and in that mental image I needed to ignore that and keep walking. That's a joke of course. So, if people had issues with points I made I'd talk about that, or if it seemed relevant somehow, I'd give a measured response.

4. Do not make great cases, but don't make trash cases either. My case against Atomic Soda had flaws in it, but it also sounded plausible and like I actually believed my own words (or so I think). I made a theory based on the idea of her coming back at the end of d1 because it was totally the kind of thing I'd do. I intentionally misinterpreted words of hers that I noticed could be seen as ambiguous, and then when called out on that I played it off as "I have my doubts... but you're right that it does clear up that inconsistency if I look at it that way." Finally, I tied it into my speculation about the night kills, but didn't push that particular facet too hard. On d3 I adhere to this with flerp. I pointed out something about his game that was suspicious, but it wasn't a slam dunk case either. BTW in that post I said I wrote a big post and accidentally trashed it... that was true.

5. Do not insult players or be inflammatory. Try not to swear. Seem measured, curious, and at all times doubtful, even if accused. I would be this way if I was town, so my scum game must match that.

6. Never take an easy lunch. If someone agreed with me or was ready to springboard my opinion, I had to assume that was a trap and respond carefully. The most notable example of this is on day 2 when Nat20 left with his Atomic Soda vote. I immediately decided I absolutely must not vote for her. Holes had been poked in my case, I had acknowledged and made peace with those flaws in front of everyone, and me suddenly still being okay voting for her would be like serving myself up to town. I briefly entertained the idea of pushing to vote Nat20 there in scum chat but decided that would be too opportunistic and even if it worked would likely blow the game for us in the long run. I went the same way on d4 after the first vote. I didn't think nat20 was waiting in the wings to go "aha!" this time, but I was thinking "I need to get Atomic Soda to vote." so I continued to engage with snail and cast further doubt on his statements.

7. Endeavor to tell a consistent story with my words and actions. If I must break this rule, the payoff must be worth it. I used to play tons of poker and if you get really involved in that or you have, you end up learning at some point that your calls, bets, folds all tell a greater story to a skilled opponent, both on a per-hand and whole game basis. I focused on making sure I was paying attention to the 'story' of the things I did.

Point 6 ties into my view of the game in general. Scum was very powerful in this game due to 2 night kills, and that power grew as a result of our luck with cop and watcher and 2 mislynches. Because of that we got to d3 and one more mislynch would be our win. It would be easy to get overconfident here but that fact actually gave me pause. Everyone still left in the game had proven capable and threatening.

From day one I felt that Natural20 in particular made great cases and might be playing his opinions about some players closer to his chest. The more nat20 and lando said they trusted me, the more I assumed they didn't. On the face of the game I believed my town image was good. Momentum was openly in my favor. But, I am a cautious individual by nature. I instead operated on the assumption that it wouldn't go our way and decided the best path to victory was doing something absolutely ridiculous and choosing to walk a tightrope instead. Clearly, it did pay off. I trashed them since the game is over but I created outlines in notepad of different arguments I thought might happen on day 4, and how the game evolving would affect who I take into day 5, and what arguments I planned to use to win the game from there, so while it was a silly plan it was also a plan I thought through.

Unlike the posts I write for these games, I didn't put a lot of thought into editing this, so I do apologize if it went on too long or was a mess.

I'm glad I was able to play with you all as you all played great, especially bowmore with his world record speedrun of calling out the scum team lol. It was a lot of a fun! I'm going to hang back for a bit and observe more than play, but I will enter more games in the future. I look forward to next time!