The Great* Balki Reread
*To avoid confusion, the adjective "great" is applied to Reread and not to Balki. Alternate title, "The Great Reread of Balki"
Day 1
P1. Suggests (jokingly, I presume) sheeping ghug. Scumreads Damian's second post and votes him for it with not additional clarification.
P2. Cheers on Xorxes for following him onto Damian. "I love having my own little disciple to follow me around and observe my teachings. @xorx, you definitely chose the right spiritual leader." Trying to pocket Xorxes or something? That's a stretch, but this is the kind of thing that makes me leery.
Asks why I am assuming scum have no kill and "finds it interesting" (read: suspicious, as he later clarifies) that I'm talking about game balance. I wasn't assuming scum have no kill, I was asking because I have never played a closed setup before. Also, just a few hours before, he himself said "I don't think we should assume that mafia get a factional kill at all. Though, I bet they have ways to kill us if we get too rowdy." Which is more likely: that Balki is scatterbrained and his assumption on whether there's a scum kill changed naturally, or that Balki is scum, and he knows there's a scum kill and forgot that he had already talked about whether to assume that when he dinged me for assuming scum had no kill?
P6. Filler post replying to Flum's "No I'm not [scum]". 66 words of sarcasm resulting in "I'm putting Fluminator solidly among my town reads." Now that I'm tunneling Balki, I wonder if he crafted it to make it look like he was seriously town reading Flum. It's not, it's blather, but maybe he's hoping that someone just skimming will just see the last sentence and not realize that it's sarcasm.
P7. Filler post replying to Damian, who asked if there was a point to Balki's filler post replying to Flum.
P8. Self congratulatory post comparing himself to a folk figure who is only capable of leading rats and stealing children.
P10. Notes that he'll be absent because of IRL things. Doesn't have any strong feelings about anyone's alignment, but Damian and myself "give [him] the slight heebeegeebees, but it's pretty minor." Votes for me, and in response to Squigs question about why, says that it's not specific, and looks to him like "effort to blend" and is a weak read.
P11. This is where Balki actually shows up for real for the first time. Backs off the Damian wagon that he started, asking for someone to give him a case on Damian. Suggests that people should vote for who you think is likely to flip scum, and that pressure votes make it hard to "see where we really are" and are ineffective if you call them that anyway.
It seems to me like he had already decided to back off the Damian wagon by P10 (6+ hours earlier) when he voted me over Damian. We both gave him the heebeegeebees, but Damian had written "clearly the scummiest thing I have read in like a week," but his scumread of both of us was "very minor." At this point (16:58) Damian was at 4, and Balki moved off him to me, putting Damian at 3. But then he comes in 6 hours later (10:01) when the Damian wagon is down to 2 (Xorxes and Ezio, Vecna had moved to rdrivera) and ask people to justify the wagon again, like he's all concerned he started a fad that now he's not sure about? He already wasn't sure about it, and it was already fading. I'm not just shading Balki, I'm actually wondering what the explanation is, because it looks like an attempt to get the Damian wagon back up and running again without being seen as leading it.
"And are we threatening to kill squigs for being too aggressive? For being just “different than last time”?" Balki knows that meta reads are large part of this game, and that people acting differently is a valid question to pursue. The scum-Balki explanation here would be that he knew Squigs was town and would possibly be lynched (squigs was leading at 3 votes) and thought it would look good to have been defending a misunderstood townie. The town-Balki explanation rests on him not buying into meta-reads as a thing, which is possibly true, I don't think Balki strongly relies on meta reads.
Possibly the first real engagement on substantive issues with someone else is with Vecna, where he disagrees with Vecna's scumread of Rdrivera for scumreading the top two wagons (Squigs, Damian) but then voting Ezio. Then scumreads Vecna for how he phrased a sentence.
Some back and forth with ND on whether being on a work trip is an excuse. Asks for more information on ND's scumread of Ezio and Squigs (votes Squigs).
P12. Linguistic analysis of Ezio for using the word "threat" and concluding that Ezio's Day 1 proposal is "performance art". I don't go in for the linguistic analysis, but the Ezio thing was real enough, even if it wasn't particularly original.
P19. 15 minutes out. Votes Damian with no explanation, breaking a tie for second place, with Squigs 4 versus Damain 3. Then immediately (1 minute later) votes Ezio. So the initial question is why vote Damian? He had been backing off that scum read, he didn't justify it, it's not clear that he ever got a case he asked for on Damian. But he had just most recently scumread Ezio, which is where he jumps to next. Only after he votes does he point out that he isn't caught up and asks if there's anything he needs to know. Why not ask that question first?
It looks to me that the end of Day 1, Balki couldn't even follow his own advice to vote for who you think is most scummy, and was simply looking at wagons trying to decide who push as an alternative to squigs. Which is a decision town often has to make, but the vote for Damian (a read he was already backed off of) and then the jump to Ezio (his most recent and pretty strong scumread) makes me think that there are other calculations Balki had to make.
EOD1 Balki is voting Ezio with his scumread, the one and only Foxcastle.
Day 2
P30. "Balki is here!" I can't keep up this depth of analysis and commentary since Balki picked up the pace on Day 2. This is where I seriously start considering whether Balki is seriously scumhunting, though. [Edited to add, actually, the Day 2 analysis is not deep because Balki does very little worth commenting on...]
Proposes mass reveal of roles and powers. This seems dumb, given that early on Balki was pointing out that we knew so little about the game that speculating on game balance or whether there was a night kill wasn't useful. Others have already poked holes in why scum could easily game this. What I find interesting though is "while scum can lie about their powers, they don’t know all of the powers the town has, and their fake claims may be testable." I wonder if the mafia chat came up with a scheme whereby they could manufacture enough "proven" mislynches if they could convince town to mass reveal. It's a long shot, and they'd have to know it had almost no chance of happening, but maybe it was worth the try.
P32-41. Balki's day 2 is useless. Was the tufted leather armchair not comfy enough? Was the oolong tea just too much? He makes small comments, asks small questions, pushes back on a couple things, tries to lynch Rdrivera despite basically never having commented on Rdrivera before, but basing a vote on one "scummity scumbucket" post, forgets his prior reads. Which, actually, there aren't that many of.
There are two posts here that demonstrate some actual thinking and are more than just a thin comment or one line question. On page 35 he replies to Damian's question about Balki's scum meta with a presentation of how each side could come out, enough to conclude that Damian's question is NAI; and a takedown of Ezio's scumread of him.
Balki makes 1 vote on Day 2, the first vote on Rdrivera. I don't see any actual scumhunting. He presents no case, he pursues no leads, he proposes no theories.
Day 3
I guess now we're getting into the meat of it? Is this where scumhunting happens? I was promised that on Day 2, and disappointed, but we're finally starting a reread.
P43. Townreads Xorxes for guessing on Day 1 that the the scum kill would process with the lynch. " I think this was a reasonable guess, and it is what I was thinking would probably happen too." Actually, Balki, you were thinking that we couldn't assume things about the scumkill. I'm curious which of the two following things you actually thought, and why on Day 3 you're retconning yourself to agree with Xorxes?
Balki Bartokomous wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:32 pm
Squigs44 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:29 pm
The no night thing is the most interesting thing to me. How does this work without NKs? Mafia day kills?
Assuming that our fearless GM would tell us rules if she wants us to know rules. I don't think we should assume that mafia get a factional kill at all. Though, I bet they have ways to kill us if we get too rowdy.
Balki Bartokomous wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:47 pm
xorxes wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:32 pm
Maybe they vote during the day and the NK processes together with the lynch?
So, just started my reread. I have to point this out. There was confusion on the first page about how the game would work with no night phase. Xorxes was the first to speculate that the NK would process together with the lynch.
I think this was a reasonable guess, and it is what I was thinking would probably happen too. But I think it's significant that Xorxes was the first to put that guess in thread, and it seems like this is exactly correct. I would think that scum knew exactly how these mechanics worked form the start, and they would be hesitant to reveal the correct mechanics, for fear it would give them away.
I betcha Xorxes is town.
Yeah, Day 3 is where Balki changes his strategy from "many words, little content" to "much content, little scumhunting".
P44. Things Balki loves: mass reveals and the choose-a-color scum-detector. Does Balki always go after the psych angle? Thing like the linguistic analysis, the idea that the color test is actually indicative, because that's pretty thin stuff.
Oh look actual analysis on rdrivera's response to the EOD2 flip. Which is legit, but also, why comment "Suspicious!" like you didn't already think rdrivera was suspicious? You were voting for him, after all...
Still "very dedicated to lynching Foxcastle or rdrivera this phase." Still has presented basically no case on me, and relying on 2 posts from rdrivera for that decision.
P45. Okay, actually adding on to the rdrivera case.
P47. Getting into with Vecna. Vecna has been low-key watching Balki all game, and now, finally, two of Balki's biggest posts are to respond to the scumread.
P48. Some questions, but also plenty of useless talking. I already responded to the "Foxy is afraid of me" post. But this is the kind of thing that worries me about Balki: he just asserts that the scumteam is me, Rdrivera, and one of Bozo/Ezio without really presenting that case on why. Town Balki does better than that.
P50. I think I replied to these posts about me, but generally he spends time asking other people to convince themselves that they think I'm scum rather than putting a real case up.
I'm gonna stop here, because that's mostly caught up, and I want to engage with some of P51-52 directly. This is what I mean when I say this is Balki's scum meta: Balki claims to see the structure of the game and have divined the truth, but then it turns out that most of the decisions he reaches come with little or no justification, and are not actually based on gamewide explanation but rather are cobbled together from reactions to specific posts. And I think they are
decisions, not conclusions, because as scum, he doesn't need to conclude anything.