Things I've found a bit scummy/off about faust this game. Some are minor, but they add together.
First, there was his fishing around for a MiX wagon in D1 while not actually voting MiX because he wanted to sit on Mathdude. I called him on it at the time, so you can see the exchange a bit at
#256, though faust doesn't explain why he's set on Mathdude over MiX.
I kind of felt that faust wasn't really scumhunting, but rather was reacting to what the rest of town would go with, both in probing who would go for what wagon, and in not really engaging properly with my question about whether Robz was a better alternative-wagon target than MiX. I don't think faust ever went back and addressed my question at
#277, though this one is more minor, because with both this and the earlier point about the MiX wagon, MiX was taking it upon himself to answer all the questions for other people, so that gave faust plenty of cover/excuse for not saying anything at the time.
Faust
seconding MiX's "Intent to make someone hammer math" post felt super-scummy to me, because I think faust is someone who should absolutely have been arguing for doing something sensible with the claims.
Faust made a "Pfft" comment to MiX when he said I was locktown. I could feel some omgus offence here, but I don't actually think it's contributing much to me read on faust. Worth noting that he did want to discredit my prob-town status, though.
Faust pushes quite a safe line of asking what d2 MiX voters thought was going on at the end of d1. It's another example of fishing for other people to make cases, or to say things he can them safely pick at, because scum knows that MiX isn't mafia. This starts at #415, and continues at #435, #437, and kind of also at #447, where he's using the fact that gkrieg hasn't engaged with it to justify not saying anything more about his vote on gkrieg.
#431 is the first time in a while that faust answers a direct question from me. I was still very frustrated at MiX for playing so chaotically and rushing through the EoD1, but of course scum!faust would already know that it's safe to fence with me over my puching the MiX wagon, because from scum's point of view it's a fine and obvious wagon for town to push.
#473 is a continuation of faust's "how does MiX make sense as scum" line, but calling it a game intervention. However, he's changing nothing in the game, nor pointing anything in a new direction. This kind of feels like he's making the game stall because he's focusing everyone's attention on an irrelevant question. And as I've said before, I think scum wants to keep a chaotic MiX around for the misfires. (Joth later points out this same thing, and I quote it and build on it at #512).
At #500 faust calls me scum for being "very illogcal" in the pursuit of the MiX wagon. Obviously I disagree, and we've heard since that MiX honestly
was trying to lie to the thread and push through a ridiculous exile just because he felt threatened as a PR, so I think my read on him and criticism of anti-town play
was justified.
#501 really starts the alarm bells, because faust scumreads me for not looking at wagons, when I absolutely considered it and reasoned very logically that it was not useful to do so because the EoD1 was such a mess with so many people incorrectly supporting a terrible newbie exile. I put my reasoning at #513, and I don't think faust ever came back to exlain why my points would be invalid. Instead he does make a quote-less post at #516 kind of throwing his hands up and saying that there was no reason for the whole scumteam to be behind the bad mixile, but importantly he doesn't actually engage with the things I've said. For me, this is very unsatisfying, because he's claimed a scumread, I've made a comment, and then he never acknowledges the validity of what I've said back to the thread again, so that feels quite scummy to me, because I know there are other players in-thread who aren't going to logic their way through these things for themselves, and are going to be looking out for acceptance cues from faust, so the fact they're not there is a problem.
There's a bunch of talk of setup around the #600 mark. Again, it's an easy thing to engage in and try to score townpoints for as scum, but scum are going to have asked questions ahead of time in their QT, so I don't think it's worth townpoints, but it is a good way for scum to keep the conversation away from definite scumhunting.
#626 faust is back on the "there is like for sure scum off the mathdude wagon" line, without having engaged in the conversation I'd tried to have with him about why I don't think that's necessarily true in this case. It's notable that now he's only trying to convince Didds of this, though. I really think this feels like someone who knows all the scum were on-wagon pushing a line that there has to be an off-wagon scum in order to confuse town into voting for each other.
I don't like the tone of faust's response to gkrieg at #661. It just doesn't feel townie to push such a tenuous line as the "one scum off-wagon" thing I'm already arguing against, and come out with "This is ridiculous" when gkrieg also replies that the way the exile went down was fast and all scum could absolutely have ended the day on the Mathdude wagon.
The faust engages quite happily with joth on the topic of policy votes, which again is a safe topic for scum, because we're literally talking about voting townies whose play bothers other townies, and of course scum have to love that.
Faust sounds quite excited to be lining up the gkrieg exile at #736, and makes it clear that he's leaving it there at #747 and going to be gone till after the D2 deadline.
Okay, I was going to do a complete re-read of faust and also find all the places where I felt I'd asked relevant questions or made relevant responses and then he'd just totally avoided engaging with them, but it's late now, so I'll have to leave that. Still, I think overall it's enough for me to be more confident on a faust case than I've been able to feel on any other person I've tried doing a case-making read-through on, so:
Vote: faust