HypersomniacLive: That's not what he said, or at least not how I read it. And the way I read it, he has a point.
The way I understand the random rolling of scum roles, each one of us had the same odds to land the first scum spot. I said this on D1, and nobody disputed it, nor made an argument to point out the flaw in my thinking.
So, the value of the grid is two-fold:
1. While scum-hunting, who can't be scum with whom must be taken into account when trying to pair people.
2. After we find our first scum, it narrows down the field of players we need to look in for the second one.
With two town flips so far, everybody is still very much on the table; we cannot use the grid to clear anyone but the dead, and the number of possible scum partners tells us nothing about finding our first scum.
So "I have doubts/concerns about player A for doing this and that, but I'm going to disregard them, because the grid says they have only a couple of possible scum partners, so they must be town" is a dangerous path to take to scum-hunt at this stage. If one is town, that is. If they are scum, it's an excellent tactic to sway others to look into the direction they want, and lead us to a mislynch.
The question for me is - from which camp are you operating?
Of course we can use it to clear people. It's the balance of probabilities.
Take a normal game. We get claims, someone claims Cop, someone else claims Doctor. We can judge from the timing of those claims (and various other factors) whether we believe they are genuine or not.
And you can usually tell that the person claiming Coroner (ahem) or PGO (heh) is lying and is really scum.
You don't know for sure the cop is a cop, and can't really know until you lynch them or they are NK'd, but you can say whether it is likely they are what they say they are and analyse their interactions from that point.
In the same vein, I don't know you are town. I don't know Lift is town, but I am comfortable assuming that based on the evidence (not least because the pool of possible buddies for you both is quite small, you more so than Lift).
So if I knock me, you and Lift off the Matrix it leaves a very obvious pool of candidates, who can all be paired together (barring RWarehall who could only be scum with gogtrial in that case).
And it's not the least bit curious that two of them also happen to be the two players who claim to have absolutely no town reads (ok, trent town reads you, but you said yourself that even scum town read town players) and think the matrix is a waste of time.
Ok, it may not be trent and drealmer, it could be gogtrial and one of them or even gogtrial and RWarehall. But if we lynch drealmer today I'm fairly sure we'll hit scum. If not then the pool is narrowed considerably and it will be almost impossible not to hit scum tomorrow.
I'm not even going to attempt to reply in line to your other post so I'll just put my answers in order here:
Probably not. But on weighing the options killing JMich and removing the question mark over him seems a fairly poor choice in comparison to removing someone fairly townie.
No, I mean because of that. We (actually, not me as I was all over RWarehall as scum in #45 if I remember rightly, and wasn't in the other game) have been fooled by that too many times to not at least pressure JMich for it today causing enough distraction that we might mislynch him or someone else.
I seem to remember that too, I might even have been scum in that game. I definitely remember NKing a person seeking replacement to save the mod having to find one in one game (can't remember which, I believe flub was scum with me). But just because it's happened before doesn't mean it's a good move.
Yeah, I changed my mind once I saw the matrix. If you and Lift are town one of you is probably dead anyway, I don't think scum need me pointing out you're the towniest players to figure that out. But the benefit of being able to remove you both from the matrix is more than worth the risk.
Fair enough, there are two scum. So if that is the case, who benefits from JMich being killed? We all (bar drealmer) held Gamma (and yes, it was still Gamma then) in varying levels of suspicion day 1 so I don't see who it could benefit or incriminate overly much to have him end up dead and flipped town.
Just like a smart town player would too.
drealmer's general play always comes off as very defensive to me. He attacks anyone who attacks him, and anyone who aligns with his theories or supports him is instantly town (game #45 is a case in point). He frequently supports No Lynch or considers it a viable option if he doesn't have a target he firmly believes is scum.
So his 'You're all scummy, lets kill anyone' attitude just doesn't seem to fit. Unless he doesn't care who we kill because he's scum.
I'll come back to Lift's post in a minute, this one is long enough as it is.