VCA

Vote Count Analysis (VCA) is the process of analyzing the way players vote to help determine who is scum, usually by viewing the moderator's vote counts in isolation.

For example, if someone is on a lot of bandwagons on scum, it could point to them being town, while someone helping mislynch a lot of townies could be a sign of being scum. A common "distancing" tactic is for mafia members to vote each other early in the Random Voting Stage to appear that they don't know each other.

The ability to perform in-depth VCA is a unique benefit of forum mafia that is much more difficult in MeatWorld games.

Wagon Analysis

A primary method in VCA is Wagon Analysis, looking at the composition of players on and off various wagons.

Terminology

• Onwagon and Offwagon: Usually used to refer to players being on or off the bandwagon that led to a lynch on a particular day.
• Flashwagon: A bandwagon that grows very quickly, with many players voting in succession.
• RVS Wagon: A wagon that grows quickly during the low-information Random Voting Stage to generate reactions from the wagoned player or from other players.
• Counterwagon: A bandwagon that grows in response to a larger wagon, usually composed of players who disagree with the larger wagon.
• Vanity wagon: A wagon that, usually over multiple vote counts, is only composed of one player (or two players in larger games). Called a vanity wagon due to its futility.

Wagon Motivation

As scum have the unique ability to coordinate votes with knowledge of alignments, they often exert more influence over the vote counts than a similarly sized set of town players. The goal in wagon analysis is to detect this influence.

Wagon analysis often consists of determining whether a wagon is town-motivated or scum-motivated by looking at the motivation and timing of players joining the wagon and using any available flips. Using this determination of motivation, the analyst attempts to conclude approximately how many scum were on a given wagon, or the alignment of the wagoned player.

Examples

• Flashwagons are commonly held to be more likely scum-motivated, as many votes in succession can indicate carelessness or coordination.
• If a wagon on flipped scum had a counterwagon on another unflipped player, it is commonly held that this counterwagon was a scum-motivated wagon on town to avoid a lynch on scum.
• Similarly, if a counterwagon to a wagon on flipped scum has unusual resistance over multiple vote counts, it is commonly held that this counterwagon is a town-motivated wagon on scum that scum are refusing to join.
• If a town player scumreads or votes one or more scum players, a scum-motivated Retaliatory Wagon might grow on them, to remove their reads or power from the game. If this wagon leads to a mislynch, VCA often analyzes that player's votes or their wagon to find scum.