Long Game 46: A Land War in Asia

[DeTess]

@Dalinar Kholin, you're right that false-claiming is suicide, but Devotary was already as good as lynched. If I had been an elim at that point, I'd have false-claimed to get an additional mislynch. Is it so inconceivable that an elim would lie to be able to take one more person down with them?

You're right that the spaniard has a kill and could have used it to resolve the claim, but he also has a special win-con involving him killing one particular elim, so presumably that's what he'd use the kill for.

Devotary made his claim so close to roll-over that reasonable doubt still existed in my opinion. If he'd claimed 8 hours earlier I would have let the lynch roll over me, but the time he gave it was just enough to swing the lynch, while still keeping the chance of a counter-claim low.

[Mr Doctor]

I have mixed opinions of the arguments so far. I'll point out what I do and don't like, and then give my own thoughts on the matter of Rand.

 

2 hours ago, Sart said:

That being said, I understand why Randuir posted a vote on Devotary. In this game, you can only be certain of one alignment: your own. Thus, it is of utmost imperative that you defend yourself when on the chopping block. Even if you believe 99% that the other target is another villager, it will be better than your own lynch. After all, that's what led to Elenion dying. There are some exceptions, like when the role being claimed is more important than yours. I could see myself sacrificing myself in that situation, but I can also see my survival instinct kicking in.

I agree with this. There’s no way that you can ever know if a claim is legitimate until they’re revealed, and therefore the only person you can trust is yourself and the dead. Would Rand really sacrifice himself to save a Villager when the arguments against him aren’t even that convincing? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

 

2 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

Devotary's claim would be suicidal if not true. The real spaniard could claim, no village would have a reason to lie. One of them must be lying, either way we have a 50% shot of killing the right spaniard quickly. More likely he would have been attacked during the night because there aren't protect roles. Either way, he would have quickly been confirmed by either of those mechanisms. Thus, it is beneficial for devotary to remain alive and rand to die.

I don’t agree that you should expect Rand come to that conclusion, since he was in the firing line. If you’re a player looking from the outside, you might decide to vote either way based on how much of a utilitarian you are, but if you’re one of the players in question, then would you really think that a single kill by someone who has a win condition that doesn’t even align with yours is worth your own life? Remember that at least two Elims are likely to be revived this game, given Max's win-con, so the value of one kill goes down even more.

I think that’s a pretty significant question. The Spaniard’s win-con is to kill the Count. That means that the kill won’t necessarily be targeted at the person that the Village wants it to be. The Count is the weakest of the Elims because he has no special abilities beyond being able to be revealed, so having a counter to him isn’t as high-value as everyone is making it out to be. The Elims can plan to distance themselves from him early on, to mitigate damage when he goes down.

This relates back to Sart’s point that I mentioned earlier. I think it’s pretty easy to figure out whom to value, and so if the only person you can trust is yourself, and you have an option of letting an already-suspected person live or saving yourself, is it even worth asking which option you choose? Note that Devotary’s claim was not enough to save them, so people may have still suspected them, which lowers the utility of letting them live. Of course, it might have just been too late and people weren't on to rescind their votes.

 

2 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

If they both tell the truth, Dev dies by night or is confirmed village. Better than a double lynch.

If Rand is good and Dev is bad, getting himself killed will result in a counterclaim (or even in that time period of Dev claiming could have resulted if he was lying, a notable risk to take), we eventually get a baddie. Furthermore, the evidence against Devotary wasn't great, furhter weakening this possibility.

This makes sense. The Spaniard would be too juicy of a target to leave active. Even if they get resurrected, the Spaniard is the last of the roles with actions who is closely linked to the Village. Although, I don’t believe as strongly as most that the Spaniard would act in the interests of the Village. From an Elim perspective, the Spaniard would naturally be worth killing, but from a Village perspective I’m not sure if they’re worth sustaining.

In terms of Rand sacrificing himself, I imagine that it’s certainly possible that he would decide that. But as I’ve stated above, I don’t think that it’s necessarily indicative of anything, because Rand might have some reasons for letting Devotary die because he values himself higher. But I agree that it’s not a point in his favour that he did it this way.

 

2 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

If Rand is bad and Dev is good, everything makes sense. Self preservation as opposed to the good of the village. In his final post on that night there wasn't even any statement saying sorry for killing the spaniard if he's telling the truth or laying out his logic of self preservation. Heck, he didn't even do that during the night. Don't you find that a little weird? No word of defense during the night for his previous actions? Even the tone during the final post sounds like a fingered elim making a last stand (:p I speak from experience, limited experience, but still experience). Until he read back and then realized that the evidence wasn't very strong and he could resume his role of getting people to contribute with a post aimed at everyone. Only when I come with a vote on him does he reluctantly take up the mantle of defending himself.

I don’t think that his tone was alignment-indicative. Given what he said, he seemed pretty irritated that people had organised a kangaroo court against him while he was inactive, and were close to lynching him without him even knowing. The point about the lack of defence is interesting, though.

 

2 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

Consider This: If Devotary was evil. The real spaniard knows. The real spaniard has a kill, one kill, presumably to save for important tasks...like killing elims. This would be a basically 100% elim kill because no village would want to lie to everyone. The spaniard doesn't even need to claim in order to prove devotary is evil, he could just kill dev in the night, Problem solved, Randuir avenged or village role saved. @Bort 

The real Spaniard would kill the Count, and the Count above all else. The Spaniard is a Villager, but a Villager with a separate win-con. So why would the Spaniard suspect that the one claiming to be them is the Count? As hilarious as that situation would be, it doesn’t make much sense.

 

Overall, I agree with Dalinar’s logical progression up to their discussion of the elim!Rand, village!Devotary case. The arguments there don’t strike me as especially strong, and certainly not enough to say that “everything makes sense”. @Dalinar Kholin would you mind expounding on those thoughts a bit given what I've said?

 

Given all of that, I don’t especially like the fact that Rand has remained in the background for so long. He’s never committed to much, as others have pointed out, either in votes or arguments. I think that it’s too late in the game to let someone sit back and refrain from taking a decent stance. Rand is experienced enough that he wouldn’t need this long to form significant opinions on people. Most of what he’s shared has been brief analysis of everyone, and so it’s hard to glean any sort of alignment from it.

It does rather remind me of Elenion's behaviour. Len remained mostly active from the start, offering meta-discussion and RP without much deeper analysis, perhaps because he felt like people would be scrutinising him closely. He didn’t do much in terms of analysing other players, except in a couple of posts. Looking at it now, he was probably trying to remain active enough for people to feel familiar with him, but not so active that he ever drew attention. There are parallels between that and Rand's behaviour, and I think that's worth considering.

Insofar Rand seems to have distanced himself relatively equally from everyone. I’m finding him very hard to read because he spreads his opinions so broadly and offers little in his analysis compared to others. I can’t really read anything from this behaviour because it looks like an entirely neutral player. Anyone have any thoughts on that? It seems remarkably similar to Doc12, and no one's suspecting him at the moment. I think that I'm of the opinion that neutrality and the occasional suspicious vote may not be worth the lynch, especially if Rand flips Village and we lose a good player.

Rand hasn’t offered any substantial defence of himself yet, although I've seen him post just now as I'm writing this. Perhaps the lack of defence is just because he hasn’t had time to, but he might also think that any defence is going to be picked apart, and so the best thing to do is to let the Village argue itself into making a bandwagon against a different target. I'm not sure, that really feels like a stretch to me.

Note that Rand has consistently been trying to bring all the players into the game. Virtually every cycle he's encouraged people to share their opinions on various developments, and addresses them specifically to do so. This could be him being a good sportsman regardless of alignment, but wouldn't a less active thread help the Elims more? The less that the Village knows, the better the Elims do.

 

Back in C1 I voted on Araris rather than Elenion because Elenion offered some form of argument, and had been contributing more than Araris. I now recognise that this is a poor method of analysis, and I blame it on my inexperience. Rand has given comparatively shallower analysis than other players, but I shouldn’t consider that to be a tell of Elim-like behaviour. There are a lot of inactives and slightly-actives who have posted less, and I since I don't suspect them, Rand shouldn't be suspected solely for that reason. I think that it's pertinent that he has a smaller dataset for us to analyse, and that he's the only one who can fix that.

 

Given this talk about additional win-cons, have there been any games with more than two factions? How did that work out?

[DeTess]

I've been casting a rather broad net in my analysis as I don't think we can afford to narrow things down yet. there's something like 18 people still alive (though looking at the thread today and yesterday, you'd be forgiven for thinking there are only 8 ), so I can't really narrow things down to a small group of suspicions yet, as I've got little basis to do that on. I also lack the time to take people posts apart bit-by-bit in the thread, as unlike during previous games, I'm currently on an internship that's eating up a lot of my time.

I'll be going through Elenion this evening though to see what I can learn from his psots now that he ahs flipped elim.

[Bort]

8 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

Consider This: If Devotary was evil. The real spaniard knows. The real spaniard has a kill, one kill, presumably to save for important tasks...like killing elims. This would be a basically 100% elim kill because no village would want to lie to everyone. The spaniard doesn't even need to claim in order to prove devotary is evil, he could just kill dev in the night, Problem solved, Randuir avenged or village role saved. @Bort 

If Devotary was evil, the real Spaniard would know, true. There is no guarantee that they would come forward though. Think about it. Dev claims Spaniard, someone else comes forward and counterclaims. One gets lynched, and the other is targeted by the Eliminators that very night, just to be sure, since the Spaniard has not only a limited kill, but also a limited scan.

I think you're making some mistakes here in the Spaniard's abilities. Their kill can only be used on the Count, and their scan can only be used to identify the Count. So, he couldn't kill Devotary, unless it turned out Devotary was the Count, claiming to be the Spaniard.

You say 'no village would want to lie to everyone,' and yet I point out again that this very thing happened in day one.

Your arguments are not convincing me.

Edit:

Something else I just noticed. You also point out that Rand doesn't make much of an effort to defend himself. I have acquired votes from people in the past, because I was defending myself too much. Get voted on if you don't defend yourself, get voted on if you do defend yourself... Is it any wonder why he didn't say much?

Edited June 13, 2018 by Bort

[Straw]

@Sart Steeldancer made a mistake in the writeup (he later updated it) and I replied to the mistake before Steeldancer fixed it. 

[Bugsy]

I'm still behind and working on catching up (sorry about that), but having skimmed the current thread I would note that Cadcom was killed by the Elims last night. Cadcom was, as I recall, someone Rand directed suspicion onto, and I'm wondering why the Elims would target him.

The only thing I can think of is that assuming Rand flips Elim, Cadcom looks relatively cleared, but this doesn't make much since as there are other more thoroughly cleared individuals that they could have targeted instead.

Perhaps they're afraid El would revive the more active contributors in the interests of keeping the game engaging? This seems implausible, but I'm unsure as to the alternative. The only other guess I have is that if they start targeting active contributors, their own active contributors (who obviously aren't targeted) begin to stick out. It seems that there are a lot of ways to interpret their motive in using their kill that way, but it strikes me as something that could give us a good degree of insight into their thought process

[Walin]

Wait, El is definitely Miracle Max? I saw the claim, and the RP, and some other stuff after Roadwalker died—but for now, I’m still not sure that she’s the healer unless I missed something (and I’ve missed a lot already).

Ok, there’s a lot of discussion happening concerning Rand and Devotary, with much of the accusation happening from their own posts directed at each other. For right now, I’m going to stay neutral and out of it; I’m not sure what evidence I could bring to light to clear either of them.

[Bort]

Elbereth is definitely Miracle Max, as in she has claimed, and there have been no counterclaims. That's about as definite as we can get, I think. That said, if I were Max, and Elbereth claimed, I'd let her since she was attacked, as was Roadwalker in cycle one. That isn't a good record for someone else coming out and claiming.

[Dalinar Kholin]

6 hours ago, Bort said:

You say 'no village would want to lie to everyone,' and yet I point out again that this very thing happened in day one.

1

No, I corrected that statement because I realized it was false. Instead I asked, why would he lie in this situation if he was village? I can think of none. Can you think of any? As I noted, Road was a different situation entirely. I agree, there are situations where a village would lie to village, but I challenge you to find a scenario where Dev would have been doing that here.

@Straw You've been pretty quiet. What are your thoughts on Rand?

11 hours ago, Mr Doctor said:

 

1. I agree with this. There’s no way that you can ever know if a claim is legitimate until they’re revealed, and therefore the only person you can trust is yourself and the dead. Would Rand really sacrifice himself to save a Villager when the arguments against him aren’t even that convincing? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

2. I don’t agree that you should expect Rand come to that conclusion, since he was in the firing line. If you’re a player looking from the outside, you might decide to vote either way based on how much of a utilitarian you are, but if you’re one of the players in question, then would you really think that a single kill by someone who has a win condition that doesn’t even align with yours is worth your own life? Remember that at least two Elims are likely to be revived this game, given Max's win-con, so the value of one kill goes down even more.

3. I think that’s a pretty significant question. The Spaniard’s win-con is to kill the Count. That means that the kill won’t necessarily be targeted at the person that the Village wants it to be. The Count is the weakest of the Elims because he has no special abilities beyond being able to be revealed, so having a counter to him isn’t as high-value as everyone is making it out to be. The Elims can plan to distance themselves from him early on, to mitigate damage when he goes down.

4. This relates back to Sart’s point that I mentioned earlier. I think it’s pretty easy to figure out whom to value, and so if the only person you can trust is yourself, and you have an option of letting an already-suspected person live or saving yourself, is it even worth asking which option you choose? Note that Devotary’s claim was not enough to save them, so people may have still suspected them, which lowers the utility of letting them live. Of course, it might have just been too late and people weren't on to rescind their votes.

5. This makes sense. The Spaniard would be too juicy of a target to leave active. Even if they get resurrected, the Spaniard is the last of the roles with actions who is closely linked to the Village. Although, I don’t believe as strongly as most that the Spaniard would act in the interests of the Village. From an Elim perspective, the Spaniard would naturally be worth killing, but from a Village perspective I’m not sure if they’re worth sustaining.

6. In terms of Rand sacrificing himself, I imagine that it’s certainly possible that he would decide that. But as I’ve stated above, I don’t think that it’s necessarily indicative of anything, because Rand might have some reasons for letting Devotary die because he values himself higher. But I agree that it’s not a point in his favour that he did it this way.

7. I don’t think that his tone was alignment-indicative. Given what he said, he seemed pretty irritated that people had organised a kangaroo court against him while he was inactive, and were close to lynching him without him even knowing. The point about the lack of defence is interesting, though.

8. The real Spaniard would kill the Count, and the Count above all else. The Spaniard is a Villager, but a Villager with a separate win-con. So why would the Spaniard suspect that the one claiming to be them is the Count? As hilarious as that situation would be, it doesn’t make much sense.

Overall, I agree with Dalinar’s logical progression up to their discussion of the elim!Rand, village!Devotary case. The arguments there don’t strike me as especially strong, and certainly not enough to say that “everything makes sense”. @Dalinar Kholin would you mind expounding on those thoughts a bit given what I've said?

9

1. Bringing it to four v four is dangerous. It allows for vote manipulation by the elims if they have it, thus could cause a doulbe lynch as Bort pointed out. To be fair, how much time was left after Randuir voted on Dev? Let me rephrase, I don't think it should be a simple decision of self preservation, I think it should require some thought. Is it, in this situation, better for me to die and will the village be better off than if I survive? Merely knowing you are good is not enough reason to want to kill the other person. 

Let's expand this principle with a hypothetical. Presume Rand has a dagger or rum. Now he knows that he is good, so according to the rule of self preservation that has been argued thus far, he should use the rum or dagger in order to survive and kill devotary. He knows he is good. He knows they may or may not be good. Thus the other person should die. However, this could cause a double myslynch by thinking he's being saved by fellow elims, thus it could be a bad idea. The rule of self preservation only extends so far, and defending an important village role that will in my opinion be immediately confirmed (either killed by elims or killed by spaniard, and yes I stand by that argument and I'll explain it in more detail in a moment). The moral of this argument is the rule of preservation has limited utility. The benefits of keeping a village spaniard alive to use his kill at least once before he dies is the equivilant to a lynch. So although we would lose a lynch and a village Rand if wrong, we would also gain the equivalent of a lynch through the Spaniards killl (which if revealed he mind as while use).

The Spaniard Kill: The win condition of the Spaniard is to kill the six fingered man. There are two ways to do this. First, is to have the village win the game (and participate in all the lynches), or use your kill. However, you overemphasize the importance of saving the kill. If the Spaniard finds the count, he can simply announce it in thread and have the six fingered man lynched with his help. After all, he doesn't care if he dies once he's lynched the six fingered man, so being outed doesn't matter once he's finished his job. I think you underestimate that the Spaniard is happy if the village wins. One less elim gets the village closer to victory and also the Spaniard closer to lynching the sixth fingered man.

2. I disagree, the Spaniards win condition does align with mine (after all the six fingered man is an elim). However, fair point of being in the firing line.

3. Yes and no. I agree that the six fingered man is the weakest of the elims, but still would take a while to find him as the spaniard, and I doubt it'd be worth distancing yourself from day one (no more than any other elim anyways). After all, we got an elim before the six fingered count, and in all probabilities would have gotten another before the Spaniard identified him.

4. Refer to the argument above, I agree with the main point (you only know your good), but sometimes there are times to sacrifice yourself for the good of the cause. I suppose it isn't an easy argument that this was one of them though.

5. I sort of find that contradictory. This is a zero sum game after all. Anything that detracts from the elim helps the village.

6. Fair

7. Fair, I do think the lack of defense is odd, the time point could be a valid defense though.

Sigh, I think I'm just tunelling at this point. I'm not sure. I'll rescind my vote for the moment, even though I don't love it, until I've looked through everyone.

Also, @randuir I haven't forgotten the question you've asked me, I'll add it to my post tonight. Randuir.

[DeTess]

Alright, I'm done looking over Len's posts. I'll use the rest of this day-cycle to also go over people's interactions with him, including the D2 lynch. I should probably be able top complete that if I've got Wi-fi during my commute. Otherwise I might not be able to get it done entirely.

For starters there was the D1 vote on Bugsy. Judging by Bugsy's responses, I'd say this was a genuine lynch attempt, rather than an attempt at distancing. If I'm wrong, it was a pretty nice bit of acting, but I don't think I am.

During D2 he goes over the Araris bandwagon. Of those people, he townread Doc and mr. Doctor, outright suspected HH, and hedged his opinion on Fifth and Eternum. The fact that he decided to draw a lot of attention to this lynch makes me suspect that it might have been pure, or almost pure, because if there had been a lot of elims on it attracting attention to it would have been quite dangerous. He then puts in quite a bit of work to try and get HH lynched, pinging me and Elbereth to convince us to lynch HH. What's also noteworthy is  that he also defends Eternum doing so, by trying to draw the lynch on HH(and then sets himself up to move his vote to Fifth instead of eternum if he needs to move his vote). I feel fairly certain clearing HH based on this interaction, and will be taking another look at eternum.

That's pretty much it from Elenion's posts. tl;dr Bugsy and HH are soft-cleared, Eternum looks more suspicious.

 

As I've got the time, I might as well take a quick look at Eternum. He provided the first vote against Elenion, and was around long enough to see CadCom place a second. There was some stuff in his posts that looked contradictory, and if it had led to a villager being lynched it would have been downright suspicous (most notably him supsecting Elenion for his village read on Araris, while he himself said that his elim!read on Araris was weakened by the same thing that Len brought up as making him read Araris as village). However, I don't see why elim!eternum would do that to throw Elenion under the bus when that didn't look necessary yet.

So, Eternum could have been doing some pretty hard bussing, but I'm not really seeing that right now.

Edited June 13, 2018 by randuir

[Straw]

I’m unsure about Randuir. On one hand, he caused the Spaniard to get lynched. On the other hand, he was going to die, and the Spaniard provided no evidence.

[Steeldancer]

Eternum has dropped out of the game, and is now replaced by Drake Marshall! 

[Bort]

2 hours ago, Dalinar Kholin said:

No, I corrected that statement because I realized it was false. Instead I asked, why would he lie in this situation if he was village? I can think of none. Can you think of any? As I noted, Road was a different situation entirely. I agree, there are situations where a village would lie to village, but I challenge you to find a scenario where Dev would have been doing that here.

If Dev was village, then he would have had no reason to lie. If he was an eliminator, then it could have staved off death by another cycle and all but shut down discussion for a cycle (assuming someone else came forward to counterclaim). I mean, isn't that the key thing for an eliminator? Time? The longer they survive, the better chance they have of winning.

The only way a ploy like that could fail is if someone counterclaimed by the end of the turn, and enough people saw to swing the vote then and there, or as what happened here, not enough people saw the claim, or were moved enough by it to remove their votes.

I think we should be looking more at the people that assured Devotary's death, rather than someone else trying to survive.

Quote

I agree with the main point (you only know your good), but sometimes there are times to sacrifice yourself for the good of the cause. I suppose it isn't an easy argument that this was one of them though.

If the Spaniard's scan was to detect alignment, instead of target specific, or even if we had had some confirmation of the role, then yeah, it might have been worth it. But for a simple claim to a key role, in a desperate attempt to divert the lynch? I'd have done the same as Rand.

Dalinar.

Edit:

Hi Drake, welcome to the game

Edit 2: Upon further examination of the thread, I think I'm going to put my vote on Doc12. He was the 4th vote in the Araris lynch, didn't vote in the second cycle, but was also the third vote on Devotary, and didn't remove it after her claim. Even if he is a villager, he has a 100% rate of lynching our heroes... and that's inconceivable.

 

Edited June 13, 2018 by Bort

[Straw]

Welcome, @Drake Marshall!

[DrakeMarshall]

Hi.

Thank you.

So uh. What's up?

[Rathmaskal]

So, here's my question right now...

Elim night kills:

Night 1 - Roadwalker - Miracle Max Claim

Night 2 - Elbereth - Miracle Max Claim

Night 3 - CadCom...why CadCom?

Potential reasons off the top of my head:

• Made a deal with Max to revive a confirmed elim - this would be interesting...seems like Max wouldn't be too interested in helping out the elims at this point though.  My thought: Inconceivable!
• RNG - possible...seems like an effective way of deciding on night elims...but after the first two, it seems likely that the elims aren't doing that.  My thought: Conceivable...but unlikely
• They wanted to get rid of a villager who actually was doing consistent (good?) analysis to help reduce the amount of information we have - My thought: Conceivable...UNLESS
• CadCom said SOMETHING that tickled someone wrong - My thought: Conceivable
• Misdirection...CadCom said SOMETHING that they thought was hilariously wrong but they wanted to draw attention to it.  My thought: Conceivable...
• CadCom actually had the super secret role of The Sicilian whose win condition is to cause widespread panic and confusion and generally snuff out any fun people are having - My thought: Inconceivable!

There are far too many Conceivables on that list...  At this point, though, I'm going to try to look back through CadCom's posts to see what points are brought up and how conceivable they are...

Edit: I guess I didn't really phrase a question there...but I think my thoughts are coherent enough that you get the picture.

Edited June 13, 2018 by Rathmaskal

[DrakeMarshall]

2 minutes ago, Rathmaskal said:

Elim night kills:

Night 1 - Roadwalker - Miracle Max Claim

Night 2 - Elbereth - Miracle Max Claim

Guys, I'm Miracle Max 

(inconceivable?)

For real though I'll be back in a few, and figure out what's going on.

[DrakeMarshall]

Vote Tally
Doc12 (1): Bort
Straw (1): Sart
Randuir (1): Fifth Scholar

Well, that was fun.

Now I'm wishing I got around to doing this before MR29.

The above vote tally is entirely created by an inconceivably short python script I just wrote. I just specify the thread URL, and it assembles a nicely formatted vote tally, correctly accounting for things like abridged usernames and "votes" found in quote blocks. 

Edited June 14, 2018 by Drake Marshall

[Fifth Scholar]

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Starkindler! It is a most pleasant surprise to share a game with you once more! It would be a great pleasure to once more weave some stories!

-Doc12

I’d missed this when I first saw it, but I very much appreciate the LoTR reference to Elbereth, Doc.

 

Quote

A couple of early observations:

1. RVS seems to be in full effect.
2. It's odd to come into a thread that has been running for about 8 hours with so many players and not have to catch up to 300 posts. But I don't really mind (I'm reserving the right to call the thread quiet if we don't have 600 posts per cycle though, because apparently that's quiet )
3. FoS on Elenion, as he's failed to provide us with the number of elims he expects, and how many cycles we have before LYLO.
4. It's going to take me a bit to get rid of all these handy abbreviations. I'll probably keep WIFOM instead of IKYK for this game, though.

[RP]

I'd say Miracle max would be more dangerous to the village if he worked with the elims than vice-versa. If he where to constantly heal the night-kills then the elims could just start slipping their own in there to get them cleared, while the village still needs to lynch people to solve the game. If he starts to keep the elims safe from the lynch though, they will become very hard to deal with, unless Wesley sacrifices his night kill to make sure the lynchee dies.

edit2: Regarding roles, the only thing that stood out as unusual (apart from max) is the giant. I'd prefer it if the giant claims if it looks certain he or she is going to be lynched, as that way we can move the vote elsewhere to prevent us from wasting a lynch.

-Randuir

This post I feel deserves mention—I think the way Rand brings up Len here is a potential distancing tactic that allows him to respond, and could give them both village credit for being the first players to do “analysis” so early. 

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Just for my understanding Bugsy, do you actually think Araris slipped up there as an elim, thinking that the pirates where evil? You seem to be saying here that you'll only consider it suspicious if no one else does something more suspicious, which sounds a bit opportunistic.

-Randuir

This is for reference—this post by Rand started the whole Bugsy/Len/Araris exchange that ended up eating the whole day. I don’t want to rehash my objections to the points against Bugsy, but I’ll just say for now that I disagree with Rand’s logic here. 

Quote

In all seriousness though, I dislike the way Elenion made the vote against Bugsy about as much as I dislike the hedgy way Bugsy was throwing shade at Araris, but it feels almost too careless to come from an elim. I can see an elim voting on village!Bugsy after I expressed some reasonable suspicion of them, but to do it in a way that basically echoes what made me suspicious of Bugsy in the first place... I'll be keeping an eye on Elenion at any rate. (which is just a long way of saying that this seems twtbaw, maybe).

-Randuir

I strongly dislike the hedgy way this post is worded. It makes it look like Rand is trying to go both ways on Len, supporting him and giving him towncred while also leaving himself a way to distance himself from Len should the situation around him sour. Also, I’m guessing twtbaw means “too wolfy to be a wolf,” but I wouldn’t mind clarification on all the brand-new shorthand you’re using.

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@Bugsy, you stated that you don't think elims will vote early to attract attention to themselves. Both Araris' and Elenion's votes attracted quite a bit of attention, especially at this stage. If one or both of them are elims, do you think there's a reason for them to be moving more agressively?

-Randuir

This reads as a soft-defense of both Araris and Len, though I would note that this defense doesn’t really hold water with Len at all, due to his usually aggressive playstyle. I could see village!Rand posting this but elim!Rand would have far more incentive to post this. 

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The advantage that it would convey is that it gives you a progression to your vote on Araris. Araris is taking a bit of heat because he suddenly voted you without explanation, while if he'd had a prior suspicion stated, he could easily point back to that when making the vote as an explanation. So it's definitely in the elims interest to seem to be working towards a vote, rather than just jump on the nearest available bandwagon.

-Randuir

Explains to Bugsy how an Elim!Bugsy could benefit from faking progression of thought. That’s true, but as Bugsy states he wasn’t working towards an Araris vote, instead parking his vote on Len. Nevertheless the tone and sentiment of this post give me a village read, despite both of those being terrible things to assign village reads for. 

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Fifth/Bugsy w/w confirmed!

In all seriousness though, I'm starting to agree with you here. I think it's the lingering tournament mindset that makes me look at everything with a more suspicious eye and expecting a different kind of elim play.

-Randuir

After a discussion on progression of thought, demonstrates progression of thought. Totally not feeding my paranoia. (Slight village lean from this post.)

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As I said, I don't like the way he jumped on the Bugsy lynch, but the way in which his post mirrored the suspicion I had laid out of Bugsy (which he referred to, and so must have read) is really throwing me off, as it seems too careless for an elim. "Hey this guy is suspicious because he did A. let me vote on him while also kinda doing A".

-Randuir, doing analysis of Len

This analysis mirrors his earlier post, and I still don’t like the hedginess, but at least he’s consistent about it.  Again, hindsight is 20/20, but Len is by his own admission an aggressive Eliminator, and the fact that he was opportunistic while accusing someone of opportunism is not past him. I believe I even said so at the time. Or Bugsy did. /shrug

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Anyway, the discussion centered around Araris, Len and Bugsy for most of the day yesterday. I had my own part in that, of course, but one thing I did notice is that the elims (or anyone else for that matter) seemingly felt no need to move the discussion elsewhere. I made a vote against CadCom in the second half of the day, both because I thought the way he went after straw looked odd and suspicious, and because I wanted to see whether people would jump on a  fourth option outside of the main discussion or not. That vote got pretty much ignored, but if the elims believed one of their own was getting an uncomfortable amount of attention, I would have expected them to try and move discussion away if given a decent excuse. I'm not ruling Bugsy or Len out as elims right now, but it makes me feel a bit better about both of them.

-Randuir

This is another reason I really don’t like Rand’s posts—these ways of insinuating that Len is trustworthy without explicitly giving his support or picking a side. In addition, there was wasted discussion D1, notably Roadwalker false-claiming Miracle Max, so Rand’s statement isn’t entirely accurate anyway (plus there was an elim in Bugsy/Len). 

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Elenion

I've already talked about Elenion's vote against Bugsy before. The point Eternum brought up about him seemingly reading Araris village for no reason is somewhat refuted (Elenion brought up that the comment from Araris that made Bugsy lean very slightly elim on Araris actually made him Lean more village on Araris), but I agree that that seems like a slim reason, and I haven't seen much else from Araris that would make me lean village on him back in D1.

Not much else stands out to me. The fact that the elims seemed fine with the focus around Elenion, Araris and Bugsy last cycle still makes me a bit more hesitant to continue lynching in that group, but Len's seemingly strong village read on Araris looks pretty odd on review.

Slight elim read.

-Randuir

This post would give me a village read if it weren’t for all the preceding points Rand brought up that seemed to hedge against Len’s lynch. The above post was made early enough in the cycle, so there was little reason for an elim!Rand to accuse Len unless this was a premeditated bus, but the hedgy comments from earlier make this seem like a sudden pivot, whether towards a bus or simply attempted distancing on a teammate who had accrued some suspicion. Village in isolation, probably neutral or very slight village in context. 

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My current elim reads are Devotary, Straw, Elenion and Eternum, more or less in that order form most to least suspicious, but I have no hard suspicions on any of them right now. In fact, I'm tempted of borrowing Alvrons trick from MR29 and rolling a  4-sided die. I won't do that though. I'm going to vote on Devotary, as his slight defense of Araris still feels off to me, and partly because process of elimination drops the other 3 for this cycle at least. I feel like I end up lynching straw just about every time I've got no better idea, I've got a PM with Eternum that's given me a not-horrible gut-read, and I feel like Elenions posts today have been better than what made me initially suspicious of him.

-Randuir

The additional flip-flopping on Len is not helping the paranoid part of my brain, but it is pushing the needle on the Randuir Dial towards elim more and more. 

Rand made a lot of other posts this game, which I don’t feel the need to cover. Suffice it to say that I didn’t really glean much from them, and even if they weren’t strictly NAI I was too lazy or tired to properly read through them. 

I’ll admit I haven’t commented on Rand’s stuff past D2 but I did read it. However, considering it is far past my usual bedtime, I will not analyze it. I will point out that Rand’s last second vote seemed more like an elim hammer than a last ditch attempt by a villager to prove their innocence/beg against their lynch. 

I stand by my vote on Rand, and would urge people to look at him closely and draw your own conclusions, rather than leaning on one of the analyst’s observations to make your decision. 

[Jondesu]

I’ve been trying to form my own conclusions, and thus haven’t yet posted this cycle as I work through them. I still find Rand somewhat less likely to be Elim than not, and I also think that Cadmium is probably clean, as is Eternum, or rather Drake, freshly taken over for them, because of the recent voting, unless there was some hardcore bussing. 

Fifth I’m unsure on, going back and forth. Rath likewise, who has been coming up with theories of various sorts. I hate to kill someone contributing so much (especially when it’s a lot more than me), but we can’t let that stop us. I don’t think either of them are particularly strong candidates for a vote from me right now, though. 

Unfortunately, there are too many other players I don’t have as much on right now.  I’m going to once again withhold my vote until the morning at least and see what I can find.

[DrakeMarshall]

So, let me get this straight. Basically, all the important good-guys died?

Inconceivable!

 

The thing with Rand is of interest, particularly Fifth's accusation, but I feel pretty undecided on either for now. No possibility is inconceivable. Rand actually took the effort to scrutinze Len's posts though, which is a small point in his favor. He also poked Len on day one, which is another small point in his favor.

 

I was going to vote on Sart, because

-they drew conclusions about Len's death flip when it was unclear

-stated they voted on someone last cycle whom they don't suspect

-this cycle's vote on Straw and reasoning feels similar, because:

• being defended by an elim != defending an elim
• Len's defense is forward enough that I'm pretty sure Straw/Len team is inconceivable
• Len's post was made after the vote on Straw in question was retracted, so it's inconceivable that he was trying to bail out a teammate

However, before I hit post, I realized that it was Sart's vote that ultimately dusted Elenion off. So it's nearly inconceivable that Sart is an elim.

That said, @Sart, I stand by my defense above and still think it's also nearly inconceivable that Straw is an elim, and therefore request you reconsider.

 

With that lead gone, I will instead vote on Fifth. I feel a bit less sure about this one, but Fifth's accusal of Rand this cycle feels a tad uncharacteristic, I suppose.

@everyone, voting is good. It takes basically no effort to actually vote, and while theoretically it'd be nice if all our votes were excellently reasoned, I'd sooner just everyone share what's on their mind, because even sharing thoughts with literally no analysis still improves the quality of everybody else's analysis.

[DeTess]

@Fifth Scholar, you bring up some good points against me, and I can see why village!fifth would come to the conclusion that I must be an elim. I don't have much else to say apart from the fact that what I posted really did represent my feelings regarding Len's alignment, in that he looked a bit off, but I really wasn't sure.

However, I did do a quick re-read of Fifth's posts in light of me looking at other people's interactions with Len, and something really odd stood out to me. He stated suspicion of Len during D1, but went with the Araris Lynch as he couldn't lynch Elenion by that time. But then During D2 he only ever brings Len up when explaining his vote on Araris or when correcting others misconception about Len's aggressiveness. He never seems to do anything to progress his read on Len or the way the D1 lynch turned out, and then parks his vote on Elephant Earwax because he was fairly inactive.

I don't know about my own apaprent hedginess, but if a team-mate might get lynched, wouldn't it be better to cut ties, keep your head down and let the village decide whether to lynch him or not?

I'm going to vote Fifth for now, based on the speed at which he was willing to accept Devotary's claim and turn it into a lynch elsewhere, and how his suspicion of Len seemed to go into hiding during D2 while it would have made a difference in the discussion around him.

Edit: I've still got a few minutes, so I've looked over Straw's interactions with Elenion, as Straw is another suspicion of mine, and they're basically entirely non-existent. Straw hasn't had direct interactions with a lot of people, so that in itself isn't suspicious. His vote against Sart did create a tie between Len and Sart though, which is suspicious, though neither of them had a lot of votes at that point and Straw's vote wasn't accompanied by a push to actually get the lynch switched to Sart.

Conclusion: Straw's interactions with Lena re fairly non-existent and  because Len doesn't stand out in this regard, fairly NAI.

Edited June 14, 2018 by randuir

[Bort]

9 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

Guys, I'm Miracle Max (inconceivable

Is your wife Miracle Max too?

[DrakeMarshall]

45 minutes ago, Bort said:

Is your wife Miracle Max too?

Everybody’s Miracle Max! It’s like that one game where almost everybody was neutral and Len was one of the only two real villagers 

[Fifth Scholar]

5 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

The thing with Rand is of interest, particularly Fifth's accusation, but I feel pretty undecided on either for now. No possibility is inconceivable. Rand actually took the effort to scrutinze Len's posts though, which is a small point in his favor. He also poked Len on day one, which is another small point in his favor.

I would say that poke-votes on someone are mostly NAI, and can be prime distancing techniques if used correctly. I would also argue that the way the Len/Rand exchange happened points to distancing. 

5 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

With that lead gone, I will instead vote on Fifth. I feel a bit less sure about this one, but Fifth's accusal of Rand this cycle feels a tad uncharacteristic, I suppose.

This seems like something you point out and explain, and not something you vote on a person for. In addition, I’d appreciate an explanation as to how my accusation is uncharacteristic of me so I can actually respond to your point. 

4 hours ago, randuir said:

However, I did do a quick re-read of Fifth's posts in light of me looking at other people's interactions with Len, and something really odd stood out to me. He stated suspicion of Len during D1, but went with the Araris Lynch as he couldn't lynch Elenion by that time. But then During D2 he only ever brings Len up when explaining his vote on Araris or when correcting others misconception about Len's aggressiveness. He never seems to do anything to progress his read on Len or the way the D1 lynch turned out, and then parks his vote on Elephant Earwax because he was fairly inactive.

I don't know about my own apaprent hedginess, but if a team-mate might get lynched, wouldn't it be better to cut ties, keep your head down and let the village decide whether to lynch him or not?

I'm going to vote Fifth for now, based on the speed at which he was willing to accept Devotary's claim and turn it into a lynch elsewhere, and how his suspicion of Len seemed to go into hiding during D2 while it would have made a difference in the discussion around him.

My suspicion of Len didn’t “go into hiding.” I state several times that I think Len might be evil, or certainly wasn’t village, on D2. While it may be mostly related to the Araris lynch, that was the main source of discussion D2 considering he had just flipped as Buttercup, and Len had interacted with him a lot. Finally, as you yourself know, I was struggling to do analysis D2, and didn’t really substantially analyze anybody, let alone Len, and mostly responded to points against me. Here are the posts, for reference: 

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Elim!Len, as stated before, is still aggressive. While it may seem disastrous for an Elim to strongly defend a player, keep in mind that this only holds if the player who is defended flips as an Eliminator, and since Elims already know who is who, they can come to the defense of a doomed villager without worry that the villager’s alignment will cast a negative light on them. 

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I’m still wary of an Elim!Len trying to pocket Araris, though.

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While I felt worst about the way Len jumped on Bugsy, Araris wasn’t looking the greatest to me either, so in addition to information gathering I also voted based off my slightly bad read of Araris.

In addition to all these points, I’d bring up that my vote stayed “parked” on Elephant because I had forgotten that the cycle extension was being retracted, and I thought I’d have 24 more hours to place a permanent vote. I likely would have voted Len had I remembered the cycle was regular length, and even say so in my first N2 post. 

So yeah. I never cut ties to Len, and my read on him was consistent between the first and second cycle, with me consistently leaning Elim on him. Your comments about Len always seemed to cut both ways, and you still came to a hedgy conclusion when you did your conclusive analysis on him. 

Finally: why did I trust Devotary’s claim? The way it was phrased, and the timing of the claim, indicated to me that the claim was true. While previous claims had no evidence to back up their positions, Devotary also stated who she had targeted each Night, and the claim was made with enough time for a counterclaim to arise. Even if the real Spainiard was inactive enough to not counterclaim immediately, or the timezone wasn’t ideal, Devotary would have eventually been outed and potentially killed by the real Spainiard if the claim was false, which would have sealed her death regardless. Also, since Devotary false-claimed to me last game as an Eliminator, I had an idea of how she did it, and the two instances simply didn’t match up. I’m also curious as to why you’re calling attention to this, since I was the one who was correct about Devotary’s claim, and your beliefs about it led you to kill a strong village role with a last-second vote that didn’t need to be last-second; you could have coherently argued against your lynch and why Devotary was a better target, and was potentially false-claiming. You did none of these things, electing instead to wait until the last second to place your vote on Devotary in a move that looks far more like a hammering Eliminator than a villager concerned with their survival.