Long Game 82: Secrets Written in Metal

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

10 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

They both had an extra life. Feruchemists are all eliminators.

Oh, um, I didn’t see Tani was attacked

But Mage

Edit: jinx

Edited December 7, 2021 by Ookla the Confused

[Kasimir he/him]

Oh yeah since I posted before I could finish my several trains of thought and I like to use the thread as my personal thinking space;

• If Sart wasn't going for vote dilution, we're left either with the conclusion that Sart was indifferent to Mage being lynched (note, this makes Mage Village or gives Mage an extra life), or Sart miscalculated, both by thinking he could get away with a vote on Szeth and thinking he could attract people to a Szeth train.
   
• My main issue is that my pool has become so small it's a struggle. If I temporarily mark Szeth and Araris as my strongest current Village reads, then one way or another, I'm forced to look at Tani and Mage and Danex and I've sort of hit the point where it's clear I have to re-evaluate something. I am not sure it makes sense with their voting behaviour in general but this has been a low activity game so IDK if that's what is confounding the issue.
   
• We had three kills last night. My guess would be the Elim kill hit Illwei - no reasonable Villager should have targeted Illwei after the D2 votes. This means someone took a shot at Archer, and I'm claiming the Tani attack. Would be good if we can clarify who hit Archer - otherwise we may have a spare floating Thug kill and that has the potential to confound matters even more.
   
• We know for a fact that Sart was under threat for part of D1. Of the active voters that day, there's me, there's Araris, there's Szeth, and there's Danex. On the assumption that I am currently not about to revise my Village reads of Araris and Szeth for now, we have to either conclude that one of me and Danex is Evil, or that the Elims just didn't really care about Sart being under threat (why?) This also basically necessitates we have to look for our Elim either in the <Danex, me> pool or the <Tani, Mage> pool.

/shrug IDK I'd like to hear thoughts really as I feel my reasoning has become too narrow at the moment.

[Quivil]

Mage.

Who hasn't been stabbed yet?

@Kasimir @Ookla the Porched @Ookla the Confused @Mage have yous been stabbed?

 

Edit:

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

We had three kills last night. My guess would be the Elim kill hit Illwei - no reasonable Villager should have targeted Illwei after the D2 votes. This means someone took a shot at Archer, and I'm claiming the Tani attack. Would be good if we can clarify who hit Archer - otherwise we may have a spare floating Thug kill and that has the potential to confound matters even more.

It could have been Illwei who killed Archer.

Edit2: I'm sorry. I should have said that later. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos

[Mage he/him]

 

2 hours ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

Who hasn't been stabbed yet?

No one has attempted to kill me yet.

So @Kasimir, you think it was the elims that killed Illwei, and you are claiming the shot on Tani.

@Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos, you think that it could have been Illwei who took out Archer? If no one claims that one then I'll agree with you.

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

3 hours ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

Mage.

Who hasn't been stabbed yet?

@Kasimir @Ookla the Porched @Ookla the Confused @Mage have yous been stabbed?

 

Edit:

It could have been Illwei who killed Archer.

Edit2: I'm sorry. I should have said that later. 

I haven’t

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Okay, so we have confirmed that Tani and Danex have extra lives. But I disagree with Szeth's assessment; with all the village kills running around this game, the elims must have some way to not get NKed. Or there were 4 to start, I suppose, but I don't find that very likely.

Who does it make sense to have been elims with Sart?

We have Szeth, Kas, Mage, Danex, and Tani. The voting last cycle with Mage is confusing, because I don't understand how neither Sart nor Mage voting in self-preservation makes sense. If Mage is elim, then that pretty much clears Kas (unless Mage has an extra life, which we don't know about). I'd probably put Danex as the third elim, based on Tani's quick jump to vote on Mage this cycle.

If Mage is village, then Kas is my best guess for first elim. And Tani/Danex would probably be the other, both of whom only have one life, so they shouldn't be too hard to kill off. However, that doesn't account for the possibility of Szeth being elim. I'm not sure if it makes sense for Szeth to be an elim, but I'm hesitant to make any conclusions based on Sart's vote last cycle, since he didn't vote in self-preservation in the first place. And the rest of Szeth's contributions are tunnels, which at this point are worth less and less. @Ookla the Confused, can you elaborate on who you think Mage's teammate might be and why, and who you think the elims would be if Mage flips village? @Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos and @ookla the quantificational, can you do something similar?

I know I didn't reach much of a conclusion in this post, but I'm got some other gaming to do tonight and this is going to require a bit of a reread. I'm going to vote on Danex for now, for the reasoning above about being a teammate with Mage or Kas, combined with having definitely lost an extra life (and thus being practically certain to give us a flip this cycle) and his D1 vote on the non-Sart train.

[Quivil]

 

Quote

@Ookla the Confused, can you elaborate on who you think Mage's teammate might be and why, and who you think the elims would be if Mage flips village? @Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos and @ookla the quantificational, can you do something similar?

Who I think is Mage's teammate: Danex?

Who would be elim if Mage flips elim vil (thanks Araris!): Still Danex? After Danex I suspect Kas most.

Danex hasn't talked for several in game days. It shouldn't've taken him this long to get back on the Shard, by what he said D1.

---

Szeth, Mage, and Kas (iirc) still have two lives. Of those, I think Kas is most suspicious to me. Gutread Szeth vil. Mage: Most people think he's elim. Kas: Gutread elim, probably because of something my sister did once in an Avalon game. No concrete proof. If I had to rank it, it wouldn't even be reasonable suspicion.

---

I'm using my kill tonight.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos

[Kasimir he/him]

3 hours ago, Mage said:

So @Kasimir, you think it was the elims that killed Illwei, and you are claiming the shot on Tani.

Yes - I declared my target pool on N2 but didn't want to directly say it in case the Elims wanted to go for a double-tap since I was RNGing for a Villager. But even if I'd done analysis, I wouldn't have wanted to have declared it on the offchance I was right and an Elim had a protect and was determined to use it. I don't see anyone counterclaiming this right now and more importantly, no reasonable Villager should have shot Illwei. Illwei made the confirming vote on Sart. That should not put her in FAFO territory for any Village Coinshot paying attention.

6 hours ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

@Kasimir @Ookla the Porched @Ookla the Confused @Mage have yous been stabbed?

Nope but the Elims are welcome to try. Or Village really as I'm low on bandwidth despite my earlier valiant attempt.

2 hours ago, Ookla the Porched said:

The voting last cycle with Mage is confusing, because I don't understand how neither Sart nor Mage voting in self-preservation makes sense.

I feel like either way you swing it, we have to postulate more inactive players as the Elim team. Which is a formal set that should include me, Danex, Mage, so that's not very helpful as we return to the crux of the problem. I don't know if Szeth was on but Tani had the ability to change the voting results but did not, due to her late withdrawal from the votes. This should put her off the table today, I think. (Sorry Tani, should've done analysis before shooting you I guess but I was pressed for time  It's ok, you can shoot me back.)

One of the reasons I can see no self-pres besides inactivity is if both players were Evil - so the Elim team is indifferent to the result. Minimally we have to postulate either (inclusive-or) a primarily inactive Elim team, or one that was not invested in the result.

I feel like if this lynch doesn't work out, we should start talking about our secondary abilities or night actions. I obviously admitted to having a one-shot kill but I think we will soon near the point where secrecy just allows the Elim team to blend in, and it doesn't matter that much anyway. It may allow us to narrow down the pool.

[Mage he/him]

3 hours ago, Ookla the Porched said:

I know I didn't reach much of a conclusion in this post, but I'm got some other gaming to do tonight and this is going to require a bit of a reread. I'm going to vote on Danex for now, for the reasoning above about being a teammate with Mage or Kas, combined with having definitely lost an extra life (and thus being practically certain to give us a flip this cycle) and his D1 vote on the non-Sart train.

 

28 minutes ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

Danex hasn't talked for several in game days. It shouldn't've taken him this long to get back on the Shard, by what he said D1.

 

17 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

One of the reasons I can see no self-pres besides inactivity is if both players were Evil - so the Elim team is indifferent to the result. Minimally we have to postulate either (inclusive-or) a primarily inactive Elim team, or one that was not invested in the result.

Yeah, that's my bad on the D2 vote. It didn't even cross my mind.

I think exeing Danex today could give us some good information. I know he hasn't spoken much (which is sus in its own right), but the fact that he only has one life remaining killing him could actually get us some more info and progress the game farther.

Danex

[Araris Valerian he/him]

10 minutes ago, Mage said:

I think exeing Danex today could give us some good information.

Could you elaborate? Like, who do you think would be teammates with Danex, and who would you be suspicious of if Danex turns out to be village?

[Kasimir he/him]

3 hours ago, Ookla the Porched said:

I'm going to vote on Danex for now, for the reasoning above about being a teammate with Mage or Kas

How are you squaring this with the general lack of reaction to votes on Danex? Sart didn't move onto Szeth because of the Danex train. Sart goes onto Szeth after Archer goes onto Mage. I can be persuaded to swap my vote but teammates reasoning doesn't appeal to me - it's sort of saying, "If Mage or Kas is Evil then Danex is Evil", in which case, why not just vote for the people you actually think are Evil?

I'm more persuaded by his Archer vote, but then he was also very apathetic about removing it so I don't know how strongly I feel about that. I guess he could be too inactive to take it off once Sart was safe...

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

1 hour ago, Ookla the Porched said:

@Ookla the Confused

If Mage flips vil, I'd say both you and Kas are evil. A Sart/Araris/Kas team seems almost scarily plausible to me.

If Mage is confirmed elim, it's probably just you. Either that, my theory is wrong, Kas was bussing, or I'm elim.

[Mage he/him]

22 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

Could you elaborate? Like, who do you think would be teammates with Danex, and who would you be suspicious of if Danex turns out to be village?

Kas for one. He has been rather back and forth on Danex, at some points citing his suspicions, at another questioning your vote on him. Then he is still voting me, and voted Danex D1.

@Kasimir, remind me your reasoning for voting Danex D1, then switching to me. Is it just because you are more suspicious of me, or did Danex do something to decrease suspicion on him that I missed? I'm not hard set in this Danex vote.

[Kasimir he/him]

26 minutes ago, Mage said:

@Kasimir, remind me your reasoning for voting Danex D1, then switching to me. Is it just because you are more suspicious of me, or did Danex do something to decrease suspicion on him that I missed? I'm not hard set in this Danex vote.

With Danex D1, I just felt that Danex's vote on Archer was either opportunistic or being Illwei (i.e. bait.) More likely opportunistic since I don't recall Danex has a history of Illwei behaviour. Whenever players are tied in votes or very close in votes and another player swoops in out of the blue to add a vote, that looks weird to me, and I think it should reasonably raise suspicions that a player is invested in tie-breaking. Plus, it was D1, and I like motivating discussion as I think the Village shouldn't narrow down votes and targets - I've said this a few times but the best thing Meta told me in this game was to keep my suspicions fluid. I take part of that to be broadening the window for discussion.

To be clear, I did not vote you D1. In fact, I was not really thrilled by you being voted as a lynch target on D1, as Contribution Crusade votes require a certain set of assumptions to succeed.

Quote

I'm looking at this again. I'm not a fan of contribution crusade lynches. I think they can be easy places for Elims to hide, but they're useful in allowing us to exclude certain options.

This means of the current live, viable options:

• Archer
• Mage
• Illwei

I'm most eh about the Mage lynch. I think it's a bit too late in the cycle to veer there and hope for the best. I have no particularly strong feelings about Archer or Illwei. I'm not a fan of the argument that Evil Illwei might gun for an Village Archer lynch D1 if she can because Eiwlil gonna Eiwlil. 

(Historially, CC failed because it happened during the inactivity blight and no amount of voting gets genuine inactives to stop being inactive. You could get lucky by hitting on an inactive Elim and maybe baiting their teammates to defend them, but otherwise, it generally means active Elims don't face any pressure and it gives them an easy out in voting, which more or less defangs the lynch as a Village tool. It does work if your Elims are lurking though, and in some cases like ours, if we are facing a low activity game anyway, then we more or less are forced to it eventually, but on D1? Without even establishing if the Elims were low activity or the game was low activity? Eh.)

On D2, I was tempted to vote Danex but there was a significant amount of thread apathy which made both Archer and myself concerned that this was because no Elim was being endangered in the votes, Danex sort of read too disengaged to be am Elim (but that was a tone read and I don't put too much stock on tone reads). I voted Tani because she had an opportunistic vote on Danex and came in right after Archer. It was a good place for an Elim to be: seemingly active but also a vote that might not be questioned too much. Then I swapped to Araris because I wanted a bit more pressure on Araris and distrusted how he was framing my posts as non-committal - felt like he was trying to set me up as a mislynch target. Also, at the very start of the Day, Tani voted for Danex very shortly after Archer did. As I said, I don't like narrowing down discussion, and Danex was the lead train anyway and I had plenty of time to swap over, so why create a three-vote train when I could apply pressure elsewhere and try to cause discussion?

I swapped to you because I saw you lurking in the thread, it'd been a while since you posted you were catching up with the posts not materialising, and I generally want to make sure there is less cover for lurking Elims so I decided you could do with some pressure, reasoning that if you were an Elim and lurking, this would likely get you to say more, which would help us catch you

In general, I was fine with the existing trains. I had no hard suspicions of Sart (my read had been "This is too kayana to be an Elim") but he wasn't actually moving into my "likely Villager so I'm not voting for him" set, meaning I was happy with him potentially facing death. I might have moved off you but I generally don't like to create a reasonable expectation I will move off stab votes immediately as soon as someone posts, because that reduces the pressure a player feels. And I was rushing for time and realised I could not be on the Shard again before rollover, and you were in my "don't care if they get lynched" pool (which to be clear, was everyone not Szeth or Illwei that cycle) so I just shrugged and left it to the dice gods.

Edited to add:

26 minutes ago, Mage said:

Kas for one. He has been rather back and forth on Danex, at some points citing his suspicions, at another questioning your vote on him. Then he is still voting me, and voted Danex D1.

 

It's almost as though I'm confused and actually trying to find Elims rather than already knowing who needs to be defended from the start...  

Edited December 8, 2021 by Kasimir

[Araris Valerian he/him]

27 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I can be persuaded to swap my vote but teammates reasoning doesn't appeal to me - it's sort of saying, "If Mage or Kas is Evil then Danex is Evil", in which case, why not just vote for the people you actually think are Evil?

I guess the issue stems from my general reluctance to vote out active players when there are inactive ones that are in the same level of suspicion. 

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

One of the reasons I can see no self-pres besides inactivity is if both players were Evil - so the Elim team is indifferent to the result. Minimally we have to postulate either (inclusive-or) a primarily inactive Elim team, or one that was not invested in the result.

This is a good point, and something I've given some thought. But I think the only way this happens is if the 3rd player is also quiet. 

27 minutes ago, Ookla the Confused said:

If Mage flips vil, I'd say both you and Kas are evil. A Sart/Araris/Kas team seems almost scarily plausible to me.

If Mage is confirmed elim, it's probably just you. Either that, my theory is wrong, Kas was bussing, or I'm elim.

So I'm elim either way? What has you convinced of my alignment?

1 hour ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

Who I think is Mage's teammate: Danex?

Who would be elim if Mage flips elim: Still Danex? After Danex I suspect Kas most.

I presume where I've bolded that you mean to say village. And it seems like you think Danex is elim no matter what.

So Szeth thinks the elims are Mage+me, Tani thinks they are Danex+Mage/Kas, Mage thinks they are Danex+Kas, and Kas thinks they are in Danex/Tani/Mage. And I think it's reasonable to assume that one of Kas's suspicions is correct. Kas is really the only person in this list I'd suspect of distancing at this point, so that (and the current votes) suggest that Mage+Danex is not the elim team. Mage could be trying to distance if he sees his death as inevitable, but that doesn't really fit the tone of his posts. That leaves us with elim!Mage being distanced by a teammate, which I doubt Tani would do. Regardless, I think this leads to one of Kas/Szeth being elim. And they've both put out enough content that I should be able to pin down which one of them makes more sense. But it's late, so I'll finish this up tomorrow

[Kasimir he/him]

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

I guess the issue stems from my general reluctance to vote out active players when there are inactive ones that are in the same level of suspicion. 

Eh. I would normally be more concerned about this for Contribution Crusade reasons, but given this game has primarily been inactive, I'll grant that.

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

This is a good point, and something I've given some thought. But I think the only way this happens is if the 3rd player is also quiet. 

Why so?

[Araris Valerian he/him]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

7 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

This is a good point, and something I've given some thought. But I think the only way this happens is if the 3rd player is also quiet. 

Why so?

Said player could easily have either voted for a side train or on Sart/Mage for better odds or to get village credit respectively. And now I've realized that this contradicts what I just posted, kind of. Anyway, it's bedtime, I'll sort it out tomorrow.

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

29 minutes ago, Ookla the Porched said:

So I'm elim either way? What has you convinced of my alignment?

Process of elim-ination

haha get it

[Kasimir he/him]

1 hour ago, Ookla the Porched said:

Said player could easily have either voted for a side train or on Sart/Mage for better odds or to get village credit respectively. And now I've realized that this contradicts what I just posted, kind of. Anyway, it's bedtime, I'll sort it out tomorrow.

That's what baffles me. Let's look again at the possibilities and pathwalk:

A. Sart and Mage are both Evil. There is no other teammate.

IMO, in this scenario, the reason why there is no self-pres is a combination of inactivity and apathy. Both are Elim so they would not have gotten a better result by self-presing. This scenario requires that Mage also be a Feruchemist without an extra life. Otherwise, if Mage does have an extra life, then Sart (and Mage) are absurdly inactive. Which is not impossible but strikes me as an unlikely extent of inactivity.

tldr; Elim team: <Sart, Mage>

B. Sart is Evil, Mage is Village. Sart has one teammate.

Why didn't Sart and Mage self-pres? Likely suggests team inactivity, and inactivity on Mage's part. If Sart has one teammate, the teammate either has to be inactive - pointing to <Tani, Danex>. I think it's more likely to be Danex in this scenario because Tani was on and withdrew her vote from Danex. She could have influenced the cycle by voting for Mage, or by padding out a side-train. She chose not to. It might be the case Tani has a decent risk appetite, I suppose, and she was fine with a 50% chance of death for Sart, but eh. Padding a side-train wouldn't have put her decently at risk, and she could have voted for you or Archer.

The other option is that it's me - I voted alongside Archer on the Mage train. This explains the lack of Elim activity because it was already there. Unfortunately, I'm not accepting this as an answer but I'm formally listing it anyway so if I get two-shoted, one of you will hopefully look at the possibilities again  

I don't know if Szeth was on near the end of cycle, enough to swing the outcome. But either way, Szeth was not inactive, and Szeth could have swapped off Araris, so that doesn't really gel either.

tldr; Elim team: <Sart> + <Tani/Danex> / <Kas>

C. Sart and Mage are both Evil. There is another teammate.

I think in this scenario, it makes no sense for me to be Evil. I could easily have pulled off Mage rather than causing a tie between Elims. I could, at the same time, have reasonably stacked back onto Araris or onto Archer to reduce Sart's chances of death. This is a better outcome for the Elim team.

Sart and Mage not self-presing makes a bit less sense in this scenario, and I think this is what Araris means. What would it take for Sart and Mage to both be Evil with another teammate? Mage not self-presing becomes weird because there was at least one viable Villager train: Archer. (Likely Araris too.) It requires some Elim apathy in Sart's case, and makes it likely Mage doesn't have an extra life. If Mage did, it would be reasonable to divert the train to hit Mage instead, because the lack of a flip is a better result for Elims than an actual Elim flip. 

Sart and Mage being Evil likely entails Mage doesn't have an extra life. It requires all three members of the Elim team be inactive or borderline inactive. In this scenario, this once again points us to <Tani, Danex.> And again, in my view, it gives us a preference for Danex, because Tani did not intervene.

Something odd about this scenario: we're looking at a three man Elim-team plus a Thug (Danex survived a kill), which is a bit strong, I think, even in a game with multiple Thug Villagers. It's a nine-player game after all.

tldr; Elim team: <Sart> + <Mage> + <Tani/Danex>

D. Sart is Evil, Mage is Village. There are two other teammates.

Sart's lack of self-pres in this scenario appears to be inactivity. Same for Mage's lack of self-pres. Who are the potential teammates? Well, our fundamental pool has to be: <Tani, Danex, Szeth, Kas>.

Tani makes the least sense. She could have intervened, and ex hypothesi, none of the other trains involved a teammate (Archer, Araris.) So let's exclude Tani from our pool.

Szeth I think also makes less sense. Unless Szeth was not on at the end of the cycle ( @Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos, @Ookla the Porched, @Ookla the Confused, @Mage, @ookla the quantificational - can any of you confirm this?) - Szeth had tunnelled substantially on Archer so I don't think it would have raised too many eyebrows if Szeth just hopped from Araris back to Archer, creating a 2/3 shot at a Villager death. Szeth could have also broken the tie.

This really only leaves us with one possible combination: <Kas, Danex>.

tldr; Elim team: <Sart> + <Kas, Danex>

I'm going to exclude four-player possibilities. Those are just patently absurd. Similarly, Araris makes little sense as a teammate in any of the four scenarios because he could have pulled his vote from Sart.

From my perspective, D is a non-starter because it requires me to be Evil. I'm just going to ignore it.

Given what I've laid out, I think the logical take in this case is to go for Danex. I'm moving from Mage then. The only live scenarios for me are A, B (Danex rather than me), and C. Danex is Evil in two of them, and when Danex isn't, Mage is. In the two Elim scenario, Mage might very well have an extra life. So I'd prefer to go for Danex.

The main escape hatch I can see pertains to Szeth (possible, hence my request for information), or Tani being an extreme busser but that doesn't really make sense I don't think.

Edited to add: What's everyone's current thoughts on Elim team composition? For instance, a three man team with two Thugs (functionally.) Too strong or plausible? I think this might help us rule out C or D depending.

Edited to add 2: No wait hang on a tick. How many players do we know of who have one-shot kills? There's me, there's Illwei (presumably), there's Tani, there's Archer. That's at least nearly 50% the player-base with kills. Even with Thug-life, a two person Elim team just seems a bit on the weak side. This commits me to C, but then there's Mage's willingness to get Danex killed. 

...I'm going to scream because this drek makes no frithing sense why.

Bah. I'm sticking with my original reasoning and Danex. We can re-evaluate after that.

Edited to add 3: I guess I'm not gonna let this go because as I've been complaining to Mat and Wyrm, the only reasonable orthodox 'follows doctrine' Elim team I can work out has me on it which is a trippy experience when you start questioning your own alignment...

Me right now:

Spoiler

H'okay. Let's try again.

Suppose that the number of one-shot kills entails at least one Thug, and/or a three man team.

Probably Village:

• Araris
• Szeth

Araris was one of the two Sart voters, and had pushed on Sart D1 as well. Szeth tunnelled on Archer, and Araris and Szeth both seemed very engaged in trying to work that out D1. Araris generally has been proactive, which is sometimes not what I see from him as an Elim, though it could very well be due to the low activity level of this game. Szeth could have saved Sart or at least diluted the vote by voting for Archer.

Possible defeaters:

Araris has a busing rep. I feel as though Araris could have been okay with the risk, having felt there was no good way to withdraw his vote. Araris has been okay with ties before. This is a bit odd because he created the tie, but he's also known to have a decent risk appetite as an Elim. 

Szeth was looking for a simple place to park his vote. And Szeth didn't have the time to log back on to save Sart. Or Szeth is a busser.

Likely Village:

• Tani

Could intervene to save Sart, but didn't.

Possible defeaters:

Tani could be a busser. Or she might not have noticed the vote count. But trading a member is always a rough deal for the Elims, and it feels like both Tani and Szeth could have saved Sart without incurring too much suspicion.

Help I'm Going In Circles:

• Mage
• Danex

Danex's sus vote, and also, process of elimination.

Possible defeaters:

Mage is gung-ho on Danex. But Mage could be busing, and I think we don't know enough about Team Feruchemist's abilities to know if this is a power sacrifice, or just because Danex is so inactive that Danex is a better choice. 

---

I'm left with two choices. Go Danex, which is reasonable, I think, but then again, I'm always wary when one of my pool goes for the other, especially in a blackout game, because if it'd tactically hurt the Elims more to lose a different player, I'd rather do that. Or I can go Mage, but that's at the expense of passing up a potential guaranteed lynch.

Let's look at numbers. We're currently 4-2. I have an extra life. So does Szeth. The Feruchemists win when they outnumber us, which means that - yeah, okay, I'm staying on Danex. We can cross the later bridges when we get to them, but if Danex is Elim, we have a guaranteed lynch and that kicks the Feruchemist wincon further away from them, which I am absolutely down for.

At this point I'm doubting all my reads because I don't know if <Mage, Danex, Sart> makes sense as a team but it's the best I can do, so given my priors, going for Danex is the most sensible move.

One problem at a time.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Kasimir
Edited for spelling - busser, not buser

[Quivil]

6 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Sart and Mage being Evil likely entails Mage doesn't have an extra life. It requires all three members of the Elim team be inactive or borderline inactive. In this scenario, this once again points us to <Tani, Danex.> And again, in my view, it gives us a preference for Danex, because Tani did not intervene.

Objection! I'm lurking, not inactive.

7 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Help I'm Going In Circles:

This is the best section title ever.

---

Kas is slightly less sus now but I'm not telling why and only slightly.

---

Danex for reasons given earlier. Including others' reasons.

---

VC:

Mage(1): Szeth

Danex(4): Kas, Mage, Araris, Tani

[Kasimir he/him]

21 minutes ago, Ookla of Anarchy and Chaos said:

Objection! I'm lurking, not inactive.

I know you are. But from the perspective of activity profiling, you're essentially in the same bracket of low activity. The fact you are lurking and haven't intervened despite having the capability to save Sart is what has led to me removing you from the Help I'm Going In Circles pool.

Then again, I don't know. Maybe Sart was bused. Maybe Araris decided to take the gamble with the coinflip. Maybe that's where all my reasoning is going wrong because thus far, my key assumption is that the Elims would intervene if given the opportunity. But is this the correct assumption? I'm thinking again about the numbers and actually, if we're postulating a 3-man Elim team, then this is almost lylo. But I don't know if they'd willingly stomach the pain of losing Sart because this gives them a rockier path to victory, in my view. So I don't think I'm willing to revise that basic assumption just yet.

Look.

We're 4-2 now, on the presumption this is a 3-man Elim team. We could be 5-1 but we have to play to the presumption that we are in the worst scenario, so suppose we're 4-2. Right now, we're set to lynch Danex. Danex should die, minus any weird Feruchemical vote-storing powers like that game where Gleeman stole Wilson's body.

If Danex is Elim, we go to the Night on 4-1, which sucks for the Elim team, but unless Tani is Evil (sorry ;___; ), there's a guaranteed kill for the Elim team. Shoot Tani, and we go into the day 3-1. Wargaming that one is more difficult - if Danex is Elim, suppose for the sake of argument the other Elim has no extra life. Or soddit, let's branch it.

A. No Extra Life

In the worst case, the lynch keeps us at 3-1 but someone else loses a life. The Elims kill that person at night to bring us to 2-1. That's lylo then, barring assumptions about extra Village kills.

B. An Extra Life

More room for error than in the No Extra Life case, basically.

If Danex is Village, we go to the Night on 3-2. Unless Tani is Evil or one of you has a Lurch in your pocket, or unless one of the Elims lacks an extra life and Tani shoots well, it's game over - Tani is a guaranteed kill because she is down a life (SORRY ;___; ) It's not a guaranteed lylo but the potential to lose the game N3 if we play this Day badly is real.

None of this factors in additional Village kills flying around.

But yeah, I'm starting to think again about the one-shot kills because in a game where we assume everyone is a Thug, granting Elims secondary kills no matter how limited more or less gives them a free guaranteed kill, which somewhat takes away the point of the Thugs. Ultimately I can't work out how the balance would go but I think if Tani does have a one-shot, slight Village credence there as well.

...And I should be studying and not trying to break my head on why I can't make sense of which scenario we're most likely in and who my likely Elim team guess is. Welp.

[Quivil]

16 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

If Danex is Elim, we go to the Night on 4-1, which sucks for the Elim team, but unless Tani is Evil (sorry ;___; ), there's a guaranteed kill for the Elim team. Shoot Tani, and we go into the day 3-1. Wargaming that one is more difficult - if Danex is Elim, suppose for the sake of argument the other Elim has no extra life. Or soddit, let's branch it.

A. No Extra Life

In the worst case, the lynch keeps us at 3-1 but someone else loses a life. The Elims kill that person at night to bring us to 2-1. That's lylo then, barring assumptions about extra Village kills.

B. An Extra Life

More room for error than in the No Extra Life case, basically.

@Ookla the Pianist Does the NK go first or does the coinshot go first or are they simultaneus? Do we get to know?

Also, I still don't know exactly what lylo means... tho I have the general idea.

[Kasimir he/him]

Huh. Good question - I'd like to know the answer. I've just been assuming they're the same as I can't see much reason a GM would differentiate them but who knows.

@Ookla the Pianist - What happens if the last Villager standing has a one-shot vig kill, it's night, and there's one Elim remaining? Assume for the same of this case that both of them are down to one life.

Lylo is a shortform of lynch and lose - or rather, mislynch and lose. I've seen exe and lose or rather, misexe and lose here as well. So exlo.

...Is this where I make a kylo ren joke.

Hello, lylo
Hello, lylo

[dannnex male]

14 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Lylo is a shortform of lynch and lose - or rather, mislynch and lose.

I've always thought of it as Lynch or Lose. /shrug

 

So um
i should not have signed up for this game
finals week is stressful

but i think i'm leading the votes rn, so a self-pres vote would be appropriate? uhhh i think that's Mage then maybe?

@Ookla the Pianist can i get a VC?

[Kasimir he/him]

3 minutes ago, ookla the quantificational said:

I've always thought of it as Lynch or Lose. /shrug

...No, you're right, my brain isn't working. Lynch right or lose, thanks Danex.