Long Game 94: The Call of the Forest of Hell

[Mat he/him]

3 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

Okay, I'm so annoyed. I started the game with a Pallid Mask. And I was passing it to Kas last night but it failed because someone stole it off me. If we get to know that the Mask ends up in the hands on an elim at a later stage of the game, we know there is an evil Thief in the game.

I don't think that's how thieves work? They just find items, not steal them, if I'm reading the rules right.

[DeTess she/her]

4 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

Okay, I'm so annoyed. I started the game with a Pallid Mask. And I was passing it to Kas last night but it failed because someone stole it off me. If we get to know that the Mask ends up in the hands on an elim at a later stage of the game, we know there is an evil Thief in the game.

Thief can't steal items though? And pass item is last in the ooa so it should have protected you against actions to steal it? 

[Elandera she/her]

Clarification about Wrath of Shades:

The chance only increases when someone dies via an attack from another player. "Draw blood" is a stylized way of saying it.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Elandera

[|TJ| he/him]

5 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I don't think that's how thieves work? They just find items, not steal them, if I'm reading the rules right.

5 minutes ago, DeTess said:

Thief can't steal items though? And pass item is last in the ooa so it should have protected you against actions to steal it? 

>> yes my bad Elandera just clarified that. Someone targeted me and it got used up before I could pass it. 

[Elandera she/her]

34 minutes ago, DeTess said:

@Elandera does the shade expert have to specify what they are protecting someone from (so an SE has to say, protecting X from shades, which meant a crossbow could get through?). 

@Alvron@Archer, Assuming one of you got attacked by the elims, which would you believe to be more likely?

No, it'll protect against one attack from any source without needing to specify.

[DeTess she/her]

@|TJ|do you have iron will?

[DeTess she/her]

@Elandera, just checking, if 'drawing blood' is killing another player, does that also mean that wrath of shades only naturally triggers on someone succesfully killing a player, and can't trigger on someone getting succesfully protected by non-shade expert protection?

[Elandera she/her]

1 minute ago, DeTess said:

@Elandera, just checking, if 'drawing blood' is killing another player, does that also mean that wrath of shades only naturally triggers on someone succesfully killing a player, and can't trigger on someone getting succesfully protected by non-shade expert protection?

Correct. The only time it will trigger without a death first is when a Shade Expert is involved. 

[DeTess she/her]

And since the shade attack percentage did not go up, I think we know for a fact that sart must have attacked someone with a crossbow but ran into a shade expert's protection.

I'll have some more thoughts on this later, not fully awake yet.

[|TJ| he/him]

15 minutes ago, DeTess said:

@|TJ|do you have iron will?

No, I don't have any protection from insanity. So I was targeted in non-lethal ways, I think White Fox block and Spellbook are the only options. 

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

7 minutes ago, DeTess said:

And since the shade attack percentage did not go up, I think we know for a fact that sart must have attacked someone with a crossbow but ran into a shade expert's protection.

So his target was probably Archer since Sart mentioned wanting to take a look at him. I don't see Archer being protected by a village shade expert (unless he is one) since he was under suspicion. That leaves Alvron as the elim kill maybe? That's a lot of protection floating around. Or they withheld to frame a roleblock target.

5 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

No, I don't have any protection from insanity. So I was targeted in non-lethal ways, I think White Fox block and Spellbook are the only options. 

Yes, that was me. It was between you and TKN since I didn't think e!Araris would have claimed the silver dust if he was going to submit a kill.

[DeTess she/her]

I realized one other potential scenario that fits the evidence, but it's a much longer shot:

Sart got attacked and killed by the elims, which immediately triggered the wrath if shades, resetting it. The elim then survived due to some form of protection (but if they didn't gave iron will, they would be insane). The odds of this are only 5% though, so the crossbow scenario is more likely.

[---]

Uhm

So...we kill tj...or....

Edit: mvm not so confident but still...

Edited May 1, 2023 by Illwei

[Kasimir he/him]

I can add one more piece to the puzzle  (Sorry, really had a rough day/night due to sickness, am back now.)

...I got attacked

Three complications:

1. I claimed Glowsap to someone I didn't fully trust (sorry ) - but I would not be surprised if an Elim tried to target me anyway

2. I don't really believe any reasonable Village crossbowman would attack me after the events of N1-D2.

3. I lied  I was trying to see if I can bait a second Elim shot at me for the doubletap. I have Silver Bones. Well, had. And to clarify - no, I asked Elan D2 when I was trying to work everything out. Silver Bones only protects me from insanity if Silver Bones is triggered. So if I'm attacked and the attack doesn't touch Silver Bones, then welp.

Edited to add:

Sorry - uh, 4. - Entailment. I probably got hit by the Elim kill unless someone did something insane with a spellbook targeting me and a crossbow player which, you know, also sounds kind of Elim-like because why the chulls would you randomly hit me with a redirect if you don't know how it works.

Edited to add 2:

The % indeed means that Wrath was triggered, which means there are several possibilities:

-The Elim kill was unlucky and triggered the Wrath %
-The Sart kill triggered the Wrath %
-As someone speculated, a retaliatory kill was triggered, which reset the Wrath %. The fact we only see one death suggests it hit someone with Silver Bones, a protect and Iron Will, or, you know, Alv  

@Archer - was the Sart kill you? Since Alv disowns it.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Kasimir

[Kasimir he/him]

Sorry, Araris. Still struggling to make my mind up about you.

To me, this means we are actually looking at three kills no matter what.

1. Elim kill on me. (I regret I only had but one extra life to give for the Village!)
2. Crossbow kill (?)
3. Wrath kill (?)

I guess there's a world in which an Elim spellbook user gets Sart to target me with a redirect, Sart happens to be using a crossbow, and dies to Wrath through sheer bad luck. IDK.

Wrath was very clearly triggered, so IDK. I need a tea and some more meds before trying to theorise.

[DeTess she/her]

@KasimirWrath only gets triggered if the target actually dies, so the kill against you couldn't have triggered the wrath as you're still alive. If I understand you correctly, you were saved by Silver bones this time,right? In that case the possible scenarios are:

1. Elims attack Kasmir, Sart attacks someone protected by SE and gets hit by shades in retalitation, dying to it.
2. Sart attacks Kasimir, elims attack and kill Sart and trigger wrath, but survive due to SE or other form of protection.

The first scenario sounds a lot more likely, even if we take redirects into account. Sart never claimed crossbow but did have up to two PM's, so might have claimed to the wrong person in one of those.

In case of Scenario 1, Sart probably attacked 1 of Alvron and Archer, and Archer sia bit more likely as Sart mentioned them as someone to investigate in their last post. However, I am having a hard time figuring out why a v!se would protect either Archer or Alvron, as Devotary or Kasimir are far more likely targets. An e!SE would probably be protecting their team-mates though...

In scenario 2, the elim that attacked Sart would be at risk of going insane unless they had Iron will, so again Archer and Alvron look suspicious.

Could someone that played previously give me an idea about how many Iron will's the elim team is likely to have? If it's likely just the one Aman had then I feel pretty confident in saying that one of Alvron or Archer is an elim.

[Kasimir he/him]

2 minutes ago, DeTess said:

Sart never claimed crossbow but did have up to two PM's, so might have claimed to the wrong person in one of those.

Possible, but worth noting Sart's not the most chatty guy in PMs. Or, you know, he just hates me. Also possible. Have never been able to get more than three messages out of him.

3 minutes ago, DeTess said:

Could someone that played previously give me an idea about how many Iron will's the elim team is likely to have? If it's likely just the one Aman had then I feel pretty confident in saying that one of Alvron or Archer is an elim.

I think this iteration is different enough it's difficult to say, because I was looking at the comp for the games before this, and it was:

• LG76 - Two Worshippers [=Cultists], Danforth (special role - immune to insanity but 20% action failure chance), Shade Expert (different flavour, only protects v. Shade attacks)/Silver Bones [here]
• LG60 - Dagon's Will [=Cultist but additional ability for a one-shot convert under specific circumstances], Deep One (immune to insanity, can make a player insane once a Turn, takes 33% of votes to lynch, 25% chance of kills failing on Deep One), Founder (immune to insanity but 20% action failure chance) [here]

So the Elims historically had (technically) one to two roles immune to insanity. Village-side, the corresponding numbers are: 

• LG76 - 2x Iron Will
• LG60 - 2x Iron Will

So there's a chance that the Elim team might have had another but unclear.

(For curiosity's sake - three Silver Bones in LG76, two of which were attached to Shade Experts. I know of three Silver Bones in this game. @DeTess How many Shade Experts do you think there are? My view is this isn't an Elim-aligned role because then Silver Dust loses value. Two Silver Bones in LG60, alongside the Deep One. That's about it.)

19 minutes ago, DeTess said:

An e!SE would probably be protecting their team-mates though

Fair point.

I would further add that I believe the Elim team may have a second player with Iron Will, just for a touch of redundancy, but it's not confirmed. It just feels otherwise that once you lose your DK the first time, your team is then stuck with potential insanity if you trigger Wrath even if you survive? IDK.

[DeTess she/her]

@Kasimir I'd say no more than 2 SE in the game, one for the elims, one for the village. It's not a small game so if Devo hadn't claimed white fox I might have considered the village having 1 more SE, but as it is two protective roles and a smattering of defensive items (silver bones, pallid masks and the like) should be plenty of defensive power for the village. I don't think that just because Aman had silver dust that it means the elims didn't also have an SE. It would provide a little bit of redundancy, and as we've seen here there must have been at least 1 crossbow floating around, so even with the safety net of silver dust an elim SE would have a job to do.

I just realized that I missed another potential scenario for the way things went down:

• Elims attack Kasmir, Someone attacks sart with a crossbow, triggers wrath, but survives due to SE or other form of protection.

[Kasimir he/him]

39 minutes ago, DeTess said:

@Kasimir I'd say no more than 2 SE in the game, one for the elims, one for the village. It's not a small game so if Devo hadn't claimed white fox I might have considered the village having 1 more SE, but as it is two protective roles and a smattering of defensive items (silver bones, pallid masks and the like) should be plenty of defensive power for the village. I don't think that just because Aman had silver dust that it means the elims didn't also have an SE. It would provide a little bit of redundancy, and as we've seen here there must have been at least 1 crossbow floating around, so even with the safety net of silver dust an elim SE would have a job to do.

I just realized that I missed another potential scenario for the way things went down:

• Elims attack Kasmir, Someone attacks sart with a crossbow, triggers wrath, but survives due to SE or other form of protection.

No one triggered Village valenced SE last Night.

Edited to add: @DeTess The reason I feel Evil SE is a tad OP is that it trivialises Village SE protects as it can beat them and be recycled. It only dies if someone shoots a protected Elim with a crossbow and you can see from the distros last game that there was just one. And I believe crossbows are oneshot?

Edited May 1, 2023 by Kasimir
Bold and justification

[---]

Mech makes my head hurt

[Kasimir he/him]

40 minutes ago, DeTess said:

Someone attacks sart with a crossbow, triggers wrath, but survives due to SE or other form of protection.

Sorry, to be more specific - as was obvious, the SE protect was on neither me nor on Devo last Night for Reasons. I will also be fairly surprised if the player who it had protected shot Sart last Night but I suppose stranger things can happen. Given the protect exhaust, naming the player isn't constructive here.

And thanks for the PMs, Sart and the other Writers. I will never turn down more, but I don't need to keep asking for them - it was just honestly a decent way to annoy the Elims, seeing the numbers of times Archer/Stick/Araris/TJ et al. seem to dislike the idea of me getting my hands on PMs

32 minutes ago, Illwei said:

Mech makes my head hurt

I think the only unfortunate part is that due to limited info in this game, it's necessary to figure out what went down.

[DeTess she/her]

I want to take a look at Alvron and Archer, as the mech for this turn makes them look suspicious in my eyes.

Starting with Alvron.

Sorry, make that Alvron. You know what you did. Seriously, I hadn't fallen for that one in years.

(In all seriousness, Alvron did a lot of just floating around, then knuckled down for some analysis at the start of this cycle, though it's mostly recap of everything that happened. So far there is just about nothing I consider alignment indicative.)

Archer seems to be putting in a lot of effort to solve the game, which always makes me look at someone as village. Not sure what their normal elim playstyle looks like so whether they normally try to deepwolf. They've said more than a few things that I disagreed with, but that doesn't make them evil. Most noteworthy is I think them (correctly) village reading Sart since C1, for reasons I don't quite get. Might have been an attempt to get Sart to read them as village as well? I'd say I actually lean slightly village on Archer, except looking at Sart's posts, Archer is the more likely candidate for Sart to have shot if they had the crossbow, and I've explained before why I think that person is very likely to be an elim.

So, if I had to choose between Alvron and Archer I'd think Archer is a bit more likely to be evil? Their posts aren't that suspicious, but from the point of view of mech, they look worse than Alvron does. However, Alvron needs to get executed for their crimes, so that's where my vote is at right now.

[Kasimir he/him]

1 minute ago, DeTess said:

Not sure what their normal elim playstyle looks like so whether they normally try to deepwolf.

Yes. @Illwei IDK I'm not fluent in MU I think you describe him as a power wolf sometimes? When he's less busy with hockey?

2 minutes ago, DeTess said:

So, if I had to choose between Alvron and Archer I'd think Archer is a bit more likely to be evil? Their posts aren't that suspicious, but from the point of view of mech, they look worse than Alvron does. However, Alvron needs to get executed for their crimes, so that's where my vote is at right now.

I am confused at the juxtaposition between these two statements.

[---]

My townread of detess is still good and solid esp with the last post

Alv's post this cycle so far was not a great post- not as in...it wasn't readable or worded well, because in that case I post plenty of posts which are bad. His notes were pointless to share in my opinion and his reads/conclusions/thoughts weren't thoughts, but were simply more info about the cycle (the ones i read). Information instead of Analysis.

[DeTess she/her]

5 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I am confused at the juxtaposition between these two statements.

Alvron knows what he did. And If you take a thorough look at his posts this cycle, you'll know as well, and understand why he needs to be brought to justice, irrespective of his actual alignment. I'll probably swap to Archer at some point, but right now I need to vent my indignation.