Kasimir

Edited to add: I think there is at most one E between <Striker, TUO>. I hate that I've got to do this, and I hate that half the votes are nonexistent or half-arsed but that's the way it is, and sometimes the only card left to play is preventing what I think are a bunch of bad exes, and hopefully dodging around the Soothing. The Demon. Never liked Demon Balor as much as I liked Shinsuke Nakamura anyway. @A Jo in the Bush

That's what I'm mulling aloud. I'm not really of the view Aster is in her E meta. I've outlined repeatedly that she's endorsed a position that no Elim really wants to get caught saying publicly. I think TJ calling on you in thread is spicy but also a tad weird if you're E/E meaning this is not my preferred train. I do want to believe in your entrance, at least for the moment. I think TUN, Polly, and TOW probably should get some Village cred for voting TJ regardless, especially given the high purity of the C1 TJ train. C1: Roy, KSauce, TOW, Polly. C2: Polly, TUN. If it wasn't for Spirit seeming to be playing outside of his E meta, I'd side-eye Spirit for that vote too. I suppose let's PoE this. I'm really left in <Triple B, Null, Tinwatcher> at the moment, leaning against Tinwatcher a little for very poor reasons. If I had my druthers, I'd probably gun for Null here. That train ain't happening at this point in the cycle and at these numbers. Just gonna post so my line of thought is clear.

There's always the side-train option. Still of the view that voting a TJ pusher is actual Village malpractice this early on. Which is also why I'm unvoting TOW after further thought.

Just for the record, can I have your stance/position on whether this is a frame or not. Yes or no. If someone put a gun to your head and forced you to pick. Edit: @A Jo in the Bush You mentioned neither Demon or Yevad would get the penalty. In light of that, could I request the current vc please?

Triple B on C2. Spirit last cycle. In both cases the removed votes affected TUN among others. That's what I meant. Or to paraphrase the meme: "If I had a dollar for each time a vote was removed from TUN, I'd have $2. Which isn't much but it's strange it happened twice."

Fair. I think the experienced members of the team will advocate avoiding the LHF where possible, and it's possible the less experienced members did struggle. KSauce. Let's chase down one theory RE: Striker's C2 saving vote. The vote is cast at 2157hrs - 3 minutes to rollover. We know TJ was around at EoD, meaning it was possible for TJ to change orders in response to Striker if necessary. The sequence of events at EoD: 1. The votes remain at: As per call from Jo, who also made a post before my count (I've eyeballed it and don't see any differences, but yeah, we know vcs are cursed here.) These should be our trains of interest currently. Highlighting for credences, but you can ignore any highlights since they're just credences and not anything solid. Note that if Striker is E, then Tinwatcher's, TOW's, and Null's votes actually look pretty good here. The team cannot afford to double distance like this though it would explain the RBM shift. 2. TJ votes RBM at 2134hrs, or 26 minutes to rollover. I swear I've gotten the vote effects correctly this time. -1 vote from TJ, +1 to RBM. TJ pinging Striker for a save is interesting to me and makes me feel like a team-up is less likely. Because that's kind of blatant, and TJ's aware of the 'distance or die' problem. He's on his way out, and the last thing he wants to do is to get spotlight on his teammates. However, I guess it's possible that it's used to account for/pave a shift, but yeah. 3. Polly does the ping. No takers. 4. At 2157hrs, Striker makes the shift. This pushes RBM over TJ. 5. At EoD, we see that the vote was removed from Triple B, which is the TUN side-train. I do wonder if there's a world in which the Elims try to establish distance by removing from TUN over Striker. I think the more interesting question here though is: what happens if Striker doesn't make the shift? They could Soothe in <TUN, Polly, Striker>, but - actually why don't they just Soothe Polly in this world. Polly voted TJ twice (C1, C2 according to the spreadsheet.) If they Soothe Polly, then the votes are 3/4, and RBM quite simply dies over TJ without difficulties. I'm going to guess this might have been their gameplan, but also suggests that the Elims did not need to expose E!Striker by having him vote to save TJ in this choreography. Edited to add: However, tbh, I think it's possible the Elims simply did not see a double Soothe via Polly was possible. It's not my immediate assumption, but it's a unique mech in this game, and I can't really rule out that people could just have failed to understand how it works.

To further explicate what I mean by This differs from game to game but personally for me, I don't consider TUO or Polly to be really on the table until the <Triple B, Striker, Tinwatcher, myself, Null, TOW> pool is at least cleared or resolved. Even then, I might prefer to revise in <Spirit, Penguin, Aster> prior to them. In general, paranoia screws the Village over so I like to contain it by tier. I don't have a strong theory behind the Soothe which is your other question - I've looked at it, but feel that and just in general vote patterns across cycles is probably something I prefer to do an actual link analysis chart to make sense of, which is going to take time if I choose to commit to it.

IMO = In my opinion. Bus is when an Elim basically suses and subsequently votes and kills their teammate to look more like a Villager to everyone. (If you just vote and they don't die, it's called distancing. But you can also just distance by sussing them without voting, etc.) Normally in the context of a bus, it happens after the teammate has copped some flak in thread and the team decides the teammate needs to be cut off. In general Elim teams that refuse to bus just die. This was...AG8, more or less. TJ and Striker would know (we were on opposite sides of that debacle.) Hard-bus I'm using interchangeably with hell-bus, i.e. the idea you rock up to the thread and choose violence on your teammate, potentially exeing them even before the Village really thought they were sus. Everyone is usually wary of bussing, but hardbussing is harder to spot because it's normally so damned counterintuitive and less likely to happen because of where the balance of incentives is. What I'm saying in a nutshell is: I think that both Polly and TUO look more Village from voting and aggressively pushing TJ, respectively. I think the set-up of this game rewards bussing more than a normal game does, which means that the odds of a bus happening are a little higher. Although it would be a hardbus if TUO and TJ were E/E, due to the nature of how TUO pushed TJ, IMO it is always counterintuitive and just a touch obscene not to reward players who do villagery things with village credit. So yes, I would lean Village on both of them. Because of the set-up, I asterisk the read - that is, make a mental note we can swing back to them if we see indications we are very wrong about who the Elims are. This is called tiered PoE or prioritisation - in general, I'm not the most bothered by accidentally village-reading an Elim who bussed, or a deepwolf/subwoofer (Elim who gained a lot of Village cred and blended in with the players everyone is solidly reading as Village.) By definition, they're usually the last ones we catch anyway. I'd rather clear PoE, get the easier-to-find teammates, and then worry if I need to rethink. But the asterisks do mark where I would consider the grounding of the read/reasons behind the read to be more fallible.

Edited to add: You asked me about TOW. I'm not really sure why you're trying to make insinuations. Literally every single post you have made this cycle directed towards me keeps wanting to know why TOW, and now you wanna shift the goalposts and suddenly ask why I've said nothing about the Soothe or my TUO read? I've literally spelled it out for you in the post. That's why the post exists.

At some point, this shifts from Village to the world's most brazen wolf

I guess what I'd say is - I can understand tentative stuff like "ok IDK why I feel this way about Player X but I do." I can also understand the urge to reach out to another player to make it make sense, because that's reasonable and on balance, is a good indicator of solving behaviour. But IMO there wasn't a consistency in there that kind of really showed me it was interest in solving TJ, and that made me wonder if instead it was a "hi why are you sussing my teammate" kind of question. On balance I'd probably find Null a bit more sus, but the cycle is young and voting's a free action, and voting typically tends to be more useful than just asking (depends) because it actively changes the gamestate, whereas just asking does not.

If this is wrong again it will be appropriate for me to commit seppuku at once This should be prior to the Soothe on Spirit. TUN voted at an hour to EoD. Theoretically I think it's more appropriate to look on-train than off-train here, which means <Triple B, Tinwatcher, Striker, Spirit, Polly. > Both a function of train size (nearly half the game on TJ) and IMO, the Elims will feel pressure to bus here for Village cred. I don't expect the full team to be on TJ and I definitely expect a healthy side-train presence regardless, but it's useful to have two pools. Formally: BUS: <Triple B, Tinwatcher, Striker, Spirit, Polly, Kas> Side-train: <Penguin, Null, Aster, TOW, TUO> Inactive: <Yevad, Demon> -> We don't talk about these guys, no, no, no, no Again, assuming a team - if this were a pure normal game, I'd expect 3-4, I now think maybe 4-5 here. I don't want to super look at 3-worlds because I think they're too optimistic and Village is usually better planning for the worst case scenario. Given the fact that the Elims here are just Magyars, I am beginning to think I'll just ignore 6-worlds. BUS: On a first pass, I think it's fine to give Polly some cred for being on the TJ train D1 regardless. I do think this is a bit more cursed because of the Soothe, but let's just run with this and we can asterisk Polly for revision subsequently regardless. BUS: <Triple B, Tinwatcher, Striker, Spirit, Polly, Kas> I am going to say I kind of V!lean Spirit, but the meta point is weak. I've felt Spirit is kind of lacking in WiM, and I've seen that more in his Elim play. But it's been a while and I'm not sure if that/RL swamps it. Regardless. BUS: <Triple B, Tinwatcher, Striker, Spirit, Polly, Kas> I low key still want to read Striker as being Village because of his entrance, and in general his posts, but don't super feel I can completely exclude him from PoE regardless. So I'll keep this as my PoE for the moment. SIDE-TRAIN: Side-train: <Penguin, Null, Aster, TOW, TUO> IMO similar deal for TUO. I think E!TUO would feel compelled to hard-bus if he did bus, but he can have some credit for having the push regardless, with an asterisk. (I say asterisks a lot more here because I'm more concerned here that a game with a high new player % will forget not to hardclear.) Side-train: <Penguin, Null, Aster, TOW, TUO> I go back and forth about Aster. I didn't like Aster's EoD post D1 about no KSauce dogpile: In that I still want to know how/why Aster believes the KSauce train is pure. (KSauce had Penguin, Roy, and Striker.) I still think trying to suggest at exact rollover point that KSauce flips maf feels a bit more like a Villager speculation - I'm not sure I think an Elim naturally thinks to keep the jig up. I also liked Aster's brazen pro-tie position. I don't agree with it, but I feel that it does make Aster very villagery compared to everyone else in contention. That being said, I would expect this kind of play from Stick, e.g. AG9, where she sent a message to the player she was going to kill (hi) for Village cred. Aster can be Village on balance. Side-train: <Penguin, Null, Aster, TOW, TUO> Partly PoE in the side-train pool to open the day. (I need more time and energy to look at the main train more carefully but side-train is smaller and a little easier for me right now.) I kinda have some reasons to V read Penguin (entrance, plus the whole "if not you then who do I vote" exchange with KSauce. I guess the other thing is, if you're an Elim voting someone who is begging for their life and who you know will flip V, do you really want to more or less tacitly admit you're just voting them for no particular reason?) Realistically in this pool, it's more strongly between Null and TOW for me. For Null, I liked that Null seemed to just realise the game had ties, and then wanted to change to vote there. But I also didn't feel Null's position seemed very Villagery. I've spelled out my issues with Null previously, but they boil down to Null voting TUN to 'break a tie' at a time where TUN wasn't anywhere in tie contention (it was between TJ and KSauce) and Null lurking at EoD despite the potential for a three-way tie. Null later mentioned being satisfied with their vote on TUN but - your whole vote was to tiebreak! If it doesn't tiebreak, then what's the basis of this vote for you to be satisfied with it? I just don't feel Null's player behaviour matches their stated motivations well. (K, I'm tired so I've referenced my previous post on this.) Null initially wanted to create a tie so no one died by voting TUN. (I don't understand the TUN vote and retain my question about it - why TUN when the lead trains were clearly TJ and KSauce? How does TUN create a tie? Then, how do you go from a "well I guess I can't avoid one death" mindset to "I'll keep my vote on Unknown despite a 3/3 tie meaning both TJ and KSauce die" mindset? This kind of suggests you felt there's something attractive about the TUN vote and yet the OG TUN vote was both unexplained and suggested to be as a result of a desire for a no exe D1. How does this make sense? For TOW, it's both being in PoE (PoE = process of elimination, but can also be used to refer to the suspect pool) and the fact that I'm trying to understand TOW's shift in position about TJ. During mid-C1, TOW sent a PM to both me and KSauce (simultaneously which is why I ignored it but we later created a 1-on-1 PM) calling us both experienced asking us why we voted TJ. He said he'd gotten suspicious vibes off TJ from a post in which TJ sussed me, but wanted to know why we really voted TJ/if we had the same view. I dropped a reply asking TOW to spell out his vibes but never got an answer. To me, it felt like a pro-forma "my teammmate is being sussed" kind of PM because if TOW was genuinely interested in solving, and was PMing us because he found TJ weird, where's the follow-up? It's C4 now man. TJ was alive for three cycles. I felt the lede got dropped on C2 and I didn't see any process which would explain to me why TOW would change his mind here. It takes time to drop a post of this length my dude Possibly. But TUN and Polly at least were of the view that a tempo loss mattered. And I think who's up for the snipe matters too.

Not referring to that Mr GM sir I was saying it's twice someone's taken a vote off TUN in the process. TOW

That's twice, isn't it? Voted Aster C1, voted TUN C2, voted TJ C3. Curious they didn't use Mercy here - unpalatable targets in YEVAD/DEMON?

@Araris Valerian? Or we try to make time tetris work with @Aeoryi , @Amanuensis or @KelsierApologist?

Hope it goes well man! Keep us posted if you can! I suppose I'm being a bit unfair here, so I'll take it more seriously, even though I am honestly kind of tired of it and I feel that I shouldn't have to because it is really obvious. And I didn't want to turn the game serious and whatnot. But sure. I'm functionally dealing with raw paranoia. And there's no real answer to paranoia because paranoia is the rejection of any type of plausibility judgement in favour of what ifs. It is both off-putting, and then it makes me sus people because I wonder if they're Elims trying to FUD. The straightforward Elim play in a game full of new players especially with the flak TJ has copped is to bus TJ aggressively and to never look back. It is not to be wishywashy about TJ's alignment because too many Elims die on the hill of being wishywashy. You either hard defend or hardbus but you commit either way. Maybe I used to think otherwise but this was before a hard lesson from Drake and tercer (for Aster's benefit.) Either we form the tightest united front ever, or we hard distance. There's no mileage to be gained like this when TJ has already been close to the exe on D1 and this was discernable by midcycle. [Edited to add: Specifically: hardbus, delay for a cycle+ with the Soothe and Mercy, insistently leading the charge every cycle, and then bask in the Village cred and ride it to murder everyone without getting doubted or sussed at all.] If your answer to this is "but what if this is an IKYK", I point you to the second paragraph about rejecting plausibility for possibility. It is plausible an asteroid can hit Earth tomorrow and kill everyone so both teams lose. I would, however, not start looking for a bunker. In general, I would hope the commonsense answer is to not look for a bunker. It is possible an Elim can try to get cute; it is not usually plausible because you don't get mileage, it ends badly, and if you've done this dance a couple of times, you generally figure out why certain things happen in certain ways. In a game full of new players that has been generally quiet and chill with little reasoned voting and little interrogations or sharp exchanges and little appetite to really shift votes around or get fancy with the trains, it is generally easier than usual to play a deepwolf niche. This matters because, again, the mileage gained from just bussing a doomed teammate is so damned high. In a game that has been generally quiet with moments of solving here and there, trying to push the solving in concrete ways is absolutely something an Elim has to simulate, especially if your Village self is known for it. But at some point, there's also no reward for doing so, because it is tiring, takes energy, and importantly, because it is the Village's job to make the threshold for being Village as high as possible by not allowing the Elims to coast by in the thread, and generally the Elims don't want to do this because it is tiresome and also creates problems for their team (the entire team will generally not be high tempo survivors) and they'd really rather prefer the damn villagers just shut up already and be complacent. I know this because this is exactly what I felt when playing against Aster and just wishing she would stop solving already so our ML could go through In other words, if you think I'm doing this to fake being Village, I'm just gonna shrug. (There's probably a conversation here where Illwei would call me entitled. My response is I don't think I am, I just think irrational paranoia is frustrating particularly because responding to it does nothing but people also don't like it if you just snark at it, so here I am typing out what should really be bloody obvious, but that's life I guess.) I've generally avoided talking about this because again, it's tiresome/tiring, I don't think it remotely changes anything, because not everyone wants to take the game seriously or IDK, think about the game approach and that's fine, I've been consciously holding back because I don't want the new players to feel intimidated and whatnot anyway. But I'm also old and tired so I'm apparently done. Well. I'm gonna watch WWE now. I've done two analysis posts at the moment, and I'm fine with that. Whatever happens, happens. I'm not really fussed about it. I do think we need a larger margin on TJ this time, and if it means avoiding secondary train control, so be it. I'm not sure about the maths but I think a Soothe on Polly or TUN at this juncture removes 2 votes on TJ, not just one.

Thank you for your service. And also, I hope Kirby's doing fine!

Let me spell this out: Unless @A Jo in the Bush once again lets me know this vc is cursed in one way or another to the eighteen levels of Hell, this was the OG prior to Soothing: Ignoring TJ and Striker, you had three sidetrains at 3 votes each. You wanna take it out on me for voting RBM and pushing RBM to three when you had 3 sidetrains? Lol. Ok, go complain at every single TUN and Striker voter. I'll wait. You think it is completely and utterly unsurprising we have convergence on/an attempt to take out a group of veterans and regardless of your thoughts on their alignment, especially given the lack of particular reasons, there is nothing at all alarming about this and we should just go on about our days. Nothing we do will stop the Mercy shot. Our best anti-Mercy tactic is having a secondary train we can live with so we still get an exe we want even if the primary train goes byebye. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how they feel letting RNGesus take the wheel for Mercy is better. The risk of keeping TJ alive is so great we should not have secondary train discussion or discussion about the way the cycle is unfolding? See above line. But noisy player bad! -> Ok, sorry, I don't got no reply for this. Have fun, let me know how well my flip works for you. I'm gonna go watch WWE. I got better things to do with my life. Good luck, hope it works out well for you

Take with pinch of salt as doing vcs in this game is cursed enough I have PTSD by this point. TJ showed up and voted RBM, Striker was asking me about my RBM thoughts and voted RBM (IDR if it was a switch), I voted RBM earlier because I didn't like RBM's vote from D1 where he placed a vote on KSauce citing things he didn't like and then dipped and kept the vote there. Also did not like the look of TUN and Striker secondary trains as both of them were on 3 votes (Triple B was Soothed.)

Edited to add: With E!TJ world a lot more likely at present, the D1 train becomes somewhat more informative. Out of respect for the fact TJ hasn't flipped, I'm using highlights. (1) Was the KSauce train entirely pure? I do wonder, if only because I'm of the view that the Elims should by right have tried voting to save TJ first. Between <Penguin, Striker>, I V!read Penguin more than I do Striker, for reasons already laid out. (2) Was the TJ train entirely pure? In theory it should be, but with a single Soothe, I think they can at max afford one Elim on it. However, it's probably not the primary world I'd focus on (because, while this seems to be something I've been saying until I'm blue in the face that has been falling on deaf ears - good Village play always requires you to look at plausibility and not possibility. See: yes, the ball can quantum tunnel through the floor, no it probably isn't happening on 99.999999% of worlds, and if you can't see this, you're probably just Evil. I'm done having this conversation.) So asterisk Polly and TOW for the moment. Soothing Triple B in this landscape is interesting - it minimally indicates some investment in keeping votes low on TUN, but high on Striker. At the same time, with TUN being the first to push for TJ, I don't really think TUN is likely. My other thought would be (and this is why I mentioned the potential Polly clear) it suggests the order might've been placed earlier in the cycle, and that they just weren't on at EoD to change it. It does make it a weird read in light of TJ being on to ask for a RBM swing, so I'm not really sure of it, though he may not have had time to change the order, depending on how busy his morning was. I think my big question in both worlds is: where's the Elim team in that landscape? Day One: Feel free to doublecheck, because the carryover votes are just cursed at this point, I missed the damn Null train, and my main beef with Jo's vcs is you don't get breakdowns and we need breakdowns. Presume for the moment a 4-5 team. 6 feels maybe on the far end in a volatile game, though perhaps I'm wrong about it. Day One strongly looks like at least one Elim on KSauce, though not impossible otherwise. So at least one Elim between: <Penguin, Striker.> Likelihood is we're also seeing at least two in the sidetrains, potentially as an attempt to start a CW and see if it'd hit, or just busywork: <TUN, Null, Aster, Tinwatcher, Triple B, Spirit.> The more Elims on KSauce, the fewer we need on the sidetrains. At maximum one Elim between <TOW, Polly> - it's possible for them to have decided a distancing vote was ok given the Soothe but risky because it draws attention to TJ's train. Unsure. I don't rule out YAVED or DEMON being Evil, but again, they're functionally inert so I wouldn't look at either of them until something happens. More likely worlds: <TJ, KSauce #1, Sidetrain #1, Sidetrain #2>, fill as you like. Can be KSauce #1 and KSauce #2 too, I suppose. Day Two: Tinwatcher notably self-voted and did nothing. Tinwatcher is either an Elim who isn't worried because of the Soothe, or is Village. Not very helpful, but I don't got enough from Tinwatcher to go off. I still do distrust the sudden TUN and Striker votesurge. <TUN, Polly> here IMO... I'd say looks alright with the asterisk that a bus would be safe for Village cred given the situation plus the Mercy shot still existing. I'm slightly of the view that the TUN and Striker trains might've been to try to prepare a favourable secondary train in case they had to push the button on a Mercy shot. In that light, I'm slightly distrustful of the <Spirit, Triple B>, <TOW, Null> pairs in that I doubt either pair is pure, but the weaker claim is at least one in those few. Main issue for me RE: TUN and Striker is I distrust the votes coming out of nowhere and citing vibes, or just existing - hitting those numbers is weird to me, and in the short-term, looks like it wants to prep secondary trains, in the long-term, looks like it wants to make those two easier to exe, and I just don't like the look of that.

That's weird to me. TJ should've had three carried over from - oh, d'oh, no, he had two carried over because of TOW. GDI. Yeah okay, if E!TJ we're probably still going to deal with a Mercy forced vote. I'm cool with volunteering to be the secondary train so I don't remotely need to deal with this BS anymore

Could be the Elims messing with our heads. If you're V, you'll have a better idea than me but I think another option is that it probably indicates Polly is clear, which is a little annoying to me as I'm concerned Polly is TMI-ing Roy. I think the good point of the Mercy shot being blown is that as long as there's a good secondary train, TJ is not avoiding an exe this cycle. I will further note for the benefit of everyone, especially Polly, that there was nothing we could do about the Mercy shot except to ensure a secondary train we could live with was in place. I continue to wait for Polly to enlighten me about the obvious badness of a RBM secondary train that does not immediately know RBM's flip.

Since when did I even vote TJ the entire cycle? I challenge you to find a single point my vote was on TJ. I always wanted us to find a secondary we didn't mind dying because THE ELIMS STILL HAD THE GODDAMNED MERCY SHOT. You can go search for it in my posts. I've been repeatedly clear on it. Triple B never voted on any main train! Edited to add: Like literally - your entire EoD was "yo vote more on TJ so the Elims can't voteclear to kill both RBM and TJ." I think it's reasonable to challenge a sudden last-minute desperate attempt to save a player who had made a pretty sus vote on D1 by asking whether it's an E/E save or not - if RBM had said things that give you an explainable read basis, that's one thing and I would probably not have been so alarmed. There wasn't anything there and I would know because apparently only one of us is backreading the cycles. Edited to add 2: Since I apparently have to do this now: This is the train that got Soothed. The only world in which TJ survives is a world in which the Mercy shot is blown. To be clear, the Mercy shot is used exactly once in a game, and then that's it. You don't blow this to frame a Villager IMO.

Wait. Isn't this the Mercy shot? They burned the Mercy shot?

Do you V!read RBM? Why are you invested in keeping RBM alive?