Kasimir

Yeah I respect that too, as the Tunnel Master of LG90. Tunnel Master...and then some. I just don't like people mischaracterising my playstyle, intentional or otherwise and feel obligated to correct it Wait, so you now see him as more E than before, or less? I'm more at the mixed signals part, splitting the difference gives me a null. No. I hesitated about whether to ask but as in, the inbox sort. I don't really know I can guarantee whoever opened it is Village, so whenever that happens, my default is sort of to just throw it to the thread to ask overall. The true spoiler menace.

Whoa, what's with everyone and selling blatant lies this game? I specialise in vote analysis. I've said this multiple times, across multiple Village games. Sure, I've been branching out to try to do post reads, but reading playstyles is functionally not my strength. The mere fact we disagree on how to read early Turtle already explicates this. You can't have it both ways: either I am a playstyle comparison god, in which case it's not clear to me why you think I am wrong to caution against reading Turtle the classic way, or I am not very good at playstyle comparison, (hi Wiz! ) in which case the only playstyle I can be reliably expected to comment on is my own. I like this move. It's a touch more sophisticated than, "Aman has a silver tongue, and if you listen to him, you're playing the game he wants you to play." Sure, you can complain about my Elim game sample size, but that's simply all the data there is. There's nothing to cherrypick, it's what is there. So you can decide to throw it out in search of paranoid possibilities, sure. At this point, my view on you and Mat really boils down to: -I think Mat is Village. Probably my strongest read right now. -Not so sure about you, for reasons of the Wiz vote stability, but: I'm not going to sit down and listen to people blatantly mischaracterise my playstyle or lie about it and just take it. That's the line I draw, because I dislike letting misinformation spread. Nothing against you or Mat. Anyway, I'm going to not engage with these further because engaging isn't going to do anything other than remove misinformation or outright disinformation from circulation. I remind you you even find pretending to be a different player in an anon game sus. I'm just going to quote Laozi and move on: More productively: Fair, and that's a position I'd agree with disliking and the need to avoid. I kinda think that's a ridiculous position to have tbh because your holding onto it is what's giving me a V read on you so I don't really know why they're taking the opposite view of it. It's especially surprising coming to me from Tani, because I think one of the last few games she played was LG84, so that should've definitely been a point of caution. (At the same time, I've been holding back a bit as she's gone missing for a while.) Like I'm probably happy to revise you if I am somehow alive late in the game, and things are going Very Wrong but I just don't see E!you brawling with me non-stop about this, nor do I see this mattering enough to E!you to do more than the path of least resistance. I also feel E!you tends to go for more classic responses (cf. the time you tried to outline your Araris progression) and backs down faster, so I at least am personally happy for our clashes because they've reinforced my V!Mat read. And as much as I joked about it in the LG90 dead doc, I am genuinely willing to believe that V!you is more apt to tunnel than E!you. This has to do with the reactivity problem we both have, and that just paradoxically makes me feel comfortable with my current read ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I recognise it's not as comforting to you, but as awful as this sounds, that's a you problem, not a me problem, so I don't have to worry about that. I do get baited into arguing when I feel my playstyle is being mischaracterised badly but other than that, I am at least happy I do not need to worry about you and can go try to work out the other players I have my eye on: currently the <Szeth, Elk, Bookwyrm> pool. Probably Xino and Archer somewhere in the vicinity. I agree with you about the likely need to flip at least one CW (Chana? Please?) and feel that's sort of the problem with the tie landscape we ended up with. I've hit the point where I kind of find it unproductive to look at player reasons because everyone just says 'for the ties' and I'm fairly certain not everyone's motives was pure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What's your view on Bookwyrm right now? Worth asking the thread: anyone received an unexpected PM? For the matter, @Ookla the Perpetual - what's your view on things right now? Edited to add: Further question for you. You said you moved onto Bookwyrm to tie. But you moved off only a couple of posts later, very quickly. What changed, and why?

This almost feels like what happens in the world where Wayne isn't on that ship to make the call - Wax isn't that good with bendalloy so he'd more or less have to work out a pushing solution.

Edited to add: Thanks for the catch - missed that I'd typed TUN.

Done.

Day One First vote is from me onto Stick. Nothing spectacular there. Silho goes onto Mat next. Worth noting this vote will go on to be extraordinarily stable - it only goes off at EoD. Silho isn't interested in solving this cycle and felt no real sense of pressure. Two minutes later, Turtle doubles up the vote and apologises for it. The apology is a bit weird because that's not really the sort of thing people care about. Archer contends that's more V!Turtle. I think the defensiveness should be noted at the very least. Same issue with image again. Bookwyrm votes on Insanity. Kind of want to note this is a shift from how Bookwyrm has been playing LG90. Not sure what it portends. Wiz rolls a die and goes onto Chantara. Mat votes Archer, and Archer asks if Chantara wants to vote on Wiz with him. I generally like solicitation because of the confidence it displays. But also, @Archer, any reason why you thought to ask Chantara that? Stick votes TUN because she saw him in the thread but noticed he hadn't yet posted. I feel it just reminds me of what Ash was doing in terms of checking for people who were maybe in docs early on instead of in the thread. So ok, keep an eye on TUN. Fair point from Illwei that it likely entails lurking Stick too. Stick apparently has a Turtle/Mat E/E theory from this. I...okay, I sort of like this and I don't like that I like this. I like that she's thinking about that immediately (well, sort of immediately, as this is delayed post in the thread, and therefore cannot receive as much credit) but at the same time, I am not sure my gut is okay with Stick. I am going to bracket this for the moment. Turtle unvotes Mat. No replacement. I don't really expect anything by it. Ok. Archer makes a distro post. Long story short, I'm ignoring everything in the post. The numbers seem right to me, but I am not interested in assuming distro given the game has reached sufficient size that Ash can probably get a bit more exotic. It is unlikely the Elims have Division, and as the GM who likes to give E!Seekers, I will say that I strongly believe that assuming we have Jezrien is just asking to get bit. Mat unvotes Archer. Bookwyrm retracts from Insanity here. This is weird and I agree it's weird - I don't know that it is Evil weird, but Insanity hadn't even shown up when Bookwyrm retracted, and this is the pebble that starts the Bookwyrm obsession later on. This is sort of what I mean when I say Bookwyrm in this game has just been filed away in my head as Thaid because I can't make this make sense. Mat's response is to pressure Insanity. I see where Illwei is coming from: you'd expect the natural response there to be to pressure Bookwyrm, not Insanity, since the weird behaviour came from Bookwyrm and not Insanity. There are probably worlds in which E!Bookwyrm retracts from V!Insanity so you want to capture those too by directly applying pressure to the source of the weirdness. Mat's response doesn't make sense. Bookwyrm is fine with this because presumably, he hasn't been voted on, therefore feels no need for a retaliation vote, and @s Insanity. This...is still weird, sigh. And yeah I see the natural teammate theory, it's just so Thaid I hate it. Araris shows up and votes Alv but also: @Araris Valerian - Who did you expect your poke vote strategy to entail suspicion of? All votes at this point in the thread are trains of one. This is another point of weirdness: Bookwyrm posts saying Alv hadn't posted yet. This is...just even more weird. Because yeah Araris was framing his vote as a non-poke vote which is probably confusing to everyone, and might explain this, but as Mat subsequently points out, this ignores that Insanity also hadn't posted and fuels an Insanity/Bookwyrm theory that continues to rage on. Bookwyrm's response to that, by the way, is that he retracted his Insanity vote because Insanity hadn't posted yet, which like bruh, you voted Insanity on p1 of D1, how the hell do you vote and not see that Insanity hadn't posted yet? This is a bit kayana. Cash asking Araris if this was a gambit and Mat's muted response "Where?" is still odd. I still think that if you are a Villager, you should have more wariness than that if you believe the location is in question since the only other location is the Elim doc. Bookwyrm posts an explanation, which amounts to confusion, and that's more or less how I feel about Bookwyrm now, with inner Shadow saying to just blaze it, and the niggling sense that this is just too Thaid for my liking. I unvote Stick and go to Mat. Elk doubles up on Alv and insists on summoning Alv. This is something that continues later through the cycle, and Elk explains it as excitement to be playing with Alv again and wanting the chaos. In kayana world, it's protective of Mat. But I don't really buy this because it's very very early into the Day. No one should be feeling any pressure. Szeth doubles up on TUN and asks why people are voting on Alv when Alv hasn't posted yet. Irony is blinding Insanity responds with a retaliation vote on Mat. Still would like to hear from Insanity: she's promised more thoughts later, which was more measured than her hot button solo retaliation vote and I'm interested in both why there is this shift and what her thoughts currently are. @InfiniteInsanity, what's up? This is another vote worth noting because it never moved. Insanity did look at the thread subsequently. Elk points out the fact that Mat is a lead train. There's some amount of ? that Elk is even flagging this - it's still early in the cycle, so Elk shouldn't really have reason to feel too concerned at this juncture. TUN votes Araris in defense of Alv. This IMO is an extremely uncharacteristic vote from TUN, who repeatedly defends voting only with good reasons because he'd rather be sure and hit an Elim than not. This is odd to me because this policy is something TUN also highlights later on! One thing I could see is it being a TUN joke vote. It sort of has that kind of attitude. Maybe. Mat has e!Kas gut but doesn't want to vote. I have E!Mat credences, so I guess there we go. Elk also says he doesn't mind getting D1ed, which, ok, fair, I read in a slightly Village light similar to MR59 Conq, but also probably shouldn't, so I can degrade that credence a bit. Even then, I still like that I suppose. He looks at the train and decides the votes aren't suspicious, which makes me feel a bit ? because...shouldn't you have made that determination before calling out the train? Dislike this softwalking here. Bookwyrm comes in again with a vote that is opportunistic as all hell, on Mat, at a point when there are three votes on Mat and when I have expressed suspicion of Mat and I nearly reflex-unvoted off how awful that vote just seemed to be. Which opens up the layer of whether E!Bookwyrm does that. Arguably, E!Bookwyrm did it in QF63, but he also sheeped aggressively when he did that, and it stood out less. The disclaimer he hasn't read all the posts does seem designed to defang suspicion, so you know what, soddit, let's at least flip this train so we can stop thinking about this and figure out what the hell to do working from the flip. In a vote that comes right as there are three votes on Mat, and I'm asking how people read Mat, Bookwyrm adds another vote on Mat. The disclaimer seems a bit too conscious of that fact, given the timing and target of his vote. Suspicious. In response to that, JNV votes on Bookwyrm. It's a typical JNV vote, IMO, no matter their alignment. Elk agrees the Bookwyrm vote is suspicious but is currently committed to summoning Alv. Szeth unvotes TUN. Wiz agrees Bookwyrm seems off and votes Bookwyrm as well. Araris goes from Alv to Bookwyrm. In retrospect, I agree with the claim it's too careful - I dislike the disclaimer I flagged. I don't disagree with what Mat was doing here. I also see this as odd, and yeah I know I've flagged it before and you've responded, Elk, but I am currently doing a re-read and just dumping thoughts as this goes along. Hesitancy to vote top suspect over desire to hear from Alv is just odd. It's more pronounced by the fact that Elk was away for a while and therefore never touched the Bookwyrm train until the end. Xino shows up and votes Bookwyrm: @Ookla the Forgotten - Xino, why between Bookwyrm and TUN? Was Mat a no-go for you? (Noteworthy that Xino has Mat on TUN and thinks it was a tie between TUN and Bookwyrm. But his voting would've created a tie between Bookwyrm and Mat anyway so I don't see the motivation for this move.) Elk does in fact shift off Alv to save Mat, voting Bookwyrm. This gives Bookwyrm a five vote monopoly. I unvote Mat because I believe he's back to ascribing bad things to my being unwilling to give my reasons upfront, and I see that as more likely to come from V!Mat. Xino then decides he wants another train, and hops from Bookwyrm to TUN. This theoretically keeps Mat safe, but I don't understand what Xino is trying to do here. Would not be opposed to voting Xino. @Ookla the Forgotten, what was your thought process at this point? @Araris Valerian, you mentioned your thoughts on Elims sometimes jumping onto a teammate's train to explode it in order to scare people off. I am curious as to your thoughts on the sudden surge and just as sudden deflation of the Bookwyrm train. Elk returns to his obsession with summoning Alv A quick step off Bookwyrm and onto Wiz. Three way tie more important than saving Mat, I guess? @Elkanah Elk still flagging the two votes on Mat as weird is just...weird in and of itself. Put this in context: early in D1, Elk flags a train on Mat as 'interesting' and doesn't really look into it, looks and then expects it to dissolve, and then gets suspicious when it doesn't dissolve but also feels the votes are not especially indicative. I don't know if this is a meta clash, or if this is Elk trying to fish for suspicions and returning to the Mat train. I say this despite also thinking vote stability is odd on Silho's and Insanity's parts, so I know that's odd. I just sort of feel that Elk has two main things he's fixed on at this point in the game: Mat train and making Alv appear, and cuts Bookwyrm quite a bit of ice. Which I do approve of, I just feel ehhhhh about it. I guess I would say I'm not suspicious because I expect it to dissolve - I'm suspicious because I expect there to be at least a few parked votes. IDK man maybe I'm just overthinking this and I should stick with V!Elk. Ffs. @ookla the POKE VOTE - To answer your question, even though my answer might very likely change as I go on through this re-read, at this juncture, it's V!Mat for me, null on Bookwyrm but I just want that tackled, and E!Elk. As much as I like Elk's willingness to get flipped D1, I just don't like the ?s I have on him so far. Bookwyrm replies and unvotes Mat, conceding that Mat is doing the same thing that Bookwyrm is doing. Which...sort of makes sense if you're V!Bookwyrm? IDK, obviously if it's E!Bookwyrm it's performative. I just sort of kind of see it as a confused backtracking of a kneejerk...and I kind of lean a bit V on it so I'm back to circling around on Bookwyrm with no real sense of what I think. Elk declines to vote Bookwyrm off one sketchy post, which, ok, but also...D1. But he did want to hear Bookwyrm out, which fair, but you can sort of do that with a retractable vote as well. I don't feel this leans very strongly one way or another, but this is just me thinking that marked reluctance to vote Bookwyrm is the stuff E/E theories are born out of. This is what Insanity says and that I flagged earlier. Would like to hear from Insanity now. I vote for Chantara instead, who I've seen lurking. This makes Bookwyrm the lead train. Archer posts indicating willingness to vote for Xino but doesn't actually vote for Xino. This is what I mean by Archer's vote also being incredibly stable - random voting is a D1 sort of reason. D1 p1. That vote doesn't move despite Archer saying, in response to Araris's post on Xino: Alv, naturally, reacts very angrily to the slander of the Gods of Luck and Chance Araris agrees to vote Xino and swaps off Bookwyrm. This begins a temporary dissolution of the Bookwyrm train. Still V!read Illwei off this. Don't particularly care, reads are meant to be revised, and I am comfortable with the engagement this shows. TUN unvotes Araris for moving off Alv. I do feel the alignment/playstyle clash between Alv and Illwei is philosophical, still. I don't believe it has a resolution and I believe they could argue themselves blue in the meta thread and still disagree. Anyway, Illwei votes Alv on the basis of his Chana Elk deal. Still maintain that Illwei cannot deal with Chaos!Silho but I agree that Silho was not being productively chaotic D1. Hopefully we'll get something more out of Silho this Turn or the next. Chantara votes for TUN because she feels the thread PMs might be a way for the Elims to redirect suspicion. Which...sort of yes, but that's why Illwei was hypothesising E!Silho? And it's odd in light of the fact the Silho/Turtle thread PMs were what was attracting attention in the first place. She cites difficulty keeping up with the thread subsequently. I feel your pain, Chantara, I really do. This pushes TUN to lead tie with Wiz. I shift from Chantara to joining the three vote train on Wiz. RIP. Szeth sheeps me six minutes later onto Wiz. TUN votes Szeth for sheeping. I do feel this is a mildly good look, insofar as that TUN is creating a new train rather than piling onto another, which would be more self-pres territory. Also that fifth vote would've been pure wth territory no matter what. Mat goes onto Bookwyrm. This was apparently bait for Elk. I shift from Wiz to Alv - didn't super like this, but felt that the more chaotic games Alv linked were games in which he still displayed some pro-Village tendencies, and so wasn't sure if that was much of a defense. Also didn't like that Alv hadn't called Archer out on the incredibly fast and pointless clear. Shortly after, Stick joins the Szeth train for that early TUN vote. And I am still only on p9 of this Almighty-forsaken thread. Every day takes us further from God. I wander in a wasteland of barren boughs and broken stones. If I touch them, they bleed. Is it that I am dying? I don't disagree with this point from Stick. Lack of self-pres is weird. Then again, Bookwyrm train did more or less dissolve. IDK. Szeth unvotes Wiz, and Chantara unvotes TUN. I feel like the quality of my analysis is degrading at this point and I haven't even highlighted the votes yet. In between the two is the post of Archer's that mystifies me: I still think this is weird as all hell, seeing that Alv didn't at any point sus Archer, and the post in which he does mention suspicions quotes this post of Archer's, so cannot be a response. I'd almost derpclear Archer for this, but I remember E!Archer is capable of just dgaf dashing things off, so I don't think I will be doing so. Changes his mind about Xino in a sudden turnaround and declines to vote Xino, deciding it's not weird for Xino. IDK about that. Bookwyrm and Wiz are back in the lead as ties. Cash subsequently also decides he likes ties and goes onto Alv. This is another place where I kind of want to put my foot down about people and slogans. We turn every bloody sodding thing into a slogan and people sheep it without bloody thinking and I swear to God that on the day I leave SE, I never want anything I've ever said to become a slogan and abused. Now we've gone from mid-cycle ties can be useful to a bloody sodding expopsp0idn of nbslodoy sodding goddamned TIES and meaningless soddin g voites becauyse TIES AMIRITE and no one at least considers how the frith this degrades the entire frithing epistemic environment because MID-CYCLE TIES GO. ffs. If you endorse a slogan, understand what it bloody means. Understand how the frith it works. Understand its limitations. Slogans are cheap and shut down thinking. Bloody hell. Anyway, vc at this point: At this point, I'm going to stop looking at reasons whenever they mention ties. It's just bloody unhelpful. This post from TUN strikes me as odd: he says he's willing to vote if there are good reasons, but uh...the reasons this game aren't actually better than those of other D1s. TUN's two votes have been for sheeping or for trying to kill Alv. The latter's not substantively better, and the former is probably qualitatively the same as any D1 vote. I'm not sure how TUN is fine with this since he usually keeps saying he'd rather get things right than deal with uncertainty. @The Unknown Novel, think you could walk me through your new outlook a bit more? Szeth has a crack theory I'm Evil, and I encourage Szeth to vote for me. That's about it. Part of this is my wanting to see how serious Szeth was about it, and to just generally engage and try to get a better read off Szeth. Part of it is because I have started to dislike the predictability of D1 lynches. I'm not going to say too much more about this as I think it will derail people even more. But I do want to note that I think we all recognise, explicitly or tacitly, that players who get D1ed tend to come from a specific player set and to not come from a different player set because "they can be read/are more useful." There's a good game-winning calculus for this. But it's also harsh to keep getting D1ed, and with Bookwyrm and Wiz in the lead, maybe TUN surging up, it felt like we were just entrenching this all over again. If I got lynched for it, fine. But at least that'd be someone else getting MLed on a D1. I don't like sacred classes very much. That's about as much as I'm going to obliquely say on the matter. Turtle temporarily votes me for the pizza and then retracts. I've mentioned that I feel Turtle's lobbying not to get me lynched is just kinda performative because Turtle can easily influence that by breaking the tie but doesn't want to. I solicit Alv onto the pizza train for more pizza. Archer votes Szeth for tie-chasing. Which, ok, fair. Tani RNGed and voted Wiz. Four way tie. Silho unvotes Mat, but doesn't do anything else. Likely apathy or content with the results - worth keeping an eye on depending on what your view of the final train compositions is. Don't really care about what you all think: from my POV, that's 1/2 at least Village lead trains at this point. Not a bad roll of the dice for Elims. Araris breaks the tie. IMO, this is mildly positive: it violates E!Araris's doctrine, and more importantly, is a vote on one of the two uncertain train left at this stage of the game. Willingness to vote Bookwyrm looks a little good here. Mat swaps off Bookwyrm to Szeth, mentioning it was partly bait for Elk, and also that he'd take an Elk or Cash wagon. This puts Szeth solidly in the lead. Chantara declines to get involved, so votes Mat. Again, your view on this will depend on your view of train composition IMO. If low Elim investment, this is one place to look. Szeth preserves a tie but also self-preses onto Wiz. Noted preference for Wiz over Bookwyrm. Selecting the Villager #feelsbad. This gets us: Alv votes Bookwyrm in order to force a three way tie. Anyone who knew Alv was playing this game should have seen this coming. One minute later, Elk votes on Bookwyrm as well, and unvotes Wiz, which Alv moves to counter. Which means: Basically the scene in Revenge of the Sith where Obi-Wan and Anakin exchange lightsabers while grappling and fight with each other's blades for a bit. K, frankly I'm not going to track the last few moves, it's Elk and Alv hopping to and fro trying to preserve the tie. It's interesting to me that Elk's commitment to his biggest suspect, Bookwyrm, never really stays and he prefers the tie in the end. Stick votes Wiz and ensures the exe goes through. Final trains: I think what we really have to establish at this point is whether we think the trains were clean or not, and how clean they were. It ended up functionally being a Szeth-Wiz-Bookwyrm cagematch with no vote manip, meaning that the players with vote manip were content with the state of affairs before turning in for the night. (Or if they were among those on late, then they didn't care about the volatility.) Given the rampant disorganisation between Elk/Alv/Stick, I'd potentially argue at least the three of them are not teamed, which is not very helpful, but there you go. I would either way look at the dgaf side-votes like Chantara and Cash, though IMO they look a bit better if one of <Bookwyrm, Szeth> is Evil. @ookla the POKE VOTE - No substantive change in my views. I see about 7+ new replies and honestly y'all can ignore most of this. This is me trying to work out what I think. I still feel Bookwyrm's train is hinky but I still also feel as though Bookwyrm is just going to be litigated to and fro. I can definitely see where Szeth starts to look hinky as well. I just think he also sounds sincere. I did feel the choice of Wiz over Bookwyrm was an interesting one, seeing as that most of the time, the suspicion was on Bookwyrm and Stick and I were still arguing about Bookwyrm later on. Ok Turtle, maybe swap Elk with Szeth. But I need to read what both of them have said again this cycle one more time. So against the spirit of Edited to add: Sorry, didn't finish as my keyboard died and I needed to go fix it but didn't want to lose what I'd typed. I suppose it'd come out of my set of three, but I'm fine with the approximate three I've offered. Edited to add 2: My current sets. I want to go back to sleep as the thread took too long, so this is going to be a set of rough buckets this time, which can go from very slight to a strong read. My criterion for 'Evil' at the moment is anyone I'd like to apply pressure on, and 'Null' is anyone I'd want to keep an eye on. Probably some potential litigation with where Archer, Xino etc. might go but it's more important to me to get this done than to get the solid nuances right. I can work through the rest later. Village: <Mat, Illwei, Araris, JNV> Null: <Tani, Alv, Stick, Turtle, Silho, TUN, Xino> Evil: <Chantara, Szeth, Archer, Elk, Bookwyrm, Insanity, Cash> @Ookla the Forgotten - In short, my read of him has depreciated. I appreciate that I do have moments that read V to me when it comes to him, but I also have a lot of ?. I accept he has explanations for them but I just do not quite like his voting patterns. I am not sure I am running off a Bookwyrm/Elk E/E theory because of Elk's willingness to endanger Bookwyrm at the end, but I feel as though reluctance is odd - cutting that amount of slack but not wanting to push your top suspect and even pushing the tie at the end...it just reads off to me.

Welcome back

You know. I really want to yell at you for this but also not because this means you are the best human being in the game for not reading my PMs ...Shining sent me a thread PM early on asking me about my opinion on playstyles being indicative of alignment change. I've been literally responding to his questions. That's it. You can open the double spoilers to check if you want to, I'm cool with that since everyone and their chull has been apparently reading my PMs >:( You really wanna play that way? I repeat. This post, responding to Danex, was written in LG90 by V!Kas, and affirmed OOG by Dead!V!Kas. E!me and V!me do have some overlap. But E!me generally does not engage as broadly or as deeply with the game. You can link a game, if you want. I challenge you to. You cannot link a game that isn't in this post and that I haven't analysed. You wanna show I can't be effortcleared? I can take any game or link you show and demonstrate it is already linked and analysed in this post. I kind of really, really hate it when players say "don't effortclear" and repeat a slogan mindlessly. It used to be El's "confirmed good is not confirmed right" and that started to see use as a way of discrediting anything as confirmed Village player says and I see the same issue here now. What does effortclear mean? If you see a longpost and say "yeah okay the player made a longpost, not Elim," then no bloody drek? That is bloody stupid and anyone who uses that level of reasoning deserves to get bit. If you see a player who is consistently engaged with the game at breadth and at depth, and if you know that player tends to have low breadth and depth of engagement when Evil? Yeah, no crem Sherlock, that's sort of more telling. Sure, you can say I'm effortclearing Illwei. But I'm not doing it on the basis of longposts - I'm doing it on the basis of her thoughts and the fact I haven't known her to ever play that niche as an Elim. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. You're free to tunnel me for as long as you want and I don't particularly care, honestly, except that if it starts to go on to an insane extent, at some point I'm going to have to make the choice LG82 Archer did >> But don't you dare tell me you think you know my Elim tells better than I do. I do try to disguise it with long posts as an Elim but when I'm vmaxxing, the disparity is unfortunately just too great because I can't be bothered to engage with more than necessary to ensure the MLs go through. Edited to add: @ookla the POKE VOTE: As promised, since someone else flipped: The North Americans when they wake up to find chaos from everyone trying to tie at EoD:

You have only yourself to blame, Mr 'I Made Thread PMs!'

@Ookla the Omniscient You wanted a tie, meaning you were fine with exeing Wiz. You also placed your final vote on Wiz. This isn't a situation in which 'gosh darns it sticky' makes sense. Stick may have been the deciding vote, but this was also an endgame you were ok with either way. As expected, Alv was on late to enforce a tie, meaning functionally anyone who wants a train to go through should probably leave a decent margin. No sign of vote manip occurring, which is fair. Nothing much we can infer from that at this point, too many possibilities, e.g. scarcity, no urgent need felt, etcetera. Thoughts from EoD first: I'll handle vote tracking analysis later when I'm not as out of it. (And RP. I swear to the gods I will RP.) Elk, I'm confused about your preferences here. You consider Bookwyrm your lead suspect but you also decided you wanted a tie. What did you expect an EoD tie to achieve, given that unless Alv, myself, Szeth, TUN, or Stick were invested (as in, invested in the results...) vote manips, you'd essentially just be leaving the decision up to RNGesus without added informational value? On the other hand, you say that vote manip makes you a little less likely to enjoy the tie. So why go for it anyway? Still think @InfiniteInsanity's stable vote should be questioned. What's your view of the game now, Insanity? @Chantara choosing to slot onto a side-train is also a very safe choice. Why Mat? You could plausibly just go onto me, since you indicated you wanted to. I was more or less trying to get a pizza commission from me-voters anyway. IMO @ookla the POKE VOTE's near-EoD seemed a bit performative: Like ok but if I'm one of your strongest reads, why appeal to everyone else? You have a very simple solution: it's called voting for whom you most suspect among the other trains. The reluctance to get involved suggests that you either believe all the other trains are Villagers too (which you deny, since you think there's at least one Elim there) or that you don't want to get your hands dirty and/but were fine with the trains. I'm more wary of the latter attitude. I've given this more thought and the lack of the classic retaliation vote is odd. Swinging back once again to my Thaid train judgement, but part of me still feels you should just check the obvious, so I guess I'm just going to and fro about this one. I still think you are an outlier as pretty much the only unequivocal Bookwyrm defender though - most everyone else is stopping at the level that obvious Evil is Evil. I'd also consider my 'this train just feels awful' defense to be pretty lukewarm, since it's not really a full-throated defense of V!Bookwyrm but more "this train sucks" sort of unhappiness. @Shining Silhouette declining to get involved, versus @Tani apparently flipping a coin between Mat and Wiz. With regard to Chaos!Silho, I think it's fair to make the point that Silho was a bit more helpful in previous games even in chaos mode. Silho, what's your view of the game right now? Similar question for Tani. You have a game in which this occurred for me to check out? I'd say the main thing other than that that pushes me back towards E!Archer is the fact that Archer, too, isn't driving the thread as much. Arguably you could point out Archer seems busy (cf the Szeth vote), but I still at least want to flag that and get some clarity on it, given that: A. there wasn't any response to that when Alv pointed it out, and B. this is probably the second or third time in this game someone did something on a factually unsound basis, e.g. Xino 'self-presing'. The Szeth vote does shift my views again, or at least makes me more uncertain, so I am going to have to make sense of it when doing the vote tracker. Also, @Archer - what's the point of asking Araris to vote Xino with you and then staying put? @Ookla the Forgotten didn't show up at EoD, which surprised me a bit. Interested if this means you were fine with the state of affairs at EoD? Want to know where this puts you - Elk's willingness to vote Bookwyrm but also tie-chasing seems to me to be a mixed result. But I don't deny Stick has a point about the lack of a retaliation vote, too, which puts pressure on the other side of the E/E theory. Curious if you did that? Interested in why you wanted clarity on this. And oddly how? I'll be the first to admit the main reason I am more willing to consider Szeth Village is he just seems sincere about thinking that a tie is good, just also...(in my view), very wrong.

It's a fair point. I think it depends on availability as well—Bookwyrm didn't show up at end-C1 QF63 although teammate Turtle was moderately endangered, though to be fair, he was already voting Archer at that point. I'm on mobile right now so can't link. I maintain though that you're probably the strongest proponent of unequivocally V!Bookwyrm and that's just something that stands out to me. Mat started out with E!Bookwyrm credences, still no idea what Elk thinks, Araris went back onto Bookwyrm. The most I'm willing to say is that Bookwyrm feels very LHF in a Thaid way to me, but if it came down to Szeth or Bookwyrm, Szeth just feels more genuine despite IMO their also being mistaken. I also really don't want to go after a returning player D1, truth to be told. IDK. I guess we could CW me if you want to save Bookwyrm? But that's not really functional IMO because we don't have the votes. Edited to add: @Elkanah — LHF = Low Hanging Fruit. Typically trains or players that are easy to push through.

In this cycle, no. If I'm somehow still alive at lylo, I can't make that assurance. That's one point I think it becomes ethically indefensible to do what I'm doing. Edited to add: Sure, I'm happy to concede that this isn't optimal play and the most pro-Village thing for me to do is to vote on the player between Bookwyrm and Szeth I most find Village. But I don't really want to go for optimisation over other things and can afford to do so right now. Edited to add 2: This should read vote to save the player I find most Village and would probably involve me voting for Bookwyrm.

Don't worry Ash. There's still an hour and three minutes to change things around!

Listen >> There's a good reason for it. Szeth was sus of me and I encouraged him to follow his suspicions to the logical conclusion. Then I voted me because he offered delicious pizza and I regret nothing. (There are...okay reasons too I swear.) And then Alv voted me for blaspheming against the Sacred Coin and also because ties and pizza and I solicited him onto the wagon. You know how Alv is about the Gods of Luck and Chance. I accept that this is serious for him, it's definitely serious for Szeth, and it's dead serious for me! Edited to add: Stick's view on Bookwyrm is probably the biggest outlier I can think of so far as it's outright positive.

You can vote for me, that's fine I will eventually talk Szeth into giving me a commission of an additional pizza for each person I persuade! Pizza train!

Ah my bad, they get quantity, that's supposed to be the check against Blade accumulation. Edited to add: Yes and no. Voting is good for determining motivation. But say, if we went for a five way tie and one player flipped Village. Do we know anything about the other four trains? I would argue an Elim is likely happier risking 1/5 chances of getting lynched as compared to say, 1/2 or 1/3. And at a certain point, when everyone is placing votes to preserve the tie, everyone blends in. If all votes are given on an equally 'bad' basis, then how do you really decide which is good and which is bad? Everyone on the lethal train will point to people making equally bad votes on the other train. And the last thing you want to be baited into over the next couple of cycles is automatic 'lynch the CW.' Thing about data is data quality also matters, yah? Otherwise you get GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out. I don't disagree that ties can be informative - I generally agree with Mat that they're better mid-cycle or close to EoD. And I actually do not E!read you at the moment. I will be fair and admit one could say the same of me in terms of the fact my vote is pretty nonsensical. But I have meta reasons for encouraging you to vote for me and agreeing to self-vote that I don't want to talk about at the moment. Hell, a lot of what I've been doing this game has been pretty meta.

Honestly, I thought that was a bit sus, and also thought that it was very you, so I wrote that off. We basically know with high certitude given what Ash said that all Honorblades start in the game, i.e. there are two vote manips. How does a tie in this particular instance help us eliminate "a whole host of people" from the Elim list? How do we ID the vote manips? Does it really matter, since we know the vote manips already exist? (Look at Tyrian games - it's often very hard to tell early on whether a vote manip was hostile or not. In AG8, we took forever to realise all vote manips were Village.) The Shaman also knows where the Honorblades are, meaning the Shaman expressly knows who has vote manip.

I mean, there's a good chance Alv will still vote to ensure a tie. It's Alv. No one except maybe me might beat him to the punch, given our timezones ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But do I want to make Alv mad? Hmm. Edited to add: And tbf, pizza. Gotta stay bought. Pizza is delicious.

Sure. But I know I'm Village and I don't actually mind flipping, seeing as that I'm happy enough to accept a pizza bribe So this was more of a 'ok flip me if you need to, but after me, if you think this is a bad argument, could you please go consider an E!Archer world?' sort of contingency in my head. I'm rethinking somewhat thanks to the Archer swing to Szeth but I also do not like that original vote, so the only time I can advocate for my read is while I'm still alive. (I will admit part of this is the fact that given the current state of who I read Village, I am being forced to relook some of my initial reads, e.g. on Archer and Stick.) But I don't know Alv's sus really invalidates it because he explicitly mentions it - in response to Archer's Wiz-Alv E/E claim - that he doesn't in fact suspect Archer. There was no mention of sus before that, let alone sus of Archer or defense of Wiz. The main point stands. RIP he just showed... Why are you asking the thread my dude Edited to add: I guess I'd say I find the Szeth vote a defeater because I struggle to see why E!Archer votes Szeth here. Just makes the tie bigger.

I suppose you could always philosophically argue that all self-votes are dramatic but no. I wanted pizza, it was a bribe too good to ignore

Szeth was offering pizza. I haven't had pizza in two years

Quite agreed! I'd really not rather be there, either Yeah, well, his snap-vote to Szeth has confused me a bit. So I am still leaning Evil on Archer but also semi-undecided. Edited to add: That's fine, I don't maintain kill lists

Do you add to your kill list for votes or just kills? I see you've avenged yourself for that LG72 kill. I am mildly surprised I've not actually killed you when Evil though I think you or Steel got me in QF29 - MR3 was a near thing.

Could vote for you too For that matter, I think a five-way is still feasible at this point.