Kasimir

Could I ask about this one? Because to me, my goals are always twofold: I want to protect all the Villagers I can and find Elims. If I'm tunnelling or mistaken, I want to correct myself before it's too late and a mistake happens. And I want to find Elims if I've mistakenly thought them Village. I accept some MLs happen and some infolynches are necessary, but it goes against the grain to let a Villager die if I could have saved them or if I could have done better at reading them. Questioning my E reads seems natural to me. Or is your point about the asymmetry of questioning your E but not your V reads? I struggle at reading interactions but this I can do.

Aman - this has happened to me a few times, I'm sorry to hear, bro. As far as I can tell, it's some sort of timeout where if you spend too long working on a longpost, you lose everything that wasn't saved. Currently, I try to ctrl+a / ctrl+c everything before I hit post, because sometimes it screws up. Either way, please take a deep breath man? I know it's frustrating to lose something you've put so much of your heart and effort into. I've been there Storming post editor ate my D1/D2 vote analysis in LG83 and I was so done with everything and life. We gotchu, bro. Even if you can't redo it, Village has to do our part too. In LG83, Devo reminded me that the Village should never depend on one player. Everyone gotta chip in. You've done your part. If you can rewrite it, you can. If you can't, you can't. Then it's on us to take it up and do our bit.

I can feel the IKYK gaping there, and I don't even want to go near it :| Good catch, though - I think I was thinking too big picture. To me, this would mesh with the fact you've essentially been in the crosshairs since C1, which is frustrating because either way there's a powerful temptation to flip and check if we buy that NK framework (just ask Stick about how both Fifth and I toyed with the idea of checking the LG83 D1 CW out of paranoia even though we both thought her Village) and I don't like being played this way by the Elims. Or there's Illwei's mention this is your kill pattern, I guess. But killing everyone who reads E!Ash - too obvious? Feels like the playerbase largely doesn't do much NK analysis anymore. >> I take your point, sir. But no, that being said, it's the Devo kill that's throwing me. From an informational perspective, it's mixed: it narrows the Striker voter pool, and it kills a potentially ambiguous player. I honestly was a bit more strong in stating my Devo read, probably for rhetorical reasons, than I privately believed - it all comes back to the fact that I've misread E!Devo as V!Devo before because it really is very difficult to tell the difference, and in most cases, I could not have done so without mechanical analysis of some sort. So like with Araris, I'm always prepared to revise my beliefs on Devo because I'm aware there's more room for error there. I don't think my experience with Devo is a unique one, either. So given this, I'm struggling to see if framing Ash was worth the trade-off (if the Striker train really was pure which I currently can't quite bring myself to believe, then this becomes a moot point) because Ash was already quite endangered on C2, and it feels like the Thaid swing was more last minute than anything, since Devo, JNV, and Illwei were all late voters. Which is a bit of a segue but: I do have a private theory that I hadn't really shared with the thread yet, but I have been wondering if they are trying to pull the "why are you still alive" line and go for a ML on Aman at some point if he's not dead. (To a weaker extent, potentially Archer?) I would hope they won't do that, as both Aman and Orlok especially have bad history with that line, and El and I explained as much in MR56 why we try not to go there. But even that possibility is kayana because this requires a player capable of actually facing down Aman in the thread. As you pointed out, there's a reason BT1 Kas just elected to NK Aman off the bat. There are only so many players in this game I think could have that capability or confidence, among them Archer, Maili, Orlok, potentially Illwei at a glance. But would anyone try this after MR56? I feel like a decent chunk of players, myself included, would make it very clear we don't want to advance that particular line of reasoning. I think Orlok and Maili would both absolutely not countenance this. More so on the former because again - Aman and Orlok were the two players who suffered the most from this. Archer is a non-starter for me, and I'm not sure if Illwei would be this spicy. (Again, I'm not interested in entertaining E!Aman possibilities at this point in time. I do have a mental suspicion threshold, and it hasn't been reached yet. So on that, we're in agreement.) I could see JNV potentially pushing Devo - they played with SK!Devo in MR56, if we're thinking of it as a threat kill. But IDK - SK play =/= Village play. JNV was also fairly protective of returning players in LG83, which I do appreciate, even if I'm also voting on them :/ My question is, would you consider the Mat over Aman choice also spicy? Because looking at the pre-flip decision point: the Elims, having bussed Striker, expected one of their own to flip. I think I would have expected a retaliatory Aman C1 kill just on that basis, and indeed, taking out Mat appears to be either a threat kill or eroding the ground the Village might have expected to gain. Should also point out you were vocally against an Aman C1 kill and in this game, asked the Elims not to kill Aman this early. In E!Ash world, it's not a call I would be surprised to see you make. In V!Ash world? You have some 1337 powers of influence, my dude Please use them for our good. Be the hero the Village deserves! I think we're roughly in agreement that this is a possibility - I just don't have high credences in it. I'm wary of calls to go after players I have (relatively) high Village credences in unless I have sufficient reason to rethink, and I'd agree with Aman that this threshold has not yet been reached for me in order to reconsider my current view of C1 as being a bus rather than a gambit. In general, if I have credences that are sufficiently robust, I'd rather work on refining those I'm not sure about, rather than immediately rethinking everything. I think that two days of seemingly nonsense kills isn't that call to revision. The thing is, if you think it was a gambit, then on the assumption this was a gambit, are you suggesting E!Aman? Because Aman started the Striker train, rather than Archer. I could see E!Archer liking the idea of a gambit like this under specific circumstances - I just don't think that holds true in this game based off the current state of our ignorance. If you do have E!Archer credences, why are you going for Illwei instead, though?

Late reply due to re-reading again. @Illwei, why Thaid? I noticed your last post in that cycle was basically about Ash rather than Thaid. Do I infer correctly it was meant to protect Ash? From my perspective, it did look like it. We had a EoC with Archer and Ash both being live contentions, with JNV's strong push against Archer, and you and Ash both stating issues with Archer or at least intent to go on Archer. On re-reading, I had confused your later post on Archer with your earlier post on Archer, so you're essentially not my major suspect on the Archer CW theory. IDK, I feel like E!Illwei would push more strongly. Even before realising my mistake, you were still a lot more tentative than JNV in my view, since you threw a point out there, which is key in why I'm going for JNV rather than you. (My lean Village on Ash also helps with that.) That the Archer CW didn't go anywhere I attribute to fog-of-war rather than lack of intent, since we knew there was a bus, and the idea that the Elim team tried a hardcore gambit D1 is just kayana to me. Doesn't make it impossible, but a lot more weird drek would have to go down this game to convince me to explore that world. And if your take is that Ash is the CW, then shouldn't you think V!Ash? Response to tinfoil:

Honestly, why? I'm willing to be talked around if there's something I'm missing. I respect V!Illwei's thought processes enough, even if I don't know for sure if you're V!Illwei. E!Aman's not negotiable for me at this juncture. I'd like to hear you out on Archer even if I don't realistically feel I'm swapping my tiers on him right now. I guess the exchange between you and Archer have persuaded me I might be too hasty on Bort and I've been going back and forth on Ash. But this is sort of what I'm left with. I guess Maili could be busier than usual but the idea of Maili not even attempting thread control for his teammate C1 is a very hard pill for me to swallow. I have more respect for E!Maili's abilities than that, given his playhistory (LG51, LG74...)

What Maili said. Maili and Devo were Elims together in my LG74 game and I know they've had previous playhistory, so Maili would be familiar. Bort...no idea but in LG83, Drake got me to read QF30 to understand how much thread control the Elim team of that game might need, and that game featured V!Bort and E!Devo. So I'm guessing some playhistory, minimally. Last I checked/remembered, Bort was UK-based like Wyrm, so GMT for them both. But caveat that this is me going off LG15b era memories here, and IDK if he moved since. Wait, you were teammates and you don't even know his timezone? Broooooooooo. So here's the thing. I'm likely to be tied down with work from Monday to Tuesday, so if it comes to that, I'll basically be low bandwidth. So my best shot is committing to try to get analysis done over the weekend, and then doing what I can on those days. Current plan is to actually systematically go through the thoughts I've entertained across this game and to see where they make sense and where they don't. Probably should have done this sooner but LG83 chill mode dies hard. Fair warning this is me doing thought scratch table mode, so it may not really help with the discussion. I'll circle round back to that later. Some of it is really just me asking the Urbain paranoia to sit down and shut up. First thoughts on the Thaid cycle: as Aman pointed out, he's the guy who pushed this train, mostly, from the start. This is the point at which I take one step back and ask myself in all seriousness: what are the odds Aman is deepwolfing here? Or maybe here's the better question: what would it take for Aman to be Evil, here? It's true that Aman is one hell of a scary Elim, but I like realistic strategic assessments to back raw paranoia rather than just drawing off playhistory. The one sticking point is that we'd be tied to the kayana gambit branch I mentioned last cycle - a bus so early it was essentially more or less a gambit. Maybe a four Elim team could afford to give up a player - feels too much for a three Elim team. But that just seems so wild. Like, okay, but on C1? For trust? IDK, I'm having a hard time accepting that when Aman pushed the Striker train at two key junctures (initiator, and by reaffirming his intent to vote for Striker, and with smaller junctures of subsequent interchanges with Striker. I have no doubt E!Aman could make just as convincing a train (hi Hyena!) but this just doesn't make sense to me as a strategic trade-off.) So this is a non-starter for me. (Sorry Archer, you said no one needs you to seriously go through those, but I'm doing it anyway for me.) Which leads me to my other question, though I see I've already given the game away by shading my thoughts in the voting box. What are the odds that Archer is Evil here? I am marginally more willing to entertain E!Archer than E!Aman but when my willingness to entertain E!Aman possibilities is very low, this also basically says E!Archer cuts no ice with me. E!Archer is typically known for deepwolfing, and Archer of either alignment is known for C1 bold ploys, yes. In an E!Archer world, this would explain the half-heartedness of the Archer CW and why Striker merely asked people to go onto Archer, rather than actually pushed hard. But then, we loop back to the exact same question: for a while, there was a credible sense of a threat to Archer. What sort of Elim team puts both members under fire? Especially with the vote uncertainty caused by Archer's own proposal? (Three even, if you have E!Ash credences. At this point I'm leaning V on Ash, but Striker/Ash/Archer E/E/E and all up for the lynch would be an appalling failure of thread control from Archer, and makes no sense as a plan and I've seen kdramas with plots that make more sense than that.) I don't deny that gaining trust can be valuable, but it boils down to what the trust is used for. At this juncture, it just doesn't make sense to me as a trade-off. The raw possibility of a deepwolf doesn't justify suspicion at this point. Even deepwolves have to bite eventually. (Hi TJ ) I think the better read of C1 is that Archer was the favoured CW to Striker. This does make me suspicious of those pushing Archer, but that's for later - for now, suffice to say that the push for CW Archer makes me fairly willing to go V!Archer. But I also think Ash is Village, though much less strongly than my Aman/Archer reads. I've hesitated but after sleeping on it and finding a more coherent way of putting down my thoughts, I do believe Elims are more pragmatic about principles, and Ash preferring not to save his life by cashing in on Thaid outrage or Aman's info about the two accounts - it's possible that E!Ash would be principled either way, but that and the flat "okay, lynch me if you need to, hope my flip helps" jointly tip me towards V!Ash. I've stated before my thoughts about genuine willingness to die being more Village than Evil. I'm not fully sure I got that emotional valence off Ash, but I do feel that it comes back to my thoughts on the Striker bus: that it was not a gambit, and on further thought, Ash also felt resigned to death or genuinely indifferent, and I'm struggling to see this coming from an Elim who has already lost a teammate C1. Is the Thaid train a pure Village train? I don't know. This would depend on Illwei. In a V!Ash world, JNV could be an Elim pushing a ML. This would be consistent with my views on V!Archer and explain JNV's vote on that train as well. In an E!Ash world, I'm willing to lean a bit more V on JNV - Elims likely had to factor in that my vote on Ash would not have moved. But Ash was decidedly late to self-pres (though E!Ash could of course be lying and have sent the order in all along, but what would the possible votecount look like?) Even with the knowledge Ash self-presed, it's dangerously close, especially in a game where Villagers can send in votes without much signalling. I'm not sure I buy that E!JNV was distancing - given E!Ash, this scenario tilts me towards V!JNV. Another option: FYI that this looks even worse, if you also think Illwei is Evil (I'm conflicted, but at this point, I also think I generally consciously struggle to read Illwei despite actually seemingly not being awful at it.) JNV's distancing here requires Illwei to show up to save Ash, and also again - vote volatility. It's true Illwei has a good risk appetite, but I'm still leaning V!JNV in this E!Ash scenario. I don't know I can see the Elim team taking the risk, given their C1. A third option: This is what I mean by volatility. In this world, E!Ash dies. Do they want to gamble that I'd be a straight shooter this cycle rather than sneaky with my vote again, given how I kept hopping between Thaid and Ash? I don't know. Similar diagnosis to the other cases - I still think JNV looks more V in this scenario. And having done all this work, I'm going to proceed to throw it out the window anyway because I'm more committed to V!Ash than I am to E!Ash In a V Ash world, Thaid/Ash become a V/V train. Given the current state of my credences, potential places for Elims to be would be JNV, or Illwei, or the non-voters, inclusive of: <TUA, Experience, Maili, Bort, Orlok.> I lean Village on Maili and Bort. So I guess Illwei's six question answers itself here. I'll say more about it in the reads list. At this point, I'd be okay with a vote on JNV. In a V!JNV world, unless E!Illwei, I'm committed to more of the Elims being in the non-voters. But I strongly suspect that something is off and I'll need to revise some credences somewhere - this just feels too 'neat' or 'too clean', as it were. Patji all over again. Current State of Kas's Reads: Regular Casanovas [=Moderate Village]: Cute First Date [=Light Village]: Nayana [=Null+] Deader Than A Triton Moon [=Null] Swipe Left [=Null-] Given my current distribution of credences, I'm not exactly going to be upset with a TUA lynch, but I'm currently most down for JNV. Anyone want to talk about when you placed your votes last cycle? I sent mine shortly after my post on ML guilt in which I swapped for the last time from Ash to Thaid, then went back to my cases.

Sorry Thaid :/ Getting some Falcon flashbacks from this, though honestly well-deserved. Didn't think through V!Thaid possibilities enough, or at least just started to think in terms of Thaid-or-Ash. I...At least based off when I last left off, I'm still leaning Village on Ash, even if it's honestly based off some vibes from that thread interaction. Working off that, if V/V, Elims should have low investment, though a five vote train still feels pretty sizeable to me. Would imagine low penetration on the Thaid train, potential low penetration on Ash train - stacking up doesn't make sense in a V/V case due to indifference. I'll run through the V/E case just for thoroughness later on when I've had some sleep. Whatever Archer said about built-in cycle naptime. Devo kill is throwing me for a damned loop and bringing to mind Fifth's LG83 quote about trying to work out what a team of psychopaths has in mind. And she was single-handedly holding down the RP fort while the rest of us have been remiss in our duties :| I'd have thought the Elims would've gone either for Aman or left the Striker wagon untouched, but maybe I'm just old school. I do feel like Devo's posts were fairly Village, but at the same time, Devo's infamous for being difficult to read in that E! and V! Devo have very little variance (hence most often last Elim standing and mechanically outed) - so I do wonder that they went for her at all. More thoughts after sleep, but: @Amanuensis - DWAI man, I just wanted to make my line in the sand clear I'm aware that this tendency of mine is well-known and some players (even if not you) may genuinely want to use it as an alignment barometer for me. So I felt it was a good time to clearly address it since it's never been a healthy tendency of mine, and I am actively working on finding various methods and techniques to let go of the emotions because I'm kind of done with emotional self-harm as a playstyle quirk. Buddhist parable of the monks and the river applies here, as I told I think...Striker, Experience, and Devo? In the LG. On my part, I would say that it's my job to try to be as clear/easy to read as possible, so I need to do that more. I'm happy to accept the consequences of removing ML guilt from my Village play as far as possible and I don't expect players to cut me slack for it, I just do intend to defuse expectations that this will keep being a reliable tell/exist because that's not a healthy state of affairs. Fully respect the need for more data points @Ashbringer - It was rough but I appreciated the mercy-killing Thanks, Santa Klaus!

It's a fair line of thought, but I also wanted to take a moment to address the ML guilt point, because if it was from another player (well, some other players), I'd be seriously confused and a bit wary. This is a normal regular ruleset minus the anon voting mechanic. This means that unless I am some secret god at concealing my alignment (though I guess some members of the playerbase act as though they believe I am...), I can be read in the usual ways: via my thoughts scratched into the thread, via my votes, via my suspicions, my thought processes, and my voting track record. Though I take the point to be more open and probably less lazy. Given the wealth of standard measures used to read a player, it's not clear to me why the ML guilt point should be decisive, and I would never consent to a statement where the only way I can help people Village read me is by landing up with ML guilt because...why would it be? See above. The elephant in the room is that it's the one hallmark of my Village playstyle that no one seriously expects me to be able to replicate when Evil, both because I have strong principles about what I consider to be emotional manipulation, and because I can't invent emotion I don't seriously feel. Which is where I'm going to just flatout say: I plan to solve the game for as long as I am alive, and to do my best to help find and lynch the remaining Elims. This should help clarify reads of me. I also pray to all the SE gods that I will not experience ML guilt. First, because ML guilt is not a fun experience, and involves feelings of intense self-hatred, guilt, and uselessness, second, because ML guilt cycles usually get me to push myself to the point of physical and mental burnout, if not actual mental/physical health issues (I've stated before publicly that I cried with relief when the Elim team in AG8 finally killed me), third, because ML guilt resulted in an uncharacteristically poor C1 performance from me in MR56, and fourth, because I spent an entire wonderful Village-sided game in LG83 with zero ML guilt whatsoever, and still ended up being moderately effective in identifying the Elims, even if TJ and Araris both gave me the runaround. ML guilt was not necessary: sure, it helped a lot in getting Meerkat D3 to happen, but it was unhealthy self-flagellation and as I've stated several times in public, I am continuously working towards breaking the cycle of self-destruction. I don't blame players for wanting to use ML guilt as a quick and easy shorthand to solve me. But I'm currently being very brutally upfront about my views on that, which is that I am working to eliminate that shorthand, for the sake of my personal wellbeing and effectiveness as a player. I accept that people will do what they need to do, and I will do what I need to do. That's just how it's going to be. If the Elims NK me, I welcome the kill. Lord knows the LG83 Traitor team soon found out very quickly it's hard to have leverage over a player who doesn't actually care about surviving even though that was technically my wincon If at any point, this doesn't work, and my flip is absolutely required, then so be it. I'm always ready to die as soon as I begin playing, and my basic attitude is that I'm always just really seeking to trade my life for maximum value for the Village. I'm saying this because I want to emphasise how dead serious I am: A. my alignment should never be hinging on ML guilt in the first place, and I accept the implied failure on my part, and B. more importantly, this is a hill I am utterly and dead serious willing to die on. If I get ML guilt this game, which is a distinct possibility, I'm considering this a failure of my attempts to develop a healthier playstyle, and I am absolutely not going to support or play towards any SE meta which wants me to put myself in that headspace. If anyone mentions this in a future game, link them to this. Here I stand. And having now said that: I'm still divided about Ash. But at the same time, this I get (having just made my own stand), but I just really can't see a principled stand and an utter dgaf for death at that extent to be Evil, given that it's the Thaid train that's at stake here. If Thaid and Ash were E/E, I'd expect Ash to probably be a bit more invested in alternatives, rather than offering a statement of principle at any rate. Maybe Ash is a principled Elim. But I'd like to think Elims generally would be a lot more willing to take the out offered. And regardless, he has honour, and I respect that. (Shades of LG83!Kas again I suppose.) Ash, Thaid. Lesgo I guess.

Responses in bold.

Okay, you know what, I'm not comfortable with this. I'll commit to rethinking this when I come back, as I think a vote potentially influenced by emotion (or at least I cannot safely exclude this possibility) despite the player already being in my pool is not a good way to play SE. The lurking on a secondary account was the tipping point for me though. Thaid Ash. Back to my original vote. All the best, ThreadPMBro! I hope to clear my work as soon as I can. FYI since we can't PM in this game, I'm going to just spoiler a secret of Keredin's that I'm moving towards but haven't had the time to set up. Request players not Aman do me the courtesy of not reading it, but since Aman is initiating the RP, might be good if he knows what character arc I'm going for. I'm pretty yes-and for RP unless people go against an established facet of my character, so there you go

Daaaad I promise I'm not starting anything! And here, every mod who has ever IMed me rolls their eyes... I can't guarantee I'm not influenced by this piece of information, unfortunately. I'll come back and try to re-evaluate with a cooler head if I can. But I do think that this manner of lurking triggers LG5 Khas alarm bells for me, and as I've stated, I feel the Elim profile and the parked vote both put him in my suspect pool, so I am okay with this, and I think that's Rational Kas talking. Edited to add: Speaking of RL though, I am really going to stop lingering here and go work on my serial cases. Faster I start, hopefully the faster I get done, and then can be more available, even if I'm at 30% battery right now.

Should note that when I GMed QF54, the Elim team absolutely killed a player they knew was: A. not new, B. actually a ban dodger on an alt, so they were using that sort of knowledge and that passed muster. I guess the IM ( @Araris Valerian ) will let us know if this is not okay but at this point, the lerasium is out of the vial.

Ash Thaid. I got really mad for a short while and had to go through Thaid's posts to confirm if he made any claims about IRL availability. IRL availability claims are sacred to me - the failure to take them seriously leads to players being demanded to bluetext claims, which in turn, leads us into an escalation where claims not in bluetext are immediately doubted, and anything not in bluetext is fair game as a tool for manipulation, emotional or otherwise. I've said this before. I'll say it again. I don't want a SE where the default response to pain, or to RL circumstances hindering play is, "Can you bluetext this?" Or when these things can be considered acceptable tools for weaponisation. I think that harms the community. Screw that noise. I notice Thaid's first post just talks about inactivity without mentioning reasons, so then I had to step away from the instinctive, utter berserkergang fury. Which is mildly embarrassing, but hey, I'm a heart before head kinda guy where it counts. Either way, so be it. I don't see what reason a Villager has to lurk in such a way.

I think the tldr; in my head is: low hanging fruit? versus lol Jain since we MLed him nonstop for being chaotic until he stopped being chaotic. Well, okay, he didn't get MLed for being chaotic but the sentiment is there because it led to a style of play that just triggered the Village every single time. With the caveat that a 2014 SE Village isn't going to be the same demographic as a 2021 SE Village. But that being said, I don't like the parked vote, and believe the side-train is worth checking out, and I think it's strongly indicative that we didn't see resistance to a Striker lynch at the expected points, so I'm absolutely fine with a Thaid train and could join in. Edited to add: Uggggggggghhhhhhhh. Part of me is screaming this is Village. IDK. I always think that a willingness to die for the Village and to help the Village is hard to fake - understandably, not all Villagers are willing to die for the Village and there's a decent case to be made for not walking straight into a ML because that'd hurt your team, but I also feel it's genuinely difficult for Elims to fake this willingness, which is why it tends to be powerful when I do pick it up. So it's a conditional and not a bi-conditional. At the same time, the emotional valence from this just seems...flat. Which yeah, I get - exhaustion and business, but...how much does this go for then...? :/

So, in all honesty, Thaid is on my nulls to null- for that parked vote and for the profile of the Elim team, depending on the world possibility, so I'm not opposed to a Thaid lynch, but my view is that it's not as late in the cycIe as it could be since North America is due to wake up...eventually? Three hourish? I think? So I'm okay with opening more possibilities for exploration in order to get more vote data for the next cycle, and just have people sound off. I also honestly have a Patji question at the back of my head for Thaid is: is it too easy, if Striker set it up? I honestly don't know. Because we now know in retrospect that Archer's team absolutely went for the Thaid ML when it was offered in LG83, so you may very well be right that Striker should have counted on the Village biting if he wanted to set up a ML of V!Thaid, hinting at E!Thaid. But part of me wonders if it's a reasonable expectation that he didn't do it because he thought he might appear to be going for low-hanging fruit, and potentially trigger red flags - as Devo pointed out, he was certainly very concerned with how his thoughts were perceived.

Sorry for the delay - have been issued work at late notice which will probably take me out for a decent chunk of this cycle but these things happen, though I hope to be done earlier. Small disclaimer that this is being written on an insane amount of sleep-deprivation, so absolutely would like to hear from others if I'm tripping. I expect to be able to be more present tomorrow, once everything is turned in. Though knowing me, I'll sneak on here and there between segments of work... H'okay. So let's get down to business. I think for me the key question is: what was the Elim team’s disposition on C1? Because the question of whether it was a bus (very likely IMO) and when the bus was decided tells us quite a bit about the team profile, and where to look. A. Early Bus An early bus suggests a team with high risk tolerance. If the bus is too early, I almost don’t want to call it a bus—it feels like a gambit. Even then, I question what kind of gambit it was: given the Elim wincon is to outnumber, willingly giving up one member in an unforced choice for Village trust is honestly kind of kayana. Insane risk tolerance yes, but is that likely? Even if we presume a four Elim team? (I flag this because I think it causes problems next to Aman’s timeline which I’m using shamelessly.) It's so wild and patently absurd to me I'm just not going to entertain it as an option, The reasonable window for an early bus in my view goes from late p2 - p3 of the cycle, with p3 being more reasonable. Mention of two possible votes on Striker shouldn't lead to an immediate bus calculus for Elims (see my comment on feeling like a gambit.) Players I'd put in my high risk tolerance pool include: <Aman, Archer, Devo, Maili, Illwei, Experience, Ash*.> Functionally, the first two are non-starters for me for the moment. But I'm also not so fond of this, because the more I read pages 2-3, the more I have difficulty understanding how the Elim team hits on bussing as the appropriate response. Where are the attempted CWs? (Why did they not bite on the juicy side-trains? ) How the hell does an Elim team hit on bussing as the response instead of pushing for an alternate train? Was Striker the only one setting up his own CWs? Was it opportunism or - as I'm starting to think - a shallow roster? One response in this world is Illwei advancing Archer, which Ash also does perfunctorily. I'm not going to consider seriously any Archer-initiated or Aman-initiated side-train at the moment due to the current state of my credences. Further options from the risk tolerance roster would include Experience (absent) and Maili - but the only world in which I can see Maili not even trying to thread control given the masterful display he did in LG74 is basically a world where he can't be online at the critical juncture, and ex hypothesi, that's not true in Early Bus world. So largely just Illwei and Ash sticking out to me in this world, and possibly Experience I guess. I don't see Maili being Evil in this world. But there’s another option, which Araris recently reminded me of in a different context (cf. AG8 postgame, no IM interference here.) One branch of the early bus scenario has the team committed to their Striker votes in such a way that a climbdown is not as possible, or seems too suspicious. For this scenario to be plausible, we need late-arriving pressure on Striker such that the Ash and Archer trains didn’t seem possible targets. For players to feel committed to voting on Striker and unable to climbdown, we’d have to look at players who publicly committed to voting on Striker: Mat (obvious non-starter), Aman (another obvious non-starter), Devo (yeah, but I feel Devo's late voting is known well enough she could potentially have swapped off without too much flak). Potentially Ash and Archer, but Archer is another obvious non-starter, and Ash did in fact attempt a climbdown. So I ascribe low probability to this branch of A-World. B. Late Bus The other option is a late bus. Agree Striker’s re-entry seems like a good point for this: I note that the vote state was more up in the air until then. For a late bus, we'd theoretically need in our pool all the players who were on late enough to switch over: I'm going to crib from Archer's list and supplement it with the players who posted after Striker's re-entry post or were around shortly before: <JNV, Devo, Ash, Aman, Orlok, Mat, TUA, Experience, Illwei, Archer>. It's possible a teammate could have been online and simply voted without posting, but everyone on the list except Bort was on during EoC and posted. I agree that Bort's dgaf vote on Striker looks good. He's not a candidate for our Elim(s) in B-world. For me, the practical pool here is <Ash, Illwei, Orlok> - while I know E!Devo and V!Devo are infamously very hard to distinguish, I genuinely get a good vibe from Devo's posts, and feel she is closer to her Village meta right now. I also liked the attention to detail here, and on previous occasions w.r.t. Archer. I guess I would be cautious, but she's not in my immediate suspect pool in B-world. Illwei, Ash, and Orlok all have at various points expressed suspicion of Archer (who was Striker's preferred CW, from the looks of it), and committed late (relatively) to the train. Orlok's vote is signalled conspicuously late at two minutes before rollover, and framed as an info lynch, and I'm honestly just allergic to a vote as egregiously late as that. Notice that Orlok's earlier posts seem to downgrade Archer as he carries on through his tabular reads, so I'm counting him as another player who was suspicious of Archer. Another side-branch of this possibility is a mixture: some teammates were on and did bus, and some did not. The logical pool for the bussers still takes us back to <Ash, Illwei, Orlok>, but in my view, opens us to possibilities like <JNV, TUA, Experience> as well. I italicised JNV earlier and now because he's just slightly outside of the time window I'm considering, but so slightly that I feel he should be included for the sake of completeness. Let's look at the side-trains for this: Experience ends up voting with Striker, which should be risky, but I do note that both Striker and Experience have decent risk appetites (perhaps abnormal... >>) I'm still leaving out Maili because while Maili might not have been on, I feel like Maili should've been able to better protect a teammate, and clearly had the opportunity to intervene earlier. <Thaid, TUA> also in our pool purely on the basis of side-train voting. @The Unknown Aon What put you onto Illwei? You mentioned a negative Illwei read last cycle. What's up with that? @Thaidakar the Ghostblood Why Experience? There's also JNV going onto Archer, which I'm not necessarily fond of. JNV's acknowledgement of doing the One Thing Stare (which I am admittedly prone to at times) does make it look better in my eyes, but nevertheless, I keep going back to the fact it's a stable vote on Striker's known, preferred CW with potentially little time to switch off. I don't like the look of that vote. C. The Scattering cr. Devo The final possibility is that the Elims just scattered, as Devo proposed, dividing themselves across trains. This maps quite a bit onto the last possibility I just discussed, so I would say the discussion follows from the last segment of B-world. A diverging branch proposes that most of Striker’s teammates simply could not be on around rollover (hence no bus.) Thaid is the obvious candidate here, but we’d need one to two more teammates, so let's look at the pool. The obvious answer is to cull everyone from the playerlist on the B-world EoC list: this gives us <Maili, Bort.> Both of whom are non-starters at this point in time, so I'm also going to kill this branch. Bonus section: temporal vote analysis. Asterisks are players for whom we don't have an exact time, though I think it can be somewhat inferred. Mat could've voted earlier prior to his post, for instance. If we are presupposing a bus, I think we have to look towards the lower end of the cut-off, but that more or less results in the same pool already culled. For me, I think I'd go on Ash. He's in my pool in two worlds, and I’m still not comfortable with Ash trying to push Archer (Striker’s favoured CW), and then backing off when questioned and going onto Striker. It feels like a potential bus point, with room for a subsequent climbdown if Striker's last ditch succeeded, since Ash already stated that he intended there to be ambiguity surrounding his final vote. Coupled with the EoC uncertainty, I have a negative read of him currently. Best effort basis, I guess, if I don't make it back in time to substantially revise :|

Think you may want to start it off - I need sleep as it's almost 6AM and my insomnia has just come to a grinding halt. I came back to remind everyone to give timezone as well - there's no use in raw numbers if we don't know how to convert it for the sake of vote analysis. Might not be into it, you say? :eyes: It might not start shirtless, but Keredin is more than happy to oblige After all, they are using sharp pointy things right? (Nevermind that this would be an absolute failure of workplace safety I guess.)

I gotchu bro :+1: Definitely a non-signaller, I'm afraid. Laid out my reasons in my first post this cycle, but more or less: highlighted I was open to solicitation and wanted to see if people were invested enough in Striker to talk me onto him (I publicly eh-ed it), also felt it was a good time to broaden scrutiny by placing pressure on JNV, Experience, and TUA since I picked up on them while working on my voting position distribution table. Also wanted to see if anyone took up - I think it's always helpful to get a temperature check when there's enough people expressing interest in a candidate if there's sudden movement towards alternatives. My gauge is I didn't really think there was much interest, but was reluctant to consider it indicative due to the known new Elim non-reactivity meta. I think my tldr; just boiled down to feeling I could do more constructively in informational terms by non-signalling. I think this is one reason I'd like the overall timestamp picture but I think we can work even with some measure of uncertainty. But that's a later deal. I really should not be encouraging the insomnia but as the guy who works poorly with reads and better with vote analysis, this is my time to get to work

Didn't find anything that indicated that.

I'll give you that

Yes - I think there's a qualitative difference between those of us who didn't signal (me included), and those who had a group of three and were more or less obvious about who in the group of three they were going to go on.

Uh...Off the top of my head, starting from end last year/to this year, there have been four games: AG8, MR56, LG83, BT1. He got C1ed in exactly one of the games, but at least I'm quietly grateful his final post helped me to revise my suspicions, even if I accidentally went onto Karn anyway instead of Stick. Sigh. Huh, there's another one. Stick was absolutely another C1 Elim CW. Add that to the tally, Archer. Pending confirmation from Araris, yeah. I more or less highlighted my reasoning in my post: I generally agreed with your CTA post, but in the hmm way that accompanies strong C1 pushes from players who - well, yeah, look, I'm just usually paranoid when a player who is a deadly Elim (persuasive, unlikely for me to detect off the bat) is asking me (general to be fair) to vote for X, even if I pragmatically think he's V. I think I ascribe that to negative formative experiences in SE, as everyone is very familiar with by now It wasn't anywhere near as bad as how I freaked out when you kept trying to get me and everyone to go on Archer in MR56 C3 but still it gave me pause. But the point that swung me, or that I found decisive for me was the way he painted Mat as sus for re-evaluating his assessment of Archer's plan. I'd gone through that exact same thought process so obviously did not find it Evil and just found it a natural reaction. That with the CTA made me feel it was worth plopping down a YOLO vote on Striker (so you can roughly guess the time interval, even if Araris doesn't allow timestamps.) [If this is helpful, shortly after this. Edit: Got ninjaed by Araris, so this was 1027hrs my time, two minutes after the post I just linked.] Honestly I wasn't dead sold because it was C1 and sometimes it just feels like you're (general you) tunnelling and I know I have a tendency to overfocus on stuff and then ML players on that basis, but subsequent interactions just didn't look all that better (see: lack of fog of war), and ultimately I felt: A. it was a decent enough reason for a C1 vote (as C1 votes are), B. despite inducement to Archer and Ash, with myself being more amenable to Ash, I just wanted to get the Striker flip, so I didn't bother changing. I honestly thought it would be tighter due to fog of war about where the votes would go, even though people were signalling where they would likely end up, and with Archer and Ash seemingly coming live as options as well. Part of that may be due to the fact I was aware I was being a bit sneaky about my own vote, and so acknowledged the possibility that everyone else might be wanting to be sneaky too. Keredin is down :eyes: I mean, the V/V trains in LG83 were all pure Villagers, but what would the team profile even look like, for a 100% pure Striker lynch? I'd immediately look at Araris but it's clear he's not playing this game (hi Mr IM sir ), and the one rule about Evil Araris is that everytime Evil Araris steps into a game, the gods flip a coin, and the world holds its breath to see how the coin will land Oof. Alright, let's hope the timestamp thing works. I want my vote progression analysis @Experience, @The Unknown Aon, @Mailliw73, @Thaidakar the Ghostblood, @JNV - If the timestamp thing goes through, care to share your timestamps too? Might as well get a holistic picture of the votes. Edited to add 2: As I was putting in Security Officer level effort (not sorry, I'm just worn out), my reads list boiled down to a coarse-grained two pronged list: Aman and Orlok for policy reasons; Bort and Maili for returnee reasons, hemmed and hawed over Devo but just liked her post enough to chunk her up there even though I intellectually know E!Devo has led me on a merry chase many times.

I'm torn between wanting to yell at that prospect and wanting to praise the beautiful, beautiful colours >> Edited to add: Actually, Archer: Why do you say this? I recall you've said it before, and this is against a strong Village trend of having at least one Elim CW C1 for a while now. This was in part the motivation behind going for Gorilla in AG8 - precisely because, as you noted, we now needed to check the CWs due to Elim CWs popping up C1 with surprising frequency. Tuatara being the obvious case off the top of my head, as well as Crocodile/Kangaroo in AG7. You've noted this as a trend before, even.

I see I'm not the only one enjoying the secret voting mechanics here Shout-out to @Thaidakar the Ghostblood, @Mailliw73, both of whom absolutely did not signal this at all as well. So, long story short - did not like the way Striker cast sus on Mat for doing what seemed to be a perfectly natural re-eval process and one that I myself had gone through, hmmed over Aman's CTA post, and YOLO-voted Striker in the PM. I decided to be more bearish on Striker in the thread to see if anyone would explicitly talk me onto Striker (or onto a side train), and publicly advertised my side-train vote pool to see if anyone would bite. (Nope.) EoC convinced me to stay put as I wanted to settle the issue and felt it was a decent enough place to go for a C1 vote. I think the great thing about anon voting is that if you sound determined enough and signal your pool, it places some vote pressure on the players you've identified, even if you have no intention of actually final voting them So I channelled my inner kel I guess. With eight votes on Striker, I think it's safe to say he was bussed. Further analysis will wait until a more sane hour. @Lotus Are the votes in any particular order? Do we know who voted when? Be good if we can get metadata off that - vote progression analysis tends to be more helpful than just raw votes.

I said this last in a Tyrian game against Hreo. AG2 I think. tldr; your vote is your voice and your power. Especially in a regulars-only game with sprinkles, it's your one real way of changing the game landscape. It's the best shot you gotta take as a Villager. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and votes help vote analysis inclined players read you. Just do it (Nike!)