Kasimir

With Danex D1, I just felt that Danex's vote on Archer was either opportunistic or being Illwei (i.e. bait.) More likely opportunistic since I don't recall Danex has a history of Illwei behaviour. Whenever players are tied in votes or very close in votes and another player swoops in out of the blue to add a vote, that looks weird to me, and I think it should reasonably raise suspicions that a player is invested in tie-breaking. Plus, it was D1, and I like motivating discussion as I think the Village shouldn't narrow down votes and targets - I've said this a few times but the best thing Meta told me in this game was to keep my suspicions fluid. I take part of that to be broadening the window for discussion. To be clear, I did not vote you D1. In fact, I was not really thrilled by you being voted as a lynch target on D1, as Contribution Crusade votes require a certain set of assumptions to succeed. (Historially, CC failed because it happened during the inactivity blight and no amount of voting gets genuine inactives to stop being inactive. You could get lucky by hitting on an inactive Elim and maybe baiting their teammates to defend them, but otherwise, it generally means active Elims don't face any pressure and it gives them an easy out in voting, which more or less defangs the lynch as a Village tool. It does work if your Elims are lurking though, and in some cases like ours, if we are facing a low activity game anyway, then we more or less are forced to it eventually, but on D1? Without even establishing if the Elims were low activity or the game was low activity? Eh.) On D2, I was tempted to vote Danex but there was a significant amount of thread apathy which made both Archer and myself concerned that this was because no Elim was being endangered in the votes, Danex sort of read too disengaged to be am Elim (but that was a tone read and I don't put too much stock on tone reads). I voted Tani because she had an opportunistic vote on Danex and came in right after Archer. It was a good place for an Elim to be: seemingly active but also a vote that might not be questioned too much. Then I swapped to Araris because I wanted a bit more pressure on Araris and distrusted how he was framing my posts as non-committal - felt like he was trying to set me up as a mislynch target. Also, at the very start of the Day, Tani voted for Danex very shortly after Archer did. As I said, I don't like narrowing down discussion, and Danex was the lead train anyway and I had plenty of time to swap over, so why create a three-vote train when I could apply pressure elsewhere and try to cause discussion? I swapped to you because I saw you lurking in the thread, it'd been a while since you posted you were catching up with the posts not materialising, and I generally want to make sure there is less cover for lurking Elims so I decided you could do with some pressure, reasoning that if you were an Elim and lurking, this would likely get you to say more, which would help us catch you In general, I was fine with the existing trains. I had no hard suspicions of Sart (my read had been "This is too kayana to be an Elim") but he wasn't actually moving into my "likely Villager so I'm not voting for him" set, meaning I was happy with him potentially facing death. I might have moved off you but I generally don't like to create a reasonable expectation I will move off stab votes immediately as soon as someone posts, because that reduces the pressure a player feels. And I was rushing for time and realised I could not be on the Shard again before rollover, and you were in my "don't care if they get lynched" pool (which to be clear, was everyone not Szeth or Illwei that cycle) so I just shrugged and left it to the dice gods. Edited to add: It's almost as though I'm confused and actually trying to find Elims rather than already knowing who needs to be defended from the start...

How are you squaring this with the general lack of reaction to votes on Danex? Sart didn't move onto Szeth because of the Danex train. Sart goes onto Szeth after Archer goes onto Mage. I can be persuaded to swap my vote but teammates reasoning doesn't appeal to me - it's sort of saying, "If Mage or Kas is Evil then Danex is Evil", in which case, why not just vote for the people you actually think are Evil? I'm more persuaded by his Archer vote, but then he was also very apathetic about removing it so I don't know how strongly I feel about that. I guess he could be too inactive to take it off once Sart was safe...

:eyes: Hype is real. What a punch.

Yes - I declared my target pool on N2 but didn't want to directly say it in case the Elims wanted to go for a double-tap since I was RNGing for a Villager. But even if I'd done analysis, I wouldn't have wanted to have declared it on the offchance I was right and an Elim had a protect and was determined to use it. I don't see anyone counterclaiming this right now and more importantly, no reasonable Villager should have shot Illwei. Illwei made the confirming vote on Sart. That should not put her in FAFO territory for any Village Coinshot paying attention. Nope but the Elims are welcome to try. Or Village really as I'm low on bandwidth despite my earlier valiant attempt. I feel like either way you swing it, we have to postulate more inactive players as the Elim team. Which is a formal set that should include me, Danex, Mage, so that's not very helpful as we return to the crux of the problem. I don't know if Szeth was on but Tani had the ability to change the voting results but did not, due to her late withdrawal from the votes. This should put her off the table today, I think. (Sorry Tani, should've done analysis before shooting you I guess but I was pressed for time It's ok, you can shoot me back.) One of the reasons I can see no self-pres besides inactivity is if both players were Evil - so the Elim team is indifferent to the result. Minimally we have to postulate either (inclusive-or) a primarily inactive Elim team, or one that was not invested in the result. I feel like if this lynch doesn't work out, we should start talking about our secondary abilities or night actions. I obviously admitted to having a one-shot kill but I think we will soon near the point where secrecy just allows the Elim team to blend in, and it doesn't matter that much anyway. It may allow us to narrow down the pool.

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

I'm claiming the attack on Tani. As I mentioned last Night, I had excluded Illwei and Araris for the vote on Sart, and Szeth for the previously-mentioned reasons. This left me with an <Archer, Danex, Tani, Mage> pool. I didn't have enough time to think things through but I ruled out Danex after further thought - I didn't like how Sart had seized on Danex after Danex seemed genuinely in danger. Then I RNGed among <Archer, Tani, and Mage>. RNGesus picked Tani so I just rolled with it. Since there was a decent chance I might go low activity, I figured I should put the order in while I still could. I'm working with that assumption for the moment too. I think it makes sense in light of the fact that this is blackout, and we don't know the roles of the slain. That being said, I think if the Elims have cottoned on to this, they will have incentive to start claiming extra lives. And as Maili pointed out before, the nice thing about claiming Thug is that the only way it's proven you're not a Thug is the situation in which you're too dead to care. I think kills also tend to be easy to claim, since there's no functional distinction between Elim kills and Village kills, but if everyone Village-side (or almost everyone Village-side is a Thug, then kills are functionally Seeks.) Here's a quick look at the votes since I have a pocket of time: Day One My main conclusion for D1 is that just going off the votes, it strikes me that of all our active votes, we have four main unknowns: Szeth, Araris, myself, Danex. I'll come back to this again later. The point is that Archer's and Illwei's flips are actually pretty helpful in clearing up our D1 picture. Day Two How this affects the state of my reads for the moment: Likely Village: Araris - has overtaken Szeth because voting behaviour through both cycles suggests a Villager searching to secure consensus lynches and who has played a role in lynching an Elim. Szeth - tunnel on Archer makes no sense strategically for an Elim, voting behaviour sending more mixed signals than Araris. ???: Danex Tani Both have survived one hit, so are Thugs. Feruchemists may very well have Thug-like abilities as this game only reveals alignment rather than role. So I take that as weak, defeasible reason to think they're Village. Tani's seeming apathy towards the Sart-Mage tie is a weak suggestion she might be Village. Ditto for Danex's apathy to being on the Archer train. Just by dint of whoever's left, this points me to Mage. I feel like my reads have to be wrong somewhere because this is an awfully dismal pool but there you go.

Ugh. It's 6AM, I haven't slept yet, and I'm about 1.5 years into cleaning 4 years of data for that frickin' last minute rubbish request. At this rate, I don't know if I'll be back substantively before rollover or much of a presence in Day Two because I'll need sleep after the request is done, and my work inbox is still heating up, so if anyone wants to take a couple shots at me tonight and tomorrow, you're welcome. I likely won't be doing more than warm body voting duty for the immediate future because this bloody work request is setting me back on the schedule that was supposed to let me play this game and study for my exams at the same time. My immediate thought is that I have a stronger Village read on Illwei now, still one on Szeth, and one on Araris. I don't know about Danex - I can see the Village toneread from late Danex and Sart was quick to mention Danex as a sus, but Danex's pile-on made the Archer train outcompete the Sart train (remember, it was 2-3), which should be especially noteworthy since Sart didn't have an extra life. Granted, it was early in the cycle and what happened could be closer to TUO in Lotus's MR where Village action made this unnecessary. Formally, the set of people I am willing to shoot tonight will boil down to <Archer, Danex, Tani, Mage>, not in any particular order. I'm going to make my judgement call, RNGesus for it, and send in the order now in case I forget or can't make it on in time for any changes.

Eh, didn't really play and had to get subbed out so. Here's the thing. There's something that Sart is missing that makes it unlikely for Szeth to be Elim. But this is tied to something Szeth did that was rulebreaking (copying and pasting PMs, you can check the edit receipt on Szeth's N1 post) and is likely guiding Illwei's reprisal vote on Sart. Sart may not have seen it, either. Not sure who else was online at that time. But since Szeth was not supposed to do that, I'm discarding that as a reason for any positive read I have for Szeth and just basing it on the extensive tunnel. Anyway: I do it by scanning the player's post history instead. Works better on those who aren't active on other parts of the forum unfortunately. Otherwise...huh. I wonder if it's possible to edit Straw/Orlok's post bot... Or even Drake's tallybot, just extract posts instead... Unfortunately I don't have time to evaluate things so I'm going to leave my vote where it is with my apologies. I've just gotten a week's worth of work dumped on me and have been told it has to be solved and dispatched by midday tomorrow. As it is, I'm likely going to have to pull an all-nighter. I don't have bandwidth to do any serious thinking or processing right now. (As I've said before, I think blue text sets a bad precedent culturally but will be happy to do so if requested to.) I don't expect to return until at least mid-Night tomorrow, which should be fine; you all can discuss vig kill targets and I'll catch up on it. I think it's wise to simply pick a set of vig kill targets so anyone using the kill cannot be so easily predicted. But thanks for showing up, Danex, Mage. See you guys on the other side of my mountain of requests.

First is strictly-speaking untrue because I haven't been Evil in eons and we were both mostly inactive in the one game we played where I was Evil and you were Village (MR3), but I'm flagging this because House Urbain approves of this message I'll admit this is a recent playstyle shift for me (not sure if it's drastic since no one @ed me over it) but it was triggered by a conversation with Striker in a previous LG (I think it was Striker?) It's the giving up of influence that I'm lately trying to push back against by applying pressure on people I actually want to see dead or have pressure applied to them, and just doing things with my vote that isn't securing/padding the lynch train. Obviously if it's lylo or we really need to lynch that player, or if I absolutely prefer to see one player lynched over another, I'm on that train, bells and kettle on. Edited to add: You know what. I'm going to do that kasyana indecisive thing. Araris, Mage. I've seen you, you probably saw me. Thoughts on the state of the lynch? [ @Ookla the Pianist - vote added]

Put those class skills in Ninja for a reason I think on the first point, yes, but my thought in a small game with at least one Thug, the immediate inference should be that the GM might be trying to slow down the kill pace. If the Thug has a one-shot kill, then potentially the inference is that the game needs some brakes (i.e. more protects or Thugs) or it'd be over really fast. That was my thought process D1 anyway, but I can definitely see where someone might draw the opposite inference, that it'd be over really fast. I'm actually not even sure it's reason for suspicion, which is why I didn't really mention it on D1 or N1. People obviously also lie and soft other roles for various reasons. Moreover, it's really only odd in a bad way if you think that Feruchemists are less likely to be Thugs or have Thug-like abilities, on top of everything else. But back when I was reading it, I made a mental note of the comment and it stuck with me today, so I thought I'd bring it up anyway and see what people have to say.

This stands out and is a bit odd to me because I've been explicit in flagging out where I have light Village reads, so I feel as though you're trying to set me up as being more waffly than I've explicitly stated myself to be, and simultaneously also being waffly yourself - if I'm the last person on your current "would vote" list, then why even mention you want to vote me this cycle? But I can also kind of see why because this game I'm having more light Village reads than actual Evil reads. Which is a bit unusual for me since I don't often have light Village reads early on. I'm going to credit this to the low level of discussion and the lack of an actual flip. As you should know very well by now, I'm more a vote analysis guy, so without votes and flips, it's difficult for me to be able to solidify reads on players, but especially Evil reads. I don't want to do a ranking, but let's see: Off The Table: Szeth Illwei I don't want anyone in this category to die right now. Illwei is more negotiable than Szeth, with Szeth obviously being my strongest current Village read and a much lighter Village read for Illwei. For Szeth, it's the Archer scope you pointed out, which I agree with. Szeth was too over-invested in that for it to seem Elim-like. For Illwei, it's the fact I felt her move last night makes a bit more sense as a Villager than an Elim, and also because I currently lean more towards the reasoning that it's not a WGG. Prefer Not To Kill: Mage I can't have suspicions of someone who hasn't said anything. In general, if a player is promising to be back, I'd like to hear from them first. But this stay of execution only goes so far, and depends on whether Mage really is going to show back up. Then again - there's Danex. More on Danex later. Don't Care: Tani Sart Araris Archer In a way, I could subdivide the Don't Care territory a bit more. But I'm not going to bother. Still'd like to hear more from Tani. Vote on Danex has been framed as a poke vote rather than suspicion. As a result, I am correspondingly apathetic about whether Tani stays alive. Same apathy for Sart. Sart did respond D1 to the votes and went CC which I don't agree with for tactical and historical reasons, but is a safe and easy location to stash a vote whether Village or Elim. (Which Sart himself lampshaded.) Speaking of which though, he's not wrong that we have to figure out what to do about the inactives. Just to be blunt, I don't share Illwei's and Szeth's reads of Archer in terms of playstyle. I do see a bit of playstyle drift but I've made my thoughts on that matter clear. But I still think Archer's current behaviour is consistent with both Elim and Village Archer so I don't have a strong opinion on him. I could countenance a lynch on Archer for informational reasons but I've generally been persuaded by Striker's point (or was it Danex's? Ages ago) that it's better to lynch people you actually want dead than for FAFO reasons. I was initially somewhat more wary of Archer because I felt Archer was deliberately trying to tie himself to me D1 before the flip, and my gut disliked that. Now that we know Archer's a Thug, I think it's still possible but maybe less likely. At any rate, overall no strong opinion. Araris. I see Archer's reasoning about Araris's engagement with Szeth being a bit unlikely for an Elim since an Elim should be more apathetic but...I don't know. Elim Araris (I haven't seen this behaviour in Village Araris yet) has a habit of knuckling down for engagements on points of principle regardless of whether he should. Sometimes it goes well for him. Sometimes it doesn't. But historically, I've always only been able to get a more solid read on Araris after a couple of cycles. I don't have anything determinate at the moment. Something about Araris's comment on the game being over in three or four cycles did strike me as a bit odd though, since I thought at that time that it seemed to suggest Araris thought there were no other operative kills or Thugs, which would be a strange inference for a Thug with a secondary ability. But then again, we now know secondary abilities may not involve kills. But that statement stuck out to me at that time. It does rely on a set of distributive assumptions so overall I'm just /shrug on Araris. Probably Don't Care: Danex I still don't like Danex's voting patterns, but I feel it's potentially exposed as a position for an Elim to go for. I feel as though the corollary almost has to be that one of the reasons an Elim would be that blatant is potentially because of a confederate being threatened in votes as well. But at that time, it was really just a Sart-Archer thunderdome, (3-2 split between Archer and Sart, someone correct me if I'm wrong as it's late and I'm tired) and would also entail that Archer, Danex, and Sart are all not Elims together. Danex could be in the Don't Care category but I don't like Danex's vote, and feel it was a bit too opportunistic, and Danex hasn't done anything since to give me a better opinion of him and that's really what it boils down to for me. I don't share Szeth's Village toneread of Danex from that post, in general. Would I put the final killing vote on Danex eventually? Well... The thing about going for Danex is I'm not a fan of the general apathy surrounding Danex suspicion. Same with Archer this cycle, really. I feel like most of the votes this cycle have elicited so little reaction I just find it hard to see how we're on the right track at all. Granted, a two-man Elim team can't do much, but I'm just not feeling pushback or investment in the votes beyond Szeth and Szeth has been singularly invested in Archer and is my strongest Village read so I'm ignoring him for the purposes of analysis. You all need to vote for more sensible players then I've made my thoughts on vote manip clear. And I'm doing exactly what Village Araris did in LG73 and the LG where Mat tried to set Village Araris up: if I see no particular reason to jump in on a wagon that I'm fine with and is proceeding fine without my help, I'd much rather go for and try to pressure people I want to hear from. I prefer keeping suspicions broad than having the conversation narrow on a few players. If I'm right that the low temperature so far suggests that we haven't actually significantly threatened anyone who is actually Evil, then excluding my current Village reads, I'd have to look within the <Tani, Mage, Araris, Sart> set. Sart is dubious IMO because Sart already got voted on D1, and my two Village reads (however weak) were driving the other train. Which I guess is a way of saying: Tani, Araris.

1. I've changed my name back. I'm sorry, I can't live like this, it's too confusing and I don't know how I managed to remember to log in to 17S many Ookla seasons ago (2014? 2015?) when I was Ookla the Piratical. 2. Eh. It assumes the Elim team thinks like you do. WGGs are a gambit for a reason because you're always giving up that extra life. The reasoning that bringing themselves down to one life increases the chances of them dying to the vote is true of a WGG in any game - WGGs always inherently require that you decide to trade off the protective value of a passive life for trust. So if this were prima facie a reason against a WGG, then people wouldn't pull off WGGs simpliciter. It'd be a theoretical thing that never sees action in any game. I think you're also arguing that in this game, since Thugs are everywhere, the odds of being shot again are higher, except I'm not sure that's really the case, since it's been argued in past games people seem allergic to going after the kill target a second time. And also, the gambit part on winning trust. It's also a bit more fraught - if it'd hit someone like Mage or Tani I'd be more willing to give them a light Village read, but I'm not so sure the trade-offs are bad in your case, given that Szeth was not going to be a candidate anymore, and you and Danex were mentioned as suspicions. I would agree it's not your Elim style though, so if you're Evil, this is probably not something you'd do. So it's convenient for me that you got hit I guess, since I was light Village reading you anyway, and this makes me feel a bit better about it. Here's the thing though. The Elims have two pieces of info we don't, which includes whether they have a secondary kill (one-shot or otherwise), and their team size: Four Thug-roles in a nine player game is absurdly high. Suppose the Elims also had a secondary kill (one-shot or otherwise.) That's even more glaring as a hint that there are even more Thugs than declared because for game balance to work, the GM has to factor in four kills floating around along with the Elim kill and look at what happens if the Thugs don't hit each other. It'd be awfully swingy. I agree the Elims may not have worked it out, but eh, I think it's a reasonable inference if we make certain assumptions about the sorts of information they'd have access to. Edited to add: @Ookla the Pianist I'm sorry I changed my name but I need to be able to sign in and it is difficult to live this way >SadWormmon.jpg

Partly. I think the Coinshot strat relied on the Elims themselves not having secondary kills to pull off, or alternatively - as you said, we're all Thugs, so the Elims could've just as easily tried a WGG. A WGG is fairly viable in this game IMO especially if the Elims don't have access to a reliable secondary kill (i.e. beyond a one-shot) - they'd have to persuade us to do their killing for them, or be restricted to killing the lynch target each time. I think most of us could infer or suspect that everyone was a Thug by last Night, so I'm not sure it was a worthwhile trade-off. And I still feel the lack of a flip given the Archer-you-Szeth thunderdome was suboptimal. But I didn't feel strongly enough about it to go ahead with the kill. My initial target had been Archer (to guarantee a flip since I didn't have much of a Village read on him) or Danex - coinflip picked Danex, and then after you suggested we hold fire and I felt conflicted, coinflip said to not proceed, so I didn't. My supposition was that if Archer is telling the truth, then Illwei was the Elim kill target. I'm not sure what to think about this, because that's the other counterintuitive thing to me. Szeth is, in my view, somewhat of a consensus Village read at the moment, and Szeth is not going anywhere. Do the Elims not have secondary Thug abilities? A more or less consensus Villager who can't be taken out except with two NKs isn't great. So why wasn't Szeth hit last night? Or were they gambling that Illwei might not have a Thug ability? Szeth claiming to have a secondary ability that isn't a kill somewhat puts a pin in my theory. But if one-shot kill prevalence is even lower than expected, that's all the more mysterious, because it slows things down for both teams, in terms of game speed and information. So I'm not sure what to think about this right now. Either way, the Wormmon's out of the Digivice now so we just have to proceed. Reva [=Tani], for a little more pressure for the moment.

I actually think everyone has an extra life and everyone has a one shot kill. Whether the Elims have an Elim kill or just the one-shot kill is questionable, but that's why I said last night I could see two reasons for Illwei calling for a no kill from Coinshots last night. Postulating Coinshots in a game (especially one with small player numbers) even with two known Thugs is a very bold move. Less so if Illwei was a Thug too. Even less so if Illwei was a Thug with a one shot kill. I suspect Illwei's reasons for calling for a no kill were either some ersatz Illwei gambit or because Illwei was a Thug, recognised the conversation between you and Szeth, and then inferred correctly (in my view) that the game could be massively OneShotThugs and that everyone going wild Night One would reduce the protection the Village had. Possibly some postulation of weirdness with the rules. I'm still in favour of a lynch actually going through though so I'm not sure I agree with her reasoning - but I do think that it's something I wouldn't expect to hear from an Elim so much since a kill-happy Village helps them (unless all Elims are already under suspicion I guess? But that would almost require an Illwei/Danex-ish type team), so slight Village read last night on that basis. Note that Illwei very specifically asked Coinshots to hold their fire even if they thought they were going to be killed. IMO she's not asking not to be killed, she's asking you not to kill. What's interesting to me is why the Elims didn't kill you, since you were down a life, and chose to go for Illwei instead. On the assumption you're a Villager, it could be to tie up discussion, but then surely the Elims know about the Thug rules...don't they? Or was one of our kills an Elim kill? Or again, do the Elims also only have a one-shot kill? P.S. I disagreed with Illwei's reasoning but RNGesus liked what she said.

Seriously my dude, are you not getting QF1 Gunner flashbacks from the second claim given the player size? Interesting logic. I would agree with Araris on calling down a Coinshot strike if we have a Coinshot because of the missing flip from D1. I don't know if we have one though. We didn't in QF1, just had a free-floating kill that comes if the QM dies. And I can't see a Coinshot kill to be a bad thing, especially since we still don't have much solid information to work off. Elims might do a threat or high-activity kill, but a low-info kill would really waste our time. But at the same time, either it's another Illwei thing, or I think I can see a set of circumstances Eiwlil would have to take to be true in order to say what she just did. The first is Eiwlil being Eiwlil. The second makes her a bit more likely to be Village, because I can't see an Elim saying that under the given circumstances. If she is though, that makes the D1 clash all the more bizarre since I have a light Village read on Szeth for the Archer scope and am currently /shrug on Archer.

Working off Tyrian rules as the default assumption - which granted, may not be true for a Scadrial game Mat is GMing, Lurchers only protect from Night kills. Lynch protect abilities are a bit more rare so would not be the immediate assumption. Passive extra life tends to be more common. Gotta love blackout games ಠ_ಠ So you burn pewter, have Brawn in your name but are technically not a Thug, sir? I want my boxings back >>

>shrugwormmon.jpg Szeth claimed Thug, Archer is Thug. At current prevalence levels, I would not be surprised to find more Thugs within this game. (QF1 flashbacks where everyone except me seemed to be a Gunner...) That might slow things down enough to be a bit less fast-paced. But one problem is that high Thug prevalence doesn't quite favour the Village - it's balanced out with the slower information rate, since mislynch rates would then be potentially higher, and technically mislynching Village Thugs helps Elims guarantee a kill. And this is without postulating Elim Coinshots etcetera. tldr; ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In very general terms, when ties don't lead to a no kill, I don't like vote manip-proofing wagons, because suppose there was vote manip. The mere fact that vote manip exists in this blackout, small group game is informative, as is who the vote manip was trying to kill or save, in light of the flip information. This goes doubly because everyone who could have been killed by vote manip was someone I didn't mind getting a flip off, except for Mage, but in Mage's case, it's more eh, whatever. I've said it before and I'll say it again - Contribution Crusade lynches work under very specific circumstances. (Namely, by flushing out lurking Elims or the teammates of inactive Elims - if the latter at all.) By the end of the cycle, it was apparent to me this was not going to work, and lynching Mage felt like a waste of time, especially when the big throwdown was between you and Szeth-Illwei. So I don't play with Danex enough in games where Danex is active to note Danex's rollover sign-on patterns. But moreover, in light of my thoughts in the previous paragraph, I'm tired of being dragged into lynches I don't feel or don't particularly care about. One way or another, we were going to get a flip I was okay with getting. I might as well put my vote and my pressure where my suspicions actually are and see if I can get a reaction out of Danex or another player, or if I can get someone else to go with me on this. I didn't like Danex's opportunistic vote. I felt better about Szeth which meant Szeth wasn't on the table.

If he's a Thug, it would be appropriate though. Prescient name. Brawnze, geddit >>

Possible too. I just think in Tyrian terms automatically since this is in theory a Scadrial game at core with Allomancers versus Feruchemists.

FIELD LOGS #0412-CTU Hurried communication with the prof. Was reminded it is the foremost duty of a scholar to keep up with note-taking. Wasted field study otherwise. Brawnze [=Archer] was suspected to be one of the Feruchemists. Someone tried to shoot Brawnze. Seems he came prepared. Possible demonstration of Allomancy, or perhaps Feruchemy. The locals here do not seem afraid to rely on metal for more mundane means of protection. Seems odd that he did not signal it though. A well-protected target is often itself a deterrent. [=Well, we now know there's one Thug-type role in this game. Hey Archer, any reason you wanted to wager on a tie with Illwei this late rather than telling us the lynch wasn't gonna work?] No sign of Emotional Allomancy or any Feruchemical equivalent that I could detect. Just old-fashioned hostility between Feruchemical and Allomantic subcultures. Understand the conflict began with repeated arguments about which Metallic Art was superior; similarity to the literature on thieving gang subcultures in Elendel, some of whom claim a connection to the thieving crews of the Survivor's days in the Final Empire. [=No obvious sign of vote manip. Might be because it didn't exist, or there was no need to. I feel that if Archer was Elim, it's interesting his teammates didn't choose to reveal vote manip to protect that extra life. It's not impossible they felt concealing vote manip was more important. But it's odd to me to burn an extra life when you don't have to. And Archer arguably did try to pull me onto Illwei which is consistent with either alignment IMO.] Perhaps there are more Thugs or similar Feruchemists concealed here. Penrod [=Araris] speculated earlier that the conflict between the Feruchemists and Allomancers would be over swiftly. He might be more optimistic than expected. A number of Thugs or Feruchemical equivalents would slow matters down quite a bit. Yet, that itself ought to imply the existence of a Coinshot... The night will carry more information with it, no doubt.

I think you're referring to Striker here. No point in causing a tie now. Elims can't react in this window, if they're even on.

I read it as 'jerking' for a few hot seconds and went 'damn that's one hell of a pun.'

Oh God I nearly missed rollover. Right, more thoughts: I dunno but I actually get a soft Village toneread off this. Partly what Araris said about Evil Szeth having no reason to scope (as opposed to tunnel) this hard on Archer, but partly also because it reads more engaged than I've gotten off Szeth's earlier posts, enough to tip me off the fence. Hmm. Will they go no info though? Is this the current trend? I'm looking at this again. I'm not a fan of contribution crusade lynches. I think they can be easy places for Elims to hide, but they're useful in allowing us to exclude certain options. This means of the current live, viable options: Archer Mage Illwei I'm most eh about the Mage lynch. I think it's a bit too late in the cycle to veer there and hope for the best. I have no particularly strong feelings about Archer or Illwei. I'm not a fan of the argument that Evil Illwei might gun for an Village Archer lynch D1 if she can because Eiwlil gonna Eiwlil. I'm sticking with Danex. I still don't like that raw opportunism, and either way, Archer's headed for the lynch.

It's hard to say for TR. Reason is that we now have three existing batches of TR paper with different user experiences so it depends on which TR you're talking about. I've only tried OG TR, not new TR and the link I've shared is to Sanzen TR. OG TR is very light and very smooth. I think almost any paper comes off as grippy next to OF TR. Some of my friends dislike it because they like a bit of feedback for their pen. What I like about OG TR is the way the paper makes colours pop when you use shading inks, and it's supposed to be pretty good for sheen. It's actually made my gel pens sheen too (back in the day when I didn't know this notebook had TR paper and didn't know about fountain pens.) IMO HP Premium 32 performs very well for the price point but if you want inks to pop, OG TR is top-notch. I've been trying other papers though - Cosmo Air Light, Kokuyo, and Midori aren't awful either for that purpose. I have some Lennon Toolbar Egret paper but haven't given that a shot yet.