Kasimir

God this is like thr wotld's eorst hsngovet Brb lemme see wvat I gotta catch up on And get cold water A d caffeibe

"I'm going to be taking some awful pharmaceutical concoction which is probably going to knock me out for the rest of the day until past sunset," yawned Onon. "So please, do try to manage to avoid a tie, whatever you do, try not to burn down Copper's Bend, or Jahidi only knows what else. I will try to be back earlier but am not optimistic." "Because of that, I'm going to give things one last go here." A. Sirta Appears Village "I think the main key point to stick with is that Sirta here looks unambiguously Village to me. I base this off the fact that the spirits inform me that in past lives, my most successful reads of Sirta have always been based off this one, single point: I unambiguously, viscerally think he's stark raving nuts when he's Village, and quite understand where he's coming from when he's Spiked. Now, that's enough to drive a man to drink, since it has uncomfortable implications about my Village lives living in harmony with Sirta's Spiked lives, but let's bracket that theological point for now. I'm getting powerful stark raving nuts energy from Sirta, and moreover, I think the immediacy and aggressiveness/persistence of Sirta's response is a pretty good look. I'll note that if you don't share this view of Sirta, then this is probably a non-starter for you but hey this is for my benefit too." B. This Entails Spiked Protection "I think Sirta being Village likely entails the Spiked have some form of protective powers. The enemy is cunning and likely to have defenses against any powers that we can muster in our defense. This implicates both the claimed Lurchers, as well as the Thugs. This forms the basic suspect pool. Our immediate conflict here is between Sono and Rem, both of whom have claimed Lurchers. There has been an intermediate complication because Pending claimed to have scanned Sirta as a Spiked Coinshot. I'll point out that there is no world in which the Village has both a Seeker and a Coinshot - that allows a PoE clear to happen way too quickly. In any world a Seeker and a Coinshot exist together in this small village of Copper's Bend, they would necessarily be opposed - one Spiked, one loyal. I want to bracket Pending for the moment as I think he's orthagonal to the problem." Onon flourished a large sheet of paper: "I think I'm sticking with my vote," he concluded. "I'm really tempted to switch given Sono's recent remarks, but..." he trailed off.

Alright. @ me if there's something I absolutely need to catch as I don't know what thread volume will be like/I'll come back to.

That's one problem resolved, but the other problem is if Stick's V tbh. We exe a Villager, we lose. We don't get sufficient vote volume, the Elims hammer us, we lose. I'm leaning against a V!Stick world but that possibility was basically the point of the back-and-forth over the last couple posts. Edited to add: Well, that and my problem is I need to decide if I'm better off braving the alarms or no. Skipping the meds for a couple hours more is probably not an option and will definitely take me out of play for EoD.

Serious answer - I already told you as much in the edits above. The painkillers (injured wrist remember) do a number on me and there's only so long I can hold off. I've been meditating on the pain, but given how sporadically the NAs are getting up at this hour, and the fact it's about 2300hrs for me right now, my plan was to cave and just give it one last best effort shot and just take the meds. I can gamble and set multiple alarms and hope I get up, or I can just get the rest I need. I can hold fire if y'all want me to and gamble with the alarms, but we're going to be dealing with 'tired, has sedatives' Kas who is not a great decision-maker, even if I make it up in time say an hour before rollover to see what the damage is. Your call. Edited to add: I'll add the reason I'm not positive I'll make it past the alarms is I basically figured the new painkillers were stronger than I expected this morning.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I was trying to put out one other fire and I vibe with the 'I'm busy' deal but also On the one hand this is out of my hands now On the other hand - I am going back to that fire first

I'll say this: Mat had a negative response to my D1 question. TKN had a positive response. Stick had an utterly bland response but one I associate with an Elim from the relevant game. The main issue I come back to and which entirely punted me off E!Mat worlds is that it's difficult to take seriously a world in which Mat's partner thinks EoD D1 is perfectly fine. Given Stick's views on Elims distancing, I feel leaning to vote Mat on her part just tacitly commits one way or another to JNV, Raven, or me. All of whom are variously non-starters for me. Edited to add: K, tbh I'm gonna do one more round of reading and then I'm going to try one last crunch, work things out, vote, and go sleep. Would prefer y'all talk me out of any mistakes, but if it be this way then it be this way, best effort basis. Dgaf, I'm not fighting painkillers to be up just so I can catch up on what the NAs are on while I'm dead tired and struggling. Edited to add 2: Like yeah sure I could set an alarm but these painkillers are whack and I'd rather vote than not vote at lylo and let Elims do god knows what. If I'm wrong, sodding whatever, I'm kind of done at this point.

@Stick. - Let's say I bracket my current reads of you and everyone. Who would you sell me on? Returning to the question I'm asking, in terms of priority, I don't care about anyone else, who is your top Elim pairing at this juncture? Edited to add: Dude, there is no target. This is the last cycle if we screw up. You matter largely because I think Stick is a better player than to offer the read she gave of you and I don't understand her pushing you D1 to now except/unless she's Evil and looking for a target she hopes won't alienate everyone else. tldr; look, if it's about dying, I'm happy to get shot tonight, but what we really need right now is to vote the right person or we lose. I'm convinced Stick is the right person, but I'm willing to hear her out, and part of that does involve what we both think about you.

If you've paid attention at all to my posts, you'll realise I got there by PoE. I also generally regard you as an Elim who is willing to break all and any rules, particularly with regard to your own meta, so in general, I don't take that to be a hard no to the possibility of that team. If you wanna make the JNV meta point and have it be taken seriously, then I think you have to accept that the same applies to you. If you think the hardness of your teammate meta stands even in a two cycle game, then I think it's reasonable to expect the hardness of JNV's meta is equally resilient, for similar psychological reasons. I think the point is: even if you maximally assume there are two Elims in <you, me, Illwei, Mat>, I'd assert it's difficult for the two of them to iron wall without us getting on their cases, particularly when most of us already play to strong thread control niches. I was already starting to poke at Mat and others just for whether they thought Illwei's off-the-cuff read of me was too fast. I'd add that minimally, the fact that we're where we are right now indicates your powerwolf optimal world never obtained, since there was simply no joint front D1. This means we are compelled to look at non-interactive options or distancing options. Again, keeping in mind the context that Raven is a new player, and both of you acknowledged as much, do you think this is the most plausible read of Raven's back and forth? "Villagers tend to stick to their guns" is a really weird response from pretty much any prospective E!partner in <you, me, Illwei, Mat> - you would advocate pattern-breaking on occasion, I would point out belief revision is always acceptable, oddness often more forgivable in a new player, and Mat has gotten Alpha to lean on his newness before (according to the spirits - oh wait yes I can say this directly hell yeah - cf. LG94.)

Why not? Again, because it gives you insurance C2 - you can split the vote and hammer. Old tactic, works well for a reason. I think you're overestimating how gunshy everyone who wasn't Raven was. I don't count since I made a mistake C1, and Aeo's Aeo. Illwei, me, Mat would've been fairly predictable, as would TKN and JNV. Hell, you have to get TKN to vote at gunpoint. Yep. They're related because the only reason you can remotely sell JNV's meta break as plausible rather than possible is to appeal to the fact it's a short two cycle run. Similar deal with breaking optimal play. I'm challenging your assertion it's optimal play here because it's a difficult thread to seize control of, and distancing guarantees you a split Village into C2 for a hammer. I am going to remind everyone that the Elim's job is to sell possibility. The Villager's job is to determine what's plausible. JNV breaking meta becomes a lot less plausible when you keep in mind they've been trying for months and failing. It becomes a bit more plausible only if you appeal to the fact this is just two cycles. I'll also note your E!play consists a great deal in doing things "an Elim would never do" so I am going to stubbornly refuse to let you write this off - and potential you teams - "because an Elim would never do this." I've read through it and I'm not convinced - I feel 180 backtracking is the hallmark of a tunnelling, new player. Why is this something so surprising to you that you've spent most of C1 making LHF passes on TKN and Raven? Nope, sorry. You engaged with them and proceeded to 180 on Raven, sus TKN, backed off when I asked you about that. That feels less an attempt to figure them out and more a conclusion you'd already reached. If I'm being real, one of the funny things about V!TKN that he's said for a while now and he's actually right about is that Elims tend to want to push him. I'm gonna give everyone three guesses as to who went in on TKN C1. First two don't count. I am not dead sold on you, and I'm willing to be talked around, but I'm absolutely not fond of your D1, and the sense you're train-fishing now. I don't want to hear possibilities now. Which is your top most plausible pairing? @JNV @Ookla the Destined @Ooklil the Wei @Ookla of Ravens I'm still leaning Illwei/Stick for reasons I've outlined earlier - Mat endangerment makes it hard to see a partner there, Raven feels like a tunnelling Villager to me, and JNV is in V!meta.

@Quirksliver @JNV "I don't really care where you end up at this point, but if you're interested in averting a tie, you should probably vote one way or another." "I have, I will admit, entirely run out of craps to give by this point, which is unfortunate for Pending and Sono because that generally activates the part of me that just wants them both dead. Cut through the Gordian knot, so as to speak."

Which is where I think you and an Illwei team works just fine. I'm not sure throwing shade here is, to quote you, "extremely suboptimal" since again, you need not vote on the partner. Lock-in and EoD madness are wonderful excuses given E!you would know this game has exactly two cycles if a tie is averted. Where the hell are you going to be held accountable? In any normal game, refusing to vote or follow your suspicions is a problem. In a game like this, there's no bluff-calling at lylo. It's do or die. Ngl the breadth with which your proposed teams shifting here makes me feel you're just shopping around for a convenient way to split Village-side votes at this point. It's interesting to me that it's very easy to temporarily break out of meta like that, in your eyes, but not very easy to...temporarily break 'optimal' play in a game environment that has never historically played this set-up, much less cared to track for consistency. Edited to add: Like, what the hell? This cycle permits hammering. If that's not something that screams 'tbh I can lightly sus whoever as long as I vote on a sus not a teammate', I don't know what is since the chance you'd face heat for it is virtually zero. All of this is irrelevant anyway as I think the most likely team is you/Illwei. I don't take the seeming uncoordination point to be a big deal since with Mat and Aeo as trains, it really didn't matter where you go. I'm going to reiterate you spent most of last cycle harping on two LHF trains. I firmly believe V!you plays better than this. Edited to add 2: It's doubly 'what the hell' in light of this: This was you @ Aeo last cycle and ostensibly justifying you questioning Aeo, TKN, and Raven. And your answer to that was...basically to E!read the LHFs even after acknowledging it was Raven's first+ game? Yeah no not buying it. Edited to add 3: The throwing shade thing, to be honest, is pretty: The fact this is two cycles and you get one vote lock-in means you have a freedom to sus as long as you don't vote your teammate. Short game duration and lock-in means little pressure to make good on it. Moreover, since the next cycle is lylo, you're pulling on endgame tactics by that point, which means misleading Village players and making them struggle to identify a coherent team: either vote a Villager, or split the vote, hammer, and win. You all (except Raven I suppose) know the assortment of tricks as well as I do. I'm with Wormmon on this one.

I'm curious why you and Illwei both think that's a thing. Materially, you have one vote. 'Was going to' doesn't cut it - you can sus anyone you like as you only need vote on one of them by EoD and then lock-in. Is this something you can explain more? What's your view on the robustness of JNV's disengagement V!meta?

"It feels like it'd have to be in Rem or you, but I'm struggling to understand why Rem forces the Sono exe here or yesterday and claims. Sure, you can parlay it into some IKYK at some point, but it's still odd," Onon said, slowly. "But I suppose I just don't fully agree with the Rilla read. It's known that Rilla doesn't lie, which would make her a poor candidate for a Spike, but I almost think that Dasenk is just as strange a partner here. Ultimately I just don't find hesitance a compelling or a good response to supposed intelligence on who the Spiked are: the more reflexive response seems to be cast the accusation then think about it or work it out a little more." Onon added, a few moments later. "But the Immortal Teacher tells us about an episode that may be instructive here, of a Meerkat that did something rather foolish indeed. I think there's a slight analogy here and that's that immediacy is a good look, hesitance might indicate too much information. Certainly, I hesitated, but I also did know something was coming, just not what." "Sono hesitated, and then went back onto Pending, which might be worth noting. Then again if you really want to do this properly..." He began scribbling on a sheet of paper. Jahidi, why were there so many papers around this village? "In my view," Onon said, "We'd expect the same pattern of responses, by and large, from those with extra information and those without. Spiked, I expect, and this of course assumes for the moment this isn't a Spiked ploy by Pending, would be more contaminated by extra information and hesitant. By this logic, Rem's lack of hesitance is a good look. Sirta's aggressive response also lacked hesitation. I ignored it, but of course, I knew you were up to something, so my response was partially-contaminated." "Sono and Rilla are the clearest for hesitance or calculation, in my view. Dasenk does come after them, but the pool was sufficiently muddied I'm not sure it's completely damning. Either way, I do think a Sono flip is necessary for everyone's peace of mind at this point. So in answer to Sono's question: because we gain closure. I wouldn't recommend flipping you if we could possibly do without, but it isn't quite over yet - there are eight of us, and probably two of them, maybe three. If we foresee the question of your loyalties coming up again and again, it's best to gain closure and to move on together with surer knowledge of where to apply pressure than to be relitigating this fight all over again when the Spiked are about to kill us all." Edited to add: "I'd re-emphasise I don't think this is purely informational, though I think the informational reasons are a strong case. I'd point to your seeming suspicious yesterday, alleviated only by the claim. I'd also point to the fact that it's down to you or Rem, which is a situation Rem and Pending both separately instigated in different ways. I actually do think Sirta is Village, so this commits me to one Spiked between you and Rem. Again, to retrace the logic for everyone here: the abundance of protection is balanced out by the existence of a Coinshot. Sirta's being Village (if that's where your belief falls, which I think is the reasonable position here) then all but necessitates at least one of the protections being Spiked. This pushes us to selecting between you and Rem."

"Oh, yeah," sighed Onon, rubbing at his temples. If Sono were Evil, then they once again had to play tetris (a popular game in Khlennium) to figure out who Sono's accomplice were. One point still nagged him: why hadn't Sono just feigned a successful protect? Easy enough to do, and he would've been riding in Village credit. The answer he could make out was that Sono was gambling that Rem's death would ease pressure on Sono but that still felt unsatisfactory. Yet among the living, Onon was struggling to identify a coherent partner for Sono. Pending had steered the exe back onto Sono with his stunt, and Rem had been so direly committed to killing Sono that it seemed passing strange to assert they might be partnered. It also generated double Lurcher problems, though Onon supposed those at least were not insurmountable. Rilla...was possible, Onon supposed. Just strange. Sirta he ruled out, and he tentatively clung to the shreds of his reasoning on Jorrick and Dasenk. What if Sono wasn't Evil, though? (To be clear, yesterday, Onon had felt Sono looked fairly Evil, with the exception of his claim and the disposition implications thereof.) The struggle was to understand why Rem had made a push for Sono, knowing that Sono's flip would damn him in turn, much less why Rem had claimed last Night. He supposed it could be to gain Village credit, but how much was there to be gained by revealing the seeming-incongruity of two Lurchers? The entailment still seemed pretty solid, however. Onon struggled with the notion of how much protection there was. Someone in that lot had to be Evil. In addition, what was the point of Pending's play then? For trust? Onon suppose it was possible, yet hesitated on it. Sirta looked fairly Village in either world, and you didn't need a complex play like this to gain trust. Anything else, he bracketed for the moment - Copper's Bend was poorly served by people failing to keep a check on their paranoia. Rilla's flip-flopping and indecision still looked a little bad here, though. Onon knew the standard plays when you thought you had received reliable information. Rilla's initial hesitance didn't feel like a good look.

Yeah. For Mat partners I think Illwei is the only coherent one there - I could see a distancing vote that went down as Stick spent most of the Turn engaging with Raven and TKN, then Stick unexpectedly glommed onto Mat, forcing Mat to self-pres onto Aeo and also double-vote. Mat/Stick feels more unnecessary. Not out of Stick's E!range, but not my intuitive team. I guess I'm agreeing with you anyway. Edited to add: Tbf Stick did some Aeo engagement too - it's the TKN and Raven ones I feel eh about. Come to think of it, have Stick and Illwei actually had much in-thread interaction at all?

In what sense don't Mat teams cohere?

@JNV - I see you're reading this. Thoughts?

"I'm absolutely against a Sirta flip," Onon said, simply. "According to the spirits, the strongest possible tell that Sirta isn't Spiked is that he says something so eyerollingly crazy you wonder if you're looking at the same set of evidence. I emphasise: this isn't just the sort of tell where you go 'huh, this is weird.' It's when you get a powerful, visceral sense that Sirta is utterly crazy that it works. The spirits say that in past lives, I've always found him to be Spiked when he seems fairly reasonable to me, and Village when I absolutely do not understand what he's been drinking." "Part of my motivation for pushing Sirta was to see if I could force that sort of 'oh Jahidi what exactly are you smoking even' response out of him. I'm satisfied with this read, and I think Sirta is Village here. This means one of the multiplicity of protective powers is Spiked, which draws my attention back to Rem and Sono."

Look. Is it possible they'll change their meta sometime and catch us all off-guard? Yeah. Could it be this game? Sure, why not. But I'll note what I've said before (in MR66 I believe) - that JNV has acknowledged this is a correct take on their meta, that they're trying to change it, and that they have so far failed. This, to me, points to the fact that this is a bit more robust than a normal piece of meta. I do know it boils down to certain psychological aspects of how they approach the game. Would I bet the farm on it? IDK. I wasn't comfortable betting the Village on it until C3 of MR66 where I fed JNV everything I could to prepare them to take over. So even I have my limits on how much I'd use their meta. But given the robustness of it, I can't deny that's where I am for them. Which means I either accept E!Raven, or I have to look in <you, Stick, Illwei> for both E!partners. I don't have much of an Illwei read but that kind of matters here when I actually lean negative on Stick, and I suppose I'm back all over the place for you because Illwei's and Stick's EoDs don't make sense with E!you. Illwei's a bit more, I guess, but still risky. Edited to add: I'm considering because if you think about it - Illwei pointed out last cycle we are in lylo this cycle. (4-2; ignoring 3 Elims worlds here as we'd have already lost if so.) I don't reasonably believe we can engineer a hammer resistant tie here; too many factors going on. Which means we get this right or we lose this. Illwei's current push is for one E in me/Raven - that's pretty ??? to me when I look at it again because Raven still feels like LHF, and almost an excuse to take the shot on me since Raven already locked in on me. (Reminds me of Orlok telling me the important thing was to lock a train on Maili but that's neither here nor there.) My point is that I'm not convinced it's a big loss for her world-wise because Illwei's current dominant theory is in me/Raven, she said at least, which is more expansive, and...you know, shrinking worlds tends to be a long-term mid-to-late game problem, not a lylo problem. I agree it's a problem if you have too few at lylo but it doesn't feel like a hardlock here just because Stick/Raven are out for her. Edited to add 2: And no, it's not really altering my view of Raven's vote. I'm one person with an injured wrist. I do my thing, y'all do yours, and it's not on me if y'all choose poorly or anything. Sometimes the Village gotta burn before people will learn, that's all. Being chill is better for the blood pressure and I appreciate not needing to switch on Village lead mode for one game >>

Yeah. But backing you on Raven D1 feels cheap given: -Noncommittalness -New player -Literally do not ever need to vote on this as long as there's a more pressing train you can go on -Suspicions unbacked by voting are cheap especially when you only get the one. I don't take it to be as indicative. But admittedly I'm also not sure I believe E!Raven so that sort of locks me to Scenario #2, since Scenario #3 feels more nonsensical for Stick than you.

I'm reluctant to give that too much credit when she went for Mat over Raven. What about Raven?

Derpclear means being cleared because they did something mindlessly/silly that no Spiked would do. (Or so people think.) Examples of past game derpclears include not knowing what the Spiked wincon was. The point of caution for derpclears is sometimes players will fake them to try to get the easy clear, e.g. Aman notoriously pretended not to know when the Elims won in MR57 and I think Mat or TJ gave him a pass for it at that time. A positive derpclear was MR66 where ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ didn't know his abilities or his role level. By that point, you'd expect E!him to know that already, so it was fairly clearing.

Sorry Really not in the mood for RP on this one. Tbf QFs also have less RP.

At this point I'd be more willing to believe E!Stick than E!Illwei of the two, though I'm still looking at Situation #2. But this just comes from the fact Stick has actively tripped red flags for me which Illwei hasn't. @Ooklil the Wei You asked for an assessment of Raven's level and I don't think anyone has offered this yet. I'm especially weak at profiling new or chaotic players in terms of evaluation, so I'll offer what I can. LG98: -First game, joined after a ping from Aeo (suspect was drawn by RPing angle?) -Don't recall any voting from Raven all game, which was admittedly pretty short. Carefree RPing in thread. -Claimed in PMs to be a Thug. LG98b: -I am going to be a bit more cautious here as this is an ongoing game but Raven is dead there and free game IMO. -Early vote on Drake, never really explained but my sense is that he took exception to Drake voting Aeo pretty early on, as he changed his mind when discovering Drake had PMed everyone and also PMed Aeo after the vote on her. (Assessment: Likely consistent with his current views that early voting is bad.) -I think he came around on Drake after Rollovet of D1. -Claimed to V read Drake but declined to vote in defense of Drake during a EoD tie between Drake and Aeo. -Flipped V N1 after getting cruelly shot by some monster who N1s new players (sorry withholding judgement sorry) Personal assessment: -New player, WSYIWYG -Cannot deny that Raven might be pushing me because he struggles with formulating suspicions (NAI here IMO - true for either alignment, especially acute for E!Raven.) -Feel E!Raven might take path of least resistance and just go elsewhere for voting, but unclear. -Fact Raven keeps boomeranging to me feels a bit more genuine because I think a Villager is more willing to be this stubborn. -However, I'll note he was more willing to back down on Drake if we're using V!Raven in LG98b as a comparator. -Overall the main uncertainty/error margin in this read is that I am weak at establishing new/chaos player ranges, and calibrating accordingly. Edited to add: Oh yeah, Aeo. Since this annoyed me and I got on too late to say anything about it: I ignored it because by this point, I'm conditioned to believe V and E you will do chaotic, crazy things I can't see the point of and then tell me later on there's a point to it. Either there is and I don't get in your way, or there isn't and I refuse to waste my time on them. That's basically my take and my entire headspace was "Not touching this, someone else's problem."