Mysterium Mafia

[Farmerbink]

Reality is often disappointing. I might be biased, but using a post that talks about you and not about me doesn't really feel like a "nail-in-the-coffin" moment.

Oh, in a vacuum, not at all. In the context of "these three are the prime suspects," I don't see any value in Wolf!Aventine trying to make me look good or as a partner to him. Your mileage may vary.

I don't think I ever said this was a wolfy play for AV, quite the contrary actually. To elaborate, I'd believe that town!AV used it to try to fish for someone to make a misplay.

Oooooooooh, interesting. I see what you mean.

[flat_footed]

Oh, in a vacuum, not at all. In the context of "these three are the prime suspects," I don't see any value in Wolf!Aventine trying to make me look good or as a partner to him. Your mileage may vary.

That's fair, but it was your vacuum.

[Let'sGetKraken]

It has been a super busy workday and there is a whole lot to catch up to and respond to. I'll respond to some individual things later - this is more general quick scan through the thread.

The mason thing is either a joke or largely irrelevant, AvatarVecna is absolutely town, they pushed for Apogee over Bink when it would have been exceedingly easy to let Bink fall - since they both can't be wolves (for reasons previously discussed), it means they intentionally sacrificed a wolf over a town when there was absolutely zero need to do so. I actually suspect Bink a little bit less for trying to walk back what is pretty obviously confirmed - that seems like it would be such a huge misplay from a wolf to do.

I am not convinced that Aventine saying Bink is less suspicious today means anything significant, especially since it produced this exact result of making Bink - who is likely to make it to tomorrow - more trusting of Aventine. I don't think it costs them anything and they can easily walk it back tomorrow if flat_footed is town.

Current suspicion list, in order of who I think is most wolfish to least wolfish:

1) Flat_footed
2) Aventine
3) Farmer Bink.

[AvatarVecna]

Spoiler: Some Wolf Quotes

Show

You say that, but I'm still struggling to understand what town knows and how it could translate into these pictures.

- - - Updated - - -

To clarify I meant what "dead town knows"

"Do we even know if dead town knows who the wolves are?"

Oh. They might know who the wolves are? That would make sense. Has that been confirmed? My point is more "I have no idea what they know. For all we know they have the ability to see the wolf chat? Have a list of wolves? Have to work on their own reads? I have no idea, which makes it a little harder to figure out what angle to look at the visions from. Probably safe to assume they have a list of wolves though.

"Even if they do, how could we trust that we know who the images are pointing at?"

Take it whichever way you want. That said I'm really torn on this whole name connection thing. I'm currently banking on Xi to put together any real clues from the visions after that last post. The best I have is "similar to names" but that can't be the only basis because some of us have bad names for that to be the premise of a system. I'm going to probably mostly stick to trying to solve this the old school way.

"Only Xihirli could figure out the insane troll logic behind these picture choices."

I spend a few minutes just now looking at the messages from beyond, nothing really jumped out as an obvious connection.

"I don't think the images point at anyone in particular."

Wait... The one with the ship doesn't actually have water... That night poke a hole in my half cocked Kraken theory... Though ship is still water so good enough for now.

"I think my previous opinion that the pictures point at somebody is actually weaker than I once thought."

This is also fair. I'm more fond of the idea "use visions to back up existing suspicions" rather than basing things off of them.

Also... if the players themselves choose how many visions to send, I'm starting to think it's likely that 3 of the visions were from wolves. Because why would wolves ever not send the maximum?

"Who's to even say we know who sent which images?"

Bladescape

Pretty sure blade cooked this up in wolfchat. (I'll caveat that by saying AV tumbled to the same conclusion, although I'm not sure if AV would also be on the wolfteam here or independently getting to that by googling Apogee, but it reasonated hard here with blade).

As maybe some of you but at least blade know, I play mafia on MU as well, where both my forum and discord avatar are a moon. Blade is probably the only person in the game to know this. This image is played only after the first wolf (gac) is killed, and it strikes me as highly highly coincidental that an image that very strongly points to me is played with that sequence. And yeah, most of these images probably came from wolves (blade is right in the first post if the wolves are approaching this like I'd expect, which is why I was hesitant to read into the four images from yesterday).

"Oh so it just so happens there's an image that obviously points to me? Conspiracy. OMGUS. blade is the real wolf here!"

Now I don't know about you. But seeing these posts from them, it forms a pattern of behavior in my mind.

gac almost immediately started casting all kinds of doubt on the visions. He questioned if the people sending them even have any info to base their suggestions on. He questioned if anybody could even tell what the images were saying with any accuracy. He questioned if anybody could trust that they knew which images were coming from townies instead of wolves. Apogee doesn't think the images point to anyone in particular, even though everybody else agreed on who they pointed at (kraken and bink), they just didn't agree on whether they could trust who sent the images.

but we now know they're wolves.

gac wasn't arguing that hard for no reason. Something in those images spooked him so much he spent almost the whole day pushing back on the visions meaning anything at all - except when it came to accusing Kraken. Who was he defending, with all that "the visions can't be trusted at all" talk?

Apogee didn't just happen to not see what literally everyone else saw in those images. He saw it, and like gac, he wanted to pretend it wasn't there. He wanted to convince everyone else it wasn't there. So he pretends he can't see it. Who was he defending, by saying the visions don't say anything?

Spoiler: My theory

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There are only two people who town agreed were implicated by those visions. One was kraken, but it wasn't until awhile into gac's defensive posturing that kraken even got a vote. But you know who did have a vote? You know who got a vote based on how the visions implicated them? A single post before gac started shading the visions?

FarmerBink

You know who became the lead wagon before gac really kicked it into high gear?

Farmerbink

You know one of the only posts gac made that suggested the visions should be trusted?

Since your Kraken read is "nearly wolfy... But new so maybe not" it might be worth mentioning again, if any of the clues are suppose to hint towards names, Kraken is both the most obvious person to point out and matches multiple pictures if you assume "general water theme". So... Probably worth FOS due to that, at least as much as farmerbrink does for the fields.

"Oh come on! If you're gonna make a lead wagon out of bink just because of the images, you should be voting kraken at least as much, if not more!"

And you know who else is toeing the party line, throwing shade on the idea that the visions could mean anything at all?

I'm afraid we've run into a hard issue ((with the system)). Without some sort of public "role" assignment with imagery or symbolism, we're stuck trying to make pictures look like words names (which are often somewhat nonsensical in their own right)

I know it has to sound like I'm harping on this. But I really can't stop seeing it. It feels really obvious to me: gac cast shade on town!Kraken (and on scum!Bink, just in case Bink dies soon, so he can pretend to look townie), but then somebody follows his suspicion and votes scum!Bink. Gac panics and starts backpedaling, but it's too late: Bink gets another vote. He can't stop mentioning Bink now, it'll look suspicious, so he has to simultaneously downplay that the visions could mean anything, while also saying that if they mean do mean anything, it's a reason to vote Kraken (instead of Bink, who gac of course suspects but his suspicion is more mild). Apogee shows up and insists the visions mean nothing, then buses gac for towncred to try and salvage the situation.

gac3 saw something that spooked him so hard, he backpedaled straight into a grave. Apogee clearly saw the same thing, because he also pretends he can't see what everybody else is seeing. Reading through their posts from D2 makes it painfully clear they saw something in the visions they felt they had to downplay as much as possible, somebody they had to defend from the visions' accusation. But there's only two people town though those images implicated (kraken and bink).

And gac for damn sure wasn't defending kraken. Not even a teeny tiny bit.

If they weren't defending bink...then who were they defending? Who did these images implicate, that got two wolves scrambling to the defense?

Spoiler: images

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Which of these images implicate flat_footed?

Which of these images implicate 3SecondCultist?

Which of those images implicate Apogee1?

Which of those images implicate gac3?

Because I'm not really seeing it.

Because that first one has what looks like a farmhouse and tilled fields. it could be sand dunes on the beach, but when compared with the obvious desert picture, that's clearly not how sand dunes look. It looks like tilled fields to me, and I don't really see other images implicating Bink (which matches up with people's thoughts D2 that there would be one image from town and three from wolves).

If not Bink, then who? Who did gac die defending?

- - - Updated - - -

Farmerbink. Unless I can hear an actual solid argument that explains the D2 wolf behavior, I'm gonna die on this hill.

[Aventine]

I'll be honest, I only read like half that last post, but come on dude. gac was the one who first suggested the visions could point to Bink

Okay. I need some big brains. Part of me is like "what if it's hint towards our names" and then the best I got was water for Kracken? If that's a farm house in the sand maybe farmer? Though that wouldn't help for people like me? How could a picture hint towards my name when it's just my initials? So maybe they relate to posts we've made? I'll try to look and see if that holds up.

[bold added by me]

Your argument here is, what? Gac saw one of the visions could point to his scumbuddy, decided to point that out in thread. Then after that he panicked so hard over the idea that town might notice the thing that he himself explicitly pointed out that "he backpedaled straight into a grave"?

Yeah, no.

[AvatarVecna]

I'll be honest, I only read like half that last post, but come on dude. gac was the one who first suggested the visions could point to Bink



[bold added by me]

Your argument here is, what? Gac saw one of the visions could point to his scumbuddy, decided to point that out in thread. Then after that he panicked so hard over the idea that town might notice the thing that he himself explicitly pointed out that "he backpedaled straight into a grave"?

Yeah, no.

1) He made a bigger deal out of the kraken thing, and clearly thought that was the bigger thing suggested by the pics. Are you seriously suggesting to me that the very idea of a wolf making a slight accusation of a scumbuddy they thought would go nowhere, only to panic when it went somewhere, is inconceivable? That is far from the weirdest thing I've seen scum do.

2) Even if you wanna ignore my theory for the explanation, sure, that's fine. But what's your theory then? gac backpedaled into a grave. That's not my opinion, it's just a fact. It's a simple statement of what happened, of what the confirmed wolves were doing throughout day 2. Gac spent part of the day insisting the pics point to kraken (and bink, to a lesser degree), but spent most of the day insisting they don't mean anything. Apogee pushed that same "doesn't mean anything" narrative when he finally showed up. It feels fairly obvious to me that they both saw something in those pictures that looked to them like it would get a wolf caught, and they were trying to push back on that without calling too much attention to it. They're clearly defending somebody. But who? Apogee? gac? flat_footed? 3SecondCultist? Who are the images pointing to, that made them push back on the visions this hard?

[Farmerbink]

So the short answer is that the image mechanic is, to my knowledge, 100% new. Right? Not just for me, not just for the town, but for every player.

Interacting with the images and figuring out how/what/by whom information was being shared from the grave is the singular key mechanic in this particular game, right?

So yeah, there exists a theory there that gac3 was defending me, but when you hear hooves do you think zebras or horses? The more obvious, simple, and reasonable theory- by far- is that he was trying to grapple with a new, interesting mechanic. Which is exactly what Xihi was doing, what I was doing, and what I think any reasonable player should be doing, right after the first wave of images hits.

The fact that there are some (still pretty thin, easily explained as town behavior) interactions that connect his thought processes and mine on D2 is a function of both of us wondering about the same images and how they impacted the same game. Nothing more.

If you have to see me flip town to prove it, I hope you've got a really strong vibe between the other two. I mean, I think it's clearly FF at this point, but I don't get to pick your vote for you.

[AvatarVecna]

Okay, looking at this more seriously, we want to kill an established player today that a lot of us can interpret the vague pictures of.
If we get a wolf, great. But my dream team of dream givers has people I've played in a lot of games with and can more easily interpret the signs of.
So my preferred kill list, in no particular order:

AvatarVecna
flat_footed
Xihirli
Apogee1
gac3
Snowblaze

- - - Updated - - -

Therefore, in order to advance someone on my list up to dying, I will join the wagon on Xihirli.

...oh I'm an idiot how did I not realize this before. This is actually brilliant, I should've tried this last night argh.

[Farmerbink]

...oh I'm an idiot how did I not realize this before. This is actually brilliant, I should've tried this last night argh.

On its face, I wonder if that post is what got Xihi killed. By my read, all 3 wolves are in that list. *shrugs* Idle contemplation, but I wasn't seeing anything otherwise condemning of Xihi, while AV and Snow and Blade became more and more safe.

[Aventine]

AV's the wolf, by the way, for anyone who hasn't noticed that yet.

I'll go through in more detail eventually, but for now notice that two people haven't actually been playing today, they are already playing tomorrow. I'm one of them: at the start of day I wasn't yet sold on Bink being town. Three possible wolves, three kills remaining. It would be very useful if the remaining wolf NKs one of the three for us. AV was the only one that might work on. So I pretended AV was towny to try to bait an NK onto her as a hedge against the possibility that she was, in fact, town.

The wolf needs a mislynch tomorrow. From AV's perspective I removed myself from being a decent candidate for that by solidly town-reading Bink. At that point once flat dies the only living players would be myself and people I insisted were town. I could do that as a wolf, but is it a risk I would actually take? Is wolf!me confident enough that I can sell a "oops, I was wrong you guys, don't kill me!"? More importantly is wolf!AV confident enough she can sell that that's what I was doing? Bink is a better choice as the designated mislynch for tomorrow.

AV is playing today how a wolf would have to play today. And she's doing a decent job of it, but it's too deep a hole to dig out of. I mean, we have Bink being a wolf because gac pushed Kraken being the vision target harder than Bink. Ok, but the only place that is really true is voting for Kraken over Bink and here:

Since your Kraken read is "nearly wolfy... But new so maybe not" it might be worth mentioning again, if any of the clues are suppose to hint towards names, Kraken is both the most obvious person to point out and matches multiple pictures if you assume "general water theme". So... Probably worth FOS due to that, at least as much as farmerbrink does for the fields.

And then note later:

Wait... The one with the ship doesn't actually have water... That night poke a hole in my half cocked Kraken theory... Though ship is still water so good enough for now.

Not gonna lie, when I am desperately pushing a theory like AV says gac was I tend not to point out flaws in it. But maybe that's just me.

It looks to me like gac pushed Kraken harder because Bink had votes. If you have two weak wolf reads and people start voting for one, do you keep pushing that or start talking about why you think the other is also good? You don't really need to keep arguing a case that people agree with.

[AvatarVecna]

AV's the wolf, by the way, for anyone who hasn't noticed that yet.

I'll go through in more detail eventually, but for now notice that two people haven't actually been playing today, they are already playing tomorrow. I'm one of them: at the start of day I wasn't yet sold on Bink being town. Three possible wolves, three kills remaining. It would be very useful if the remaining wolf NKs one of the three for us. AV was the only one that might work on. So I pretended AV was towny to try to bait an NK onto her as a hedge against the possibility that she was, in fact, town.

1) I've already spelled out how nobody except bladescape was gonna die last night.

2) If I was on this wolf team, I wouldn't have fed Apogee to town when he was home free.

3) If I was on this wolf team, bladescape would've died N1, and you would've died last night, because you two are the people who can consistently catch me wolfing. I'd've take my chances that I could convince Bink to kill Kraken, or whoever it is I took into F3. EDIT: F2, my bad, and I wouldn't need to convince them, just outdraw them.

From AV's perspective I removed myself from being a decent candidate for that by solidly town-reading Bink. At that point once flat dies the only living players would be myself and people I insisted were town.

If I'm the last living wolf, my job would be really ****in easy. There's three suspects, and I need two mislynches, and there's no way anybody would believe there's two wolves left so they wouldn't look for pairs. All I have to do is go with the flow. I could've just joined the flat_footed wagon without resisting at all, and instead here I am, picking my hill to die on. If I'm the last wolf, it literally doesn't matter to me which of the three of you dies, as long as two of you get mislynched.

I could do that as a wolf, but is it a risk I would actually take? Is wolf!me confident enough that I can sell a "oops, I was wrong you guys, don't kill me!"? More importantly is wolf!AV confident enough she can sell that that's what I was doing? Bink is a better choice as the designated mislynch for tomorrow.

If bink is the better choice for me to try and mislynch tomorrow, then why am I the one pushing for Bink to die today?

---

You're right about one thing though: you're definitely playing tomorrow instead of today. If you're the final wolf, you need two mislynches, but there's only three targets, so you need to absolutely be the last one checked. You know you can count on me to push Bink, so you push hard on flat. The end result is that, whichever one ends up getting checked today, the other one gets checked tomorrow. And you win. If Bink dies today, I die in the night so I'm not here to call you out. If FF dies in the day, of course I get to survive the night so that I can go chasing after bink. That was the plan, yeah? You act all emotional and apologetic in the night for being wrong, and I get stewed up into a frenzy, and go after the person I've been tunneling?

[Snowblaze]

Well. That explains why Aventine had AV above me on their reads list, at least.

And my thoughts are a Confused Mess (TM).

I need to sleep, and think, and work out whether the AV tinfoil that's been bubbling around in my brain for a while is actually valid or just a result of having miscleared them in multiple previous games.

The last of those can be Future Snowblaze's problem.

[AvatarVecna]

1) Living players have no special powers.

2) Quotes in order of occurrence:

Hello all.

I took a quick read through the thread to try to get up to speed and am now ODing on tinfoil.

I will go back through things and try to have coherent and sensible reads in time for Day.

[SIZE=4]Day 4 Begins!

My current, still quite tentative, thoughts:

In order of most townie to least townie:

AV
Snow
Kraken
flat
Bink

Should have more in a few hours or so.

That last two in particular I need to sort out my thoughts on.

So I pretended AV was towny to try to bait an NK onto her as a hedge against the possibility that she was, in fact, town.

Oh oh spaghettios

You didn't post your reads list last night, in time to "bait an NK". You posted it this morning, after the new day had started.

Blatantly lying about the order of events in order to pretend you were taking pro-town anti-AV actions.

[Snowblaze]

Though I do want to point out that Apogee was not in any way "home free" as of when AV started pushing him. bladescape was voting and confidently wolfreading him and the moon image pretty strongly implied he was a wolf.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, wait, that timing thing is a good point.

[Aventine]

Desperate wolf is desperate

1) I've already spelled out how nobody except bladescape was gonna die last night.

Cool, but I was talking about this coming night, not last night.

2) If I was on this wolf team, I wouldn't have fed Apogee to town when he was home free.

Except you didn't. Blade did. You echoed him well after he made the first call out. You bussed once you knew Apogee was pinched.

3) If I was on this wolf team, bladescape would've died N1, and you would've died last night, because you two are the people who can consistently catch me wolfing. I'd've take my chances that I could convince Bink to kill Kraken, or whoever it is I took into F3. EDIT: F2, my bad, and I wouldn't need to convince them, just outdraw them.

Oh, I am one of the two people who can consistently catch you as a wolf and the other just died last night? Curious.

If I'm the last living wolf, my job would be really ****in easy. There's three suspects, and I need two mislynches, and there's no way anybody would believe there's two wolves left so they wouldn't look for pairs. All I have to do is go with the flow. I could've just joined the flat_footed wagon without resisting at all, and instead here I am, picking my hill to die on. If I'm the last wolf, it literally doesn't matter to me which of the three of you dies, as long as two of you get mislynched.

Yes, it would have been easy. Until I cleared Bink. That made it hard to push a mislynch on me tomorrow, and if you let Bink get cleared in everyones' eyes that would make him hard to mislynch as well. So you had to do something.

If bink is the better choice for me to try and mislynch tomorrow, then why am I the one pushing for Bink to die today?

Because you expect flat to die. So tomorrow you can say "see, you should have listened to me, now can we kill Bink?" Basic wolf move. The fact that you are conveniently pretending not to see it isn't helping your case. Not believable at all.

You're right about one thing though: you're definitely playing tomorrow instead of today. If you're the final wolf, you need two mislynches, but there's only three targets, so you need to absolutely be the last one checked. You know you can count on me to push Bink, so you push hard on flat. The end result is that, whichever one ends up getting checked today, the other one gets checked tomorrow. And you win. If Bink dies today, I die in the night so I'm not here to call you out. If FF dies in the day, of course I get to survive the night so that I can go chasing after bink. That was the plan, yeah? You act all emotional and apologetic in the night for being wrong, and I get stewed up into a frenzy, and go after the person I've been tunneling?

So...my master plan is to insist that Bink is extremely townie in preparation for pushing a mislynch on him tomorrow? And that makes more sense than you insisting that Bink is wolfy in preparation for pushing a mislynch on him tomorrow?

Also, how exactly did I supposedly know you would push Bink instead of me tomorrow?

- - - Updated - - -

You didn't post your reads list last night, in time to "bait an NK". You posted it this morning, after the new day had started.

Blatantly lying about the order of events in order to pretend you were taking pro-town anti-AV actions.

I was baiting tonight's kill. Not last nights.

- - - Updated - - -

Three possible wolves, three kills remaining.

Lynch today, NK tonight, lynch tomorrow. Three kills. If I was including last night's NK that would be four.

Nice try AV.

[Let'sGetKraken]

Get some sleep, Snow. We have all of tomorrow to debate too.

If I'm the last wolf, it literally doesn't matter to me which of the three of you dies, as long as two of you get mislynched.

Aside from the fact that AV's logic makes total sense - assuming they didn't ruthlessly chuck two wolves under the bus just to clear themselves in an incredibly risky play - this bit here absolutely makes me 100% confident AV is town.

The fact that Aventine is pushing AV feels very much like an attempt to set Vecna up as a possible wolf tomorrow. Aventine has to know that Snow and I won't vote AV today without damn good reason, but if they can convince Bink or FF to vote with them tomorrow...

Changing my vote to Aventine.

[AvatarVecna]

Desperate wolf is desperate

Yup, you clearly are.

Cool, but I was talking about this coming night, not last night.

I see gac's not the only wolf with backpedal.exe installed.

Except you didn't. Blade did. You echoed him well after he made the first call out. You bussed once you knew Apogee was pinched.

Blade made one (1) line of callout based on an image and nothing else. I laid out a ****in case.

Oh, I am one of the two people who can consistently catch you as a wolf and the other just died last night? Curious.

Yeah just conveniently skip over the part where I would've killed them way before now. The way I have in like every single game I've been a wolf in recently.

Yes, it would have been easy. Until I cleared Bink. That made it hard to push a mislynch on me tomorrow, and if you let Bink get cleared in everyones' eyes that would make him hard to mislynch as well. So you had to do something.

Nah. I just jump on flat today. In the night, I do the song and dance "see I ****ing told you, you were wrong about flat you ****in idiot" and then tomorrow I push Bink, and nobody listens to your screaming insistence that I'm the real wolf.

Because you expect flat to die. So tomorrow you can say "see, you should have listened to me, now can we kill Bink?" Basic wolf move. The fact that you are conveniently pretending not to see it isn't helping your case. Not believable at all.

I could've done that by pushing flat too, coasting along. Some song and dance about "I still suspect bink but you're making a really solid case".

You're making me out to be a way worse wolf than I am. Setting up two of three people to die when nobody trusts you and everybody trusts me isn't actually as hard as you're making it out to be.

So...my master plan is to insist that Bink is extremely townie in preparation for pushing a mislynch on him tomorrow? And that makes more sense than you insisting that Bink is wolfy in preparation for pushing a mislynch on him tomorrow?

I think your plan was to play on my ego.

Also, how exactly did I supposedly know you would push Bink instead of me tomorrow?

You know I'm town. You saw my theory put Apogee in the ground. Of course you think I'm gonna have a swollen ego after that, insisting that I was 100% right about everything and going after my next target.

[Aventine]

Kraken, why do I push so hard on Bink being town if I'm a wolf? Why do I pick AV as my mislynch target for tomorrow instead of Bink?

- - - Updated - - -

Also, yes AV doesn't care which of the three get lynched. That's why he's pushing on Bink, that was the option that seemed the most likely to work.

- - - Updated - - -

Yup, you clearly are.

lol

What about my play today reads as desperate?

And the rest of this post is just more obvious wolf is obvious. I mean, you really still trying to push that I lied about the timing? At least try to address the fact that I said three kills remaining instead of four.

[AvatarVecna]

Also, yes AV doesn't care which of the three get lynched. That's why he's pushing on Bink, that was the option that seemed the most likely to work.

Three people voting flat_footed, and I decide to go off-wagon for ****s and giggles? The path of least resistance was to join in, cry about how I was right about bink, and then get bink lynched tomorrow. You yourself agree this was the obvious path forward for me.

Do you seriously think that my cunning plan to ensure flat_footed got lynched first was to spend three hours building a case against Bink instead of just...voting flat_footed? Do you even hear yourself right now?

[Aventine]

Yeah, why on Earth would a wolf ever waste time building a case on someone they know they need to get mislynched tomorrow?

- - - Updated - - -

You talk about how there were three people that could die and you didn't care which. Then turn around and insist that you needed flat dead today and so would definitely not start preparing your case for tomorrow?

[AvatarVecna]

Yeah, why on Earth would a wolf ever waste time building a case on someone they know they need to get mislynched tomorrow?

I made a case against bink yesterday. I could've rested on my laurels of "getting apogee right" and not wasted the time.

- - - Updated - - -

You talk about how there were three people that could die and you didn't care which. Then turn around and insist that you needed flat dead today and so would definitely not start preparing your case for tomorrow?

Wolf!AV doesn't care who dies first, but "AV needs flat dead" was your argument. I'm pointing out that if I wanted flat dead today, the way you think I should have, wasting three hours making another case against Bink isn't the path to victory there.

- - - Updated - - -

Aventine. I've made my points well enough at this point, I think. Be back later. :*

[Let'sGetKraken]

Quite literally cannot keep up on mobile here, but:

Kraken, why do I push so hard on Bink being town if I'm a wolf? Why do I pick AV as my mislynch target for tomorrow instead of Bink?

I'm not 100% on the logic, but it is very early. Plenty of time for us to vote out Bink instead of flat_footed, and if that happens, you look vindicated and have an incredibly easy win. If not, you can still potentially turn the town (since wolves obviously aren't killing ff or bink) onto Vecna, having secured Bink's loyalty.

I'm not quite convinced this would be the path of least resistance here, but AV is so obviously cleared that it's the only thing that makes sense.

[Aventine]

I made a case against bink yesterday. I could've rested on my laurels of "getting apogee right" and not wasted the time.

Not if people start believing me about Bink. That makes your job tomorrow much harder. So you push back, after I talk about Bink looking good. Yeah, before that you were kinda resting on your laurels.

Wolf!AV doesn't care who dies first, but "AV needs flat dead" was your argument. I'm pointing out that if I wanted flat dead today, the way you think I should have, wasting three hours making another case against Bink isn't the path to victory there.

lolwat

That wasn't my argument.

Do you seriously think that my cunning plan to ensure flat_footed got lynched first was to spend three hours building a case against Bink instead of just...voting flat_footed? Do you even hear yourself right now?

Nowhere did I say you wanted to ensure flat specifically died. I said you were expecting flat to die today. (he already had, what, half the living players voting for him?).

For someone accusing me of lying, you are doing an awful lot of it.

Please finally get around to how your timing argument makes any shred of sense considering I said "three kills" and not "four kills"

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I'm not quite convinced this would be the path of least resistance here, but AV is so obviously cleared that it's the only thing that makes sense.

Why is AV cleared?

[Let'sGetKraken]

Why is AV cleared?

To quote myself from earlier - AvatarVecna is absolutely town, they pushed for Apogee over Bink when it would have been exceedingly easy to let Bink fall - since they both can't be wolves (for reasons previously discussed), it means they intentionally sacrificed a wolf over a town when there was absolutely zero need to do so.

To elaborate, they switched from Bink to Apogee, which is what did Bink in. It wasn't just voting Apogee, it was removing a vote from the other bus.

[Aventine]

To quote myself from earlier - AvatarVecna is absolutely town, they pushed for Apogee over Bink when it would have been exceedingly easy to let Bink fall - since they both can't be wolves (for reasons previously discussed), it means they intentionally sacrificed a wolf over a town when there was absolutely zero need to do so. I actually suspect Bink a little bit less for trying to walk back what is pretty obviously confirmed - that seems like it would be such a huge misplay from a wolf to do.

To elaborate, they switched from Bink to Apogee, which is what did Bink in. It wasn't just voting Apogee, it was removing a vote from the other bus.

That was Snow. AV didn't switch. She was bussing, like Apogee himself did. Unless I am completely missing something.

Edit: to be clear, AV switching to Bink once blade did would be god-awful wolf play. Blade was fishing for reactions like that, and AV knows enough to know something like that was up. Best case scenario there, you save Apogee only to see him lynched the next day, pointing very strongly at yourself.

[Let'sGetKraken]

Hm. On mobile, I'll have to go back and look at that particular interaction when I'm on my laptop later. That might change things.

Edit: you are in fact correct. I got my wires crossed between AV and Snow there. I need to think on this, take a good look back, and sleep, will get a post up in the morning.

[Snowblaze]

Awake and have time to analyse. I'm going to build a wolf!AV world and see if it holds up to scrutiny.

EOD2, their Kraken vote is an attempt to pocket bladescape who's doing the same thing. By that stage gac is evidently a lost cause so there's no point in actually trying to save them and jumping on the wagon is going to look like a bus, so they have a lack of better options.

D3, they see the vision and bladescape pointing at Apogee and me walking back my townread on him and realise that though he might be able to get through the phase his chances of endgaming are low to non-existent. And since AV is a ruthless busser, they bus. They make sure to tie a townie to their partner for future mislynches.

Apogee, in response to this pressure, proceeds to OMGUS bladescape and more or less ignore AV's case. Now arguing bladescape and AV are wolfbuddies is destined to fail even harder than what he actually did, so maybe he just decided that bladescape's cryptic bastardry made him an easier push.

But I'd expect a wolf!Apogee intent on survival because he knows his partner is in the POE and will struggle to survive without him to actually push a wagon that has a viable chance of going over instead of his own instead of a consensus townread and a not particularly strong case.

AV is quick to provide an explanation for me/blade/them being alive that isn't "one of us is a wolf". Which, while it's reasonable, also fits with wolf!AV's path to victory of grouping themselves with us to share in the towncred and then murdering us to eliminate threats which would neatly explain why I'm alive.

I really don't want to have to analyse the argument but. I can see it as wolf!AV being genuinely salty because they're being pushed for what they perceive as bad reasons.

And also despite wanting Apogee dead they spend a lot more time pushing Farmerbink than pushing Apogee. Now granted the fact Farmerbink is more active and arguing against their case could have led to them just being sucked into the argument but also.

Shutting down reasons to townread 3SC in bladescape's unpairing of him/Apogee. Granted I can understand their point and kind of agree with it but this is a worldbuilding exercise, not an ISO.

Skipping forward in time a little, AV then proceeds to shut down my NKA implying town!3SC. While it is a point that I could be alive because of my reduced activity, I'm not going to "stop posting and be essentially dead". There was briefly a possibility of that but it was clear by EOD3 that I'd still be able to maintain half-decent activity levels, and I'm me and thus going to do stuff like this even though I don't have the time and energy. (Though tbf a wolf!3SC or wolf!Farmerbink doesn't necessarily know that.)

Pushing Farmerbink is... I don't buy the "path of least resistance" thing. They're AV, they don't take the easy option, just like I don't. Letting flat die and taking Aventine/Farmerbink/one of me/Kraken to endgame probably wins for them but winning that F4 is a lot easier with a ready-made case on Farmerbink.

I also don't think AV necessarily N1s bladescape. He has to be nightkilled at some point but I could see AV doing what they did in Love Letter and pocketing him, then killing him as soon as he has them as locktown.


...gah. I was hoping to find something I overlooked that satisfies my tinfoil brain and locks them as town. I did not find that.

The world makes sense, but there are also genuinely towny moments and I need to work out if they're fakeable. And if I commit to this and am wrong...

...why couldn't I have just been killed so I wouldn't have to worry about this?

Anyway, having spent an hour of my morning when I'm sleep-deprived and have stuff to do, I guess I'll have to leave it there and think.

(Seeing this post in preview just makes me scream internally at the size of my own wall.)

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assuming they didn't ruthlessly chuck two wolves under the bus just to clear themselves in an incredibly risky play

They didn't, even if they are a wolf. AV never voted or pushed gac.

(Assuming that's a function of getting them muddled with me again.)

Aventine, questions:

- if you were trying to get AV nightkilled, why did you decide to give up on that and out your suspicion on them before night phase?

- how confident are you that AV is a wolf? Would you stake the game on it?

[AvatarVecna]

- how confident are you that AV is a wolf? Would you stake the game on it?

I feel like this is a bit of silly question. If he's town, what answer does he give? If he's wolf, what answer does he give?

But I've got a question for you, Snow. Do you think I'm partnered with flat_footed, or Kraken?

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Cuz it really feels to me like Aventine is leaning towards an AV/FF team, and I don't think he's got the evidence to support it.

[Aventine]

Aventine, questions:

- if you were trying to get AV nightkilled, why did you decide to give up on that and out your suspicion on them before night phase?

- how confident are you that AV is a wolf? Would you stake the game on it?

I became convinced of Bink's townieness. No need to bait an NK anymore. Also keep in mind this:

3) If I was on this wolf team, bladescape would've died N1, and you would've died last night, because you two are the people who can consistently catch me wolfing. I'd've take my chances that I could convince Bink to kill Kraken, or whoever it is I took into F3. EDIT: F2, my bad, and I wouldn't need to convince them, just outdraw them.

[bold mine]

Often the best lies have a bit of truth in them. AV would be likely to be genuinely concerned about me. I honestly feel kinda bad about subbing into this game and screwing AV over. I had to consider the world where wolf!AV NKs me to shut me up before I catch on. I'm so in-and-out and don't play enough games regularly enough to be confident that you'd see the meta reasons why me dying would point to AV. If I die in the night without revealing, do you vote for AV tomorrow?

The benefit to the ploy only lasts as long as I think Bink is a plausible wolf. The risk remains.

As for the second question: I would absolutely stake the game on one of flat or AV being the wolf. Who else? You? Kraken or Bink? Unless you can give me one hell of a reason to consider Kraken or Bink, the only possibilities are flat, me and AV, right? Flat's dying today and I know I'm town.

But what pushed me over the edge and made up my mind while mulling over all the above was:

Look at AV before I make up my mind that Bink is town:

My take is: Snow is busy, Kraken is new, the rest of you are suspects. And if I had to make the decision on who's going down right now, I'm not sure I feel strongly enough one way or the other on any of you.

And after (follow the link, there are too many quotes in that post, I'm not going through and adding them back in, but don't want to lose them).

The post in the link is not AV scumhunting. AV switches from "oh, I don't know which of you to be suspicious of," to very decisively laying the groundwork for tomorrow's lynch. And doing so in a very sketchy way. Why react like that as town? I didn't think I could ignore that, but also didn't think I could engage with it in a way that kept AV as NK bait as a hedge against some crazy world where the wolf is, like, you or something.

[AvatarVecna]

Had to cool off for a little while. Back for a bit.

Engaging with the three kills vs four kills thing is a waste of time, because it's getting into an argument from the position that you were trying to provoke an NK on town!AV at some point in the future. It's not just incorrect, in the sense that you're not trying to bait somebody else into killing me (because you're the one who was gonna kill me, and you wanted to use this as evidence later that you were trying to bait it for a townie reason), but even if you're telling the truth, baiting wolves into killing a skilled trusted townie is 1) not very helpful to town, and 2) not exactly a thing you can really take credit for making happen even if it occurs, since that's kinda just a generally good move for wolves to make.

The post in the link is not AV scumhunting. AV switches from "oh, I don't know which of you to be suspicious of," to very decisively laying the groundwork for tomorrow's lynch. And doing so in a very sketchy way. Why react like that as town? I didn't think I could ignore that, but also didn't think I could engage with it in a way that kept AV as NK bait as a hedge against some crazy world where the wolf is, like, you or something.

This is the most disingenuous garbage argument.

AV: "I can't necessarily count on anybody else to put in the legwork here, and currently I'm not really solid on who to go for."

AV: [looks over suspects, comes up with an argument that still has received no counter-argument from anybody]

Aventine: "AV is scummy for trying to figure out who's scummy."

Literally couldn't make this **** up. What does Aventine expect me to do if I'm town, sit on my hands??? Of course I'm gonna wallpost and make my theories. "Why react like that as town" because I suspect bink! I'm not gonna sit here and let you lynch the wrong person without getting my two cents in.

Not if people start believing me about Bink. That makes your job tomorrow much harder. So you push back, after I talk about Bink looking good. Yeah, before that you were kinda resting on your laurels.

First off, I was not "resting on my laurels" before you showed up. Bink and I were having a lovely discussion on what frame of reference we should view last night's visions through, based on how wolves might adjust their strategy given how thread has been openly interpreting things. Secondly, if I wanted to get Bink killed tomorrow, the move today would be joining the FF wagon, and then crowing about how I always suspected bink from D3 onward when FF flipped town, and nobody would've listened to you as I lead them to mislynch bink (assuming I didn't just silence you with the NK). Scum!AV doesn't make waves here when it's an objectively worse way of arriving at the end-game you're describing.

For people who want to know that Aventine is lying, this is part of what it's about. I made my bink case, instead of just voting flat_footed for an easy kill. To hear Aventine tell it, his suspicion of me solidified when I made a case on Bink, and that's what got him accusing me. But that's not the order of events, there's a middle step he skipped over because it reflects poorly on him.

Aventine pushed back against my bink case, and I asked him a point-blank question that required him to actually engage with the wolf behavior on D2. "If they're not defending bink, then who are they defending?" Rather than defending his town lean of Bink by showing how gac and Apogee were clearly reacting to defend somebody else, or making an argument that they're not defending anybody (since those are losing arguments), Aventine decides to ignore the question and attack the source of the issue by making out like I'm some wolf inventing cases on people that don't exist.

Plus, like, do y'all seriously believe I basically sat out the first two full days, especially while gac was making a fool of himself? I'm always on the forum, I would've said something in wolf chat like "stop shading the dead townies for gods sake it's not a good look". Do you seriously believe that I was sitting here watching all of D2, doing nothing to help, and then right at the end when gac and Apogee both voted for gac, I was so unwilling to bus a scumbuddy that I voted for Kraken on principle? And then the next day I'm personally putting the nails in Apogee's coffin at the first whisper of suspicion? Really?

That was Snow. AV didn't switch. She was bussing, like Apogee himself did. Unless I am completely missing something.

Edit: to be clear, AV switching to Bink once blade did would be god-awful wolf play. Blade was fishing for reactions like that, and AV knows enough to know something like that was up. Best case scenario there, you save Apogee only to see him lynched the next day, pointing very strongly at yourself.

This is the trouble with WIFOM: the actions I took were purely townie, chasing down the more solid of my two suspects. But it can easily look like a wolf trying to not get caught switching for an easy mislynch, if you're operating from the assumption that bink is innocent.

Snow and blade know how I love to argue and will tunnel to the ends of the earth, so they switch to bink to provoke a reaction from him - he dies unless he defends himself from my accusations. Bink gets trapped in an argument with me, and now we're both typing walls going over all the stuff blade and snow need to see discussed to get a feel for bink. Bink argued, and I argued, and we both continued until we were about ready to quit the whole dang game. We generated a lot of content to read through, to get a feel for where we stand. At the end of the day, Bink was there to defend himself constantly, and Apogee had disappeared into the weeds. Snow and blade feel good about the case I've made against the two of them, but the post-case behavior reflects poorest on Apogee, so they switch back and doom him. And it turns out Apogee was scum.

---

All that being said, blade, snow, and I were clearing each other before the Apogee lynch happened. Would you like to know why?

Hi, I'm seer.

Also I counterclaim Seer.

I think I wanna go ahead and claim Mason. Guess who my buddy is.

I’ll claim Baner while we’re at it. Throw Devil in there somewhere as well.

All of this happened N1. We all decided to fake-claim. Two of us claimed seers, and as a result blade and snow townleaned each other going forward (despite blade's jokes to the contrary). Two of those people have flipped town at this point. Clearly lying. So why haven't they been called out? It's because we all knew. bladescape didn't just know that bladescape was a vanillager. bladescape knew that everybody was a vanillager.

bladescape knew for the same reason that Snowblaze did, for the same reason that I did, for the same reason Xihirli did.

1) Living players have no special powers.

This is a quote. I mean obviously, I'm quoting myself. But it's also a quote from the town role PM. Word for word.

"But AV, how certain can you be that wolves don't have a similar role PM with the same exact wording?"

Well it's hard to say. "Same exact wording" is very tricky, since I'm the first person to do a word-for-word quote this game. I don't technically know for sure this matches anybody's PM. It's possible that Cao made each one very subtly unique for each player, such that a tactic like this works for 0 people instead of just 1. Additionally, the way it's worded, it's entirely possible that wolves had similar wording - certainly I could see the same laziness in PM creation extending from town to wolf PMs. Hard to really rule it out.

But like...if you put a gun to my head, and demanded a percentage chance for how likely it is that wolves would see the above, and not immediately figure out exactly why townies were claiming like this? Ah geez, I dunno, maybe...uh...

I explain later vanillager... Maybe... I'm only 35% sure I understand why we have decided to claim.

I'll claim Necromancer.

Also, "35%" mmmm I think that percentage should really be higher.

...65%?

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Ultimately, though, arguing with Aventine just isn't worth the stress, especially today. So I'm just gonna throw. If scumteam is just Aventine at this point, y'all should be able to dunk him into a grave tomorrow. And if scumteam is Bink/Aventine, I at least get the satisfaction of knowing I successfully sniffed out two wolves on basically nothing the second I started actually putting effort into the game. AvatarVecna