Smuggler's Port [Game Over]

[maxwell]

We’re gonna have to try really hard to play off my opening post as a joke datisi otherwise we’re gonna lose lmao

Sure as hell hope it is or this game is going to be a colossal waste of time.

vote:Titus

bad second post.

I think we want to check like 3 or 4 people we think are not Tomboy Daughters. Getting clears on everyone in the inspection is more valuable than getting a Tea result.

Exactly what I was going to say. The idea should be to select a smallish pool of people we think are town (I'd cap it at 5 but that's an arbitrary guess on my end), and check that. We get it right and it narrows down the PoE on later days. From there I think the strategy becomes follow the clear which is unfortunate but is just the nature of the setup. If we get it wrong, we at least get a narrow elimination pool for day 2. If I

had

to pick 1 name to be in the check right now I guess I'd go with Iconeum.

[maxwell]

That's a good point from Titus. Do we check the scummiest 2 people then and try and hit scum?

No, the strategy is we vote Titus today.

[maxwell]

That's a good point from Titus. Do we check the scummiest 2 people then and try and hit scum?

No, the strategy is we vote Titus today.

Why was Titus's second post bad?

bland setup spec that doesn't even come to a meaningful conclusion, pure empty content. Subsequent posts have not been better.

Okay so this is a fakegod setup which means there's slim to no chance of finding a breaking strategy


I'm usually the first to object to denying tribute to the blood gods on day one but what if we no-execute and send out shipments / shipment check And work off that on day 2?

Reduces our risk of outting / killing the tomboy on day one. There's no night kill, and then we have a jumping off point tomorrow.

No. We only have 5 chances to find scum. Reducing that to 4 is not a good idea.

Yeah, absolutely terrible idea. I've basically 0 concern for mistakenly wagoning the TD on day 1.

[maxwell]

username is still probably town because scum probably doesn't go out of their way to suggest an antitown strategy like that and I buy that they sincerely thought it was a good idea.

[maxwell]

I think GL and ali are both scum, or if not I think there is likely one scum in there

This made me go back and read GuiltyLion, and I have to agree, I'm not sure what in his first post is worthy of a townread and his push on Datisi doesn't seem legitimate, it's all references to "feels" but no direct quotes or anything of the like, so vague it can't really be counter-argued.

[maxwell]

Alisae sees it. I'm not trying to make an argument that "can't be counter-argued", I'm just calling a vibe that feels off from someone I've played with as town a handful of times.

Okay. And how confident are you in that meta?

I vaguely remember you scumreading icon. Why? I dont think they even really posted anything outside of RVS

mostly because i started to form some townreads and not really any scumreads and gut

kind of to be expected with the ratios the way they are, I like the explanation, it's a believable thought process.

VOTE: maxwell

Saw it coming, tbh.

Why does notscience not knowing who username was make notscience more towny rather than less towny?

It's not that

the fact of not knowing that

is a town tell, it's that lying about not knowing it would be a hard scum tell and I'm saying I don't think he did that

I guess that doesn't actually make him town, so make that the strictly logical 'and' in my post: I think he's telling the truth

and

independently of that I get the sense he's town, though I can't point to anything strongly justifying that.

This feels like a backtrack and I don't like it.

[maxwell]

maxwell, what's your read on me?

Don't think I have one. Nothing stood out on initial appraisal, lot of fluff/jokeposting but that's to be expected early game (and I guess is more common these days?). Reasoning in 228 looks okay and somewhat townish, recent pots have been all asking questions which I don't really care for. Yeah I don't really feel confident one way or the other.

Hot take- nk is lying scum and intends to actively lurk

Nah, impossible for scum to fakeclaim here.

disagree with RR's plan in 426 (and outing it makes it more or less useless) but like that they mean it, generally think their posting is town.

I think there's a high probability there is at least one smuggler in those who haven't posted since NK15 outed. (Which is six players so that's not a hugely impressive deduction I guess)

This is a bizarre assertion to make? Was just under 13 hours between the claim and this post, people could just naturally be inactive in that time. (full disclosure: I saw the claim but it was late at night and didn't have anything meaningful to say).

I find myself catching up without a strong scumread, Titus's posts after my early game read didn't really trip my radar one way or the other, on a reskim of her ISO I really don't like it, it feels particularly empty.

Umlaut's posting is alo very lousy overall, boring waffling on the inspection check accomplishes nothing, and he's really excessively fluffy. Either of those are where I want to vote.

unvote:Titus

vote:Umlaut

Inspect:Wheat

I'll vote to put the inspection on any small group, like the one on wheat right now more than the one on copper.

[maxwell]

Gonna want you to substantiate that "excessively fluffy" read, pal.

181/199/209/258/265/272/280/319/321/327/338/340/394 are basically useless, I didn't care for most of what you said in your bullet point list and overall ISO doesn't give an impression of someone actually scumhunting

[maxwell]

Like I said, I don't feel like most of those posts contain anything that look like someone trying to actually analyze the game - there's also a lot of setup spec in there that's fairly shitty as well.

[maxwell]

I also don't think simply pointing to raw volume is an adequate self-defense.

[maxwell]

Okay, explain the scum motivation behind those posts.

[maxwell]

I don't know, I post things all the time as scum without a specific intent beyond producing content and being townread. I could make up a story where notscience is trying to accomplish something in particular but I don't think I need to do that to say this isn't a town play from him.

What even is your read on notscience? It's the only significant wagon in the game right now and you haven't weighed in on it.

If you can't explain the motive then your case amounts to "he isn't aggressively pushing the PA claim", which is a ridiculous expectation. Could just as easily be overly-paranoid town.

I'm gonna say it: despite the evidence to the contrary, I'm not sold that provoking kuribo is a surefire scumtell. Independently, he seems fine so far but I'd want to see a little more weight behind his reads before I'd comfortably call him town.

[maxwell]

Okay, I admit it's a bit weird he voted you in the same post he townread me for...saying I townread you, but...I don't know. It just doesn't

feel

right.

[maxwell]

Had basically no motivation whatsoever to post today, catching up now.

[maxwell]

Hadn't liked something Norwegian had said earlier but I liked his posts on page 25.

621 From Datisi is a bad post.

"scum may spam to hide things they don't want seen." in 631 from titus is a very silly notion but it probably means she's town.

S_S's intro is meh. I really really really dislike that he put all his effort into talking about mechanics with no commentary on anyone in the game when there's plenty of material to go off.

I'm not especially confident in my "meta" (if you can even call it that - I was more operating from a vibecheck perspective than like an actual Discerning Meta Analysis Thesis of how Datisi plays as either alignment), it's just the first impression I had and the first push I wanted to make. The question to me feels like a gotcha question rather than something maxwell is genuinely interested in, cause I think it should have been clear from how I was posting already roughly how 'confident' I was in it:

It wasn't actually a gotcha, I wanted to know if you were confident you could easily read Datisi or were talking out your ass (and honestly, you might've been on to something).

page 29 is boring and I have nothing to say on it. Still happy with my vote on Umlaut.

[maxwell]

I’m trying not to drown the thread too hard with my posting

You're too late for that.

[maxwell]

Inspect:Copper

Suddenly feel a lot better about checking there.

[maxwell]

S_S's intro is meh. I really really really dislike that he put all his effort into talking about mechanics with no commentary on anyone in the game when there's plenty of material to go off.

Hello, nice to meet you! I am sorry that you dislike that.

I caught up on my phone while on a car ride home from a vacation (don't freak out, I wasn't driving). I harbor no illusion about my ability to formulate, remember, and coherently express reads in such conditions (my ability to do so while catching up is dubious in the best of situations).

On the other hand, I can, and will, give detailed mechanical discussion without having a great sense of the game's history. In fact, if anything, this will serve as a jumping off point for engagement going forward. I can't say I'm surprised that you don't like it-- there's usually SOMEONE-- but I can assure you it is both in good faith and for the best.

All right but I'm running out of patience for the aimless durdling most people produce when commenting on the setup.

[maxwell]

And yet you're actually voting for an inspection which is a fair step better than a majority of players in the game.

[maxwell]

BTW I’m ok killing off icon ig

Yeah its catchup was not great. 824 was the only post of theirs that I felt had some sort of worthy observation in it, but I don't really feel that read overall even if that is a bad line from RR.

[maxwell]

NVM, Iconeum is probably town. p-edit: What the fuck. I typed that before the claim. Now I'm just baffled.

All right but I'm running out of patience for the aimless durdling most people produce when commenting on the setup.

I think the conversation is almost definitionally not aimless. It has a clear aim which is to answer a set of questions about optimal mechanical play; this is probably clearer than a lot of other discussions this game in terms of what the point actually is.

If you personally don't understand or care for it, that's fine. But that is not the same as it being objectively irrelevant.

Okay, now you've set me off, so let's do this. Literally your only conclusions in 724 and 745 were "buhh maybe we should follow the clear?" Which, in a general sense is unfortunately correct but hardly some startling insight and not worthy of your smarm. The blind deference to the clear also encourages passivity from town in talking about who should be inspected, which a distressingly small number of people have actually weighed in on. Even if people disagree with me I think they really should be talking about who they want to see checked. Also I can't see limiting the inspection checks to 1-2 players straight off the bat as anything but objectively pro-scum, in a game with an extremely limited number of executions it's necessary to find a way to narrow the pool and everyone fretting and whining about exposing the TD is forgetting our first goal here is to be catching scum, removing a handful of players as suspects isn't a big deal

because that's going to happen anyway based on what the PA decides

. I'm not really worried if the scum have a 1 in 5 or 1 in 6 guess at endgame. As it is checking 1 person means we'd get 5 eliminations and 4 cop checks to find 2 scum out of 3 in a pool of 15, which...actually, if I'm doing the math right, those are fairly good odds. I might might talk myself into this but I still thing having a larger check on day 1 at least accelerates the game at a fairly small added risk.

[maxwell]

621 From Datisi is a bad post.

pray tell?

Nah, I'm not gonna explain it to you.

[maxwell]

I still don't like it and we probably have to inspect or eliminate NK15 at this point.

[maxwell]

You are probably right that we can be a little more aggressive in the inspections in the early days, but going above 3 doesn't make sense, because if we find one scum in a group of 4, we don't even have time to kill them all. Like, you said that a larger group helps accelerate the game, but I don't really see what finding tea in a group of, say, 5 does to accelerate the game. It's really easy for searching for the scum in that group to throw us off-track really quickly, but we kind of are forced to do it or otherwise we just wasted that information. It also gives scum plenty of time to prepare the gamestate for after the scum in that group has been found, if they even are.

I think a group of 3 would be reasonable today. The thing is, even if we clear 2 people every day, that's still a ton of information. (Probably more information than we even need, and therefore more information than we should give away.) So that's why I think 1-2; that gives us about 6-8 clears over the course of the game which should be plenty, and helps us narrow it down a lot if we do find tea.

Right, I agree, 5 is too many for an inspection check and doesn't help us to narrow things down. I think even with a group of 4 though, it shouldn't be TOO hard to scumhunt in that group & it's not like we can't potentially re-check people in a group to help winnow it down (especially as they're basically a "safe" check at that point anyway). The key thing about the information is: we don't have to check the same number of people each day, if at some point we feel we have too many people cleared, we can just stop and not have further inspections. I think I've changed my mind from earlier, probably the best approach for day 1 is to inspect a pool of scummy people (as directed by the PA) and hope we hit tea there, then we can eliminate from that pool & inspect a limited amount of players from outside.

[maxwell]

If NK15 is town then he’s misplayed hard. But i’m not really willing to take that chance.

He's literally a safe elimination (and in that sense it would be a mistake to not flip him or check him at some point) but also some of the scummiest players in the game (Datisi, Umlaut) are flocking to voting him like flies on rotting meat

[maxwell]

Let's see a VC before we get ahead of ourselves.

I think the best way forward here is for Icon to pick a group of 2-3 to inspect. To minimize info leak, they could maybe do it randomly, or semi-randomly (exclude an unstated pool of townreads, and randomize from among the rest), but I'm okay with either. (Of course, don't offer justification for any player's inclusion/exclusion.)

I agree with this and think Ico should play everything close to the vest from this point forward and avoid giving reads as further information only benefits scum. I think the pool should probably be come from suspicious people but if it's not sure of its reads then it can randomize the selection (excluding the TD as a possibility, obviously). Thinking on this: if the pool if 5 players and we hit tea, then we can eliminate one and check half of the remaining 4 on the next day, either we get a tea result and eliminate in that 50/50, or we don't and know we can eliminate in the other 50/50. This gives us at least 1 guaranteed scum elimination by day 4, which we need to not lose. If those 5 get cleared, that kind of sucks but we just have to hunt in the remaining pool. If we do a pool of 3 instead, we can guarantee a scum elimination by day 3 if we hit tea, if we don't, we can do another pool of 3 and hope to hit tea there and guarantee an elimination by day 4. A pool of 4 just seems like an unhappy medium now that I look at it this way. I think I might prefer the group of 5 method in this case because it gets us more information sooner but I'm willing to listen to what other people think.

[maxwell]

Let's see a VC before we get ahead of ourselves.

I think the best way forward here is for Icon to pick a group of 2-3 to inspect. To minimize info leak, they could maybe do it randomly, or semi-randomly (exclude an unstated pool of townreads, and randomize from among the rest), but I'm okay with either. (Of course, don't offer justification for any player's inclusion/exclusion.)

I agree with this and think Ico should play everything close to the vest from this point forward and avoid giving reads as further information only benefits scum. I think the pool should probably be come from suspicious people but if it's not sure of its reads then it can randomize the selection (excluding the TD as a possibility, obviously). Thinking on this: if the pool if 5 players and we hit tea, then we can eliminate one and check half of the remaining 4 on the next day, either we get a tea result and eliminate in that 50/50, or we don't and know we can eliminate in the other 50/50. This gives us at least 1 guaranteed scum elimination by day 4, which we need to not lose. If those 5 get cleared, that kind of sucks but we just have to hunt in the remaining pool. If we do a pool of 3 instead, we can guarantee a scum elimination by day 3 if we hit tea, if we don't, we can do another pool of 3 and hope to hit tea there and guarantee an elimination by day 4. A pool of 4 just seems like an unhappy medium now that I look at it this way. I think I might prefer the group of 5 method in this case because it gets us more information sooner but I'm willing to listen to what other people think.

Right, just realized we can pick 5 today and if we miss we can do 3 tomorrow and cross our fingers, if we can't find one scum in 9/15 players (the checks+today's vote) then we probably deserve to lose the game anyway.

[maxwell]

If NK15 is town then he’s misplayed hard. But i’m not really willing to take that chance.

He's literally a safe elimination (and in that sense it would be a mistake to not flip him or check him at some point) but also some of the scummiest players in the game (Datisi, Umlaut) are flocking to voting him like flies on rotting meat

heh

okay Maxwell are we town together again cause I would very much like to be town together with you again!

I sure hope so, been feeling a lot better about you since page 27 or so. Mind giving a word on 925? I think an inspect pool of 5 today is the best approach, if we hit a good parlay there the game's very easy with a few solid townreads.

[maxwell]

Given strategy we can absolutely put NK15 as one of the people we sort and I'm absolutely going to do so because I'm certainly not going to call him a top townread and that's all I really want to say about that.

[maxwell]

I sure hope so, been feeling a lot better about you since page 27 or so. Mind giving a word on 925? I think an inspect pool of 5 today is the best approach, if we hit a good parlay there the game's very easy with a few solid townreads.

yeah, I'm on board with trying to hit tea ASAP and I think the reasoning for 5 makes sense, with Ico giving the final call on the group

what are your thoughts on eliminating NK15 today? I overall agree with Moment/Hel in that I don't think his play makes much sense as scum - and I think he's very easy for scum to jump onto right now - but at the same time he's forever going to be a distraction and while I was kinda thinking he might be worth tea-checking, if he's scum in that world then we spend a few days just confirming that we're going to eliminate him anyway.

I think S_S raised a good point about the motive in fakeclaiming there that has potentially already been extremely damaging, and as I said he's not going to be a top townread so we should probably just punt him.

[maxwell]

Kuribo what do you make of moments defense of nk? It’s giving me the heebie jeebies

Not kuribo but: I doubt he's going out on a limb for NK15 if he's his buddy. If he's town I could see it as whiteknighting the scummy guy but I could see a town player doing it. I liked his posts before this but I might just for the style.

[maxwell]

EBWOP: If [Not Known 15] is town I could see [Moment] as whiteknighting the scummy guy but I could see a town player doing it as well.

The big issue with hard defending in this setup is is that if 2 scum go down endgame gets triggered immediately and they likely want to avoid that, hard defense means you're really likely to get checked or elim'd at some point because you look like crap. If I was scum with NK15 I'd be bussing the shit out of him right away because I'd know he's taking a dive and he's already done what he needed to do by generating TD reads.

[maxwell]

Is this supposed to be an argument for not flipping NK15 today? Because it seems like it is but you aren't really trying that hard to defend him and seem to be saying you are fine with it despite criticizing the wagon.

I was ambivalent to it but have come around to the idea, independent of my reads on the people voting him.

[maxwell]

Thanks for answering. So your model of the game right now is that Datisi and I are likely busing?

I'd have to be incredibly overconfident to think I've nailed my reads exactly on day 1 (GL can try to call it if he likes but it feels a little too easy) but independently I don't townread any of you. If he IS scum, I do think someone on him right now is likely busing.

[maxwell]

The current shipping/inspect wagons mean very little tbh. I assume we're gonna get Ico to pick the 2 scummiest people from an agreed pool of scummy people to check.

I'm not moving off Wheat fyi though

I want Iconeum picking a 5 player parlay for inspection but I don't want to dictate terms too closely because if there's a consensus scumread they end up passing on, well, everyone will know why. I will say I have townreads of varying degrees on username, GuiltyLion, Menalque, Moment (they should absolutely not be part of the first inspection), Radical Rat, and Alisae. I sort of want to townread S_S because our back and forth over the setup was actually edifying but I probably shouldn't.

[maxwell]

We are absolutely getting rid of NK15 because if we don't that stink is going to be in the air all game and I'm not going to deal with it. If he's somehow actually town he's done more to advance the mafia wincon than any member of the smugglers. The only thing we should be waiting for is setting up an inspection check, and to that extent

absolutely no one else should be voting NK15 yet

- if he's scum he'll be waiting to self-hammer and end the day early. I've gone over the strategy before but I'm going to repeat it here in case anyone skipped my posts:

The port authority should name a pool of 5 players to be inspected, with the goal of hitting scum

We have a limited number of eliminations and I think starting too small is a mistake, hopefully my reasoning becomes clear through this.

If tea is found in that group of 5 players:

• We eliminate one of those players on day 2
  We split the pool in half, and re-inspect 2 of those players on day 2
  If the d2 elim flips town, we have a tea or no tea result on the second check of 2 players
  From there, we have at worst a guaranteed 50/50 to eliminate scum (if it's no tea, we know the smuggler is in the 2 we didn't check)
  If we miss on day 2 and day 3, we are
  guaranteed
  a scum elimination on day 4, which is necessary to not lose the game.

As a bonus, we get to actually play mafia and not just follow the clear every day by doing this.

If tea is not found in the group of 5:

• That sucks, but we get to try again.
  Iconeum selects a day 2 elimination with input from the clears
  This time, we choose a pool of 3 players for inspection
  Hopefully, we hit tea this time
  If so, we eliminate 1 player on day 3, and inspect in the remaining 2
  Once again this means we have 1 guaranteed scum elimination

If we miss on the second check somehow it means the scum were in all the top townreads and we will probably lose and deserve it.

Iconeum should basically just not out any further reads or reasoning at this point, only discussion from it should be inspection strategy. If it has questions I'm willing to answer them.

If anyone has issues with this strategy I want them to speak up now.

[maxwell]

It's almost comical how many of the same cliches you see game after game. "Can't make endgame", "Can't leave it for later", "We'll be wondering all game", so on and so on.

I do not care. I'm only going to be satisfied with a flip or an investigation clear and as far as I'm concerned it's a waste of a check. We have the ability to cast a pretty decent net thanks to this setup and I refuse to call him a top townread.

[maxwell]

If tea is not found in the group of 5:
That sucks, but we get to try again.

That actually would be awesome because it would clear five players all at once


Having five clears on day 2 would be pretty damn powerful.

That was my thinking initially with this setup, but no, we want to hit scum with the inspections we have available because otherwise we have to hunt in a narrowed down pool and it becomes even easier for scum to guess the TD (and NK15 has already likely done plenty of damage on that front)

Despite the mass increase in noise and mech talk my reads shockingly remain mostly untouched. I'll leave the mech play to everyone else I suppose since the lynch is decided on someone I've had at mostly null.

I don't know how you read everything that happened and come away without an opinion. Just bizarre.

[maxwell]

i'm not going to hard-direct anyone here...

however for day 1, i think we either make a pool of 3 people that we think will 'flip town'. This should establish a good townblock for tomorrow, at which point we make a second block to investigate for scum in a much smaller pool.

Or we make a pool of 3 to 4 people with the scumblock in them, in which we scumhunt tomorrow

y/n?
on a scale of 1 to dragonite wtf have you been drinking how bad is this suggestion?

as for a means of work

i think it's ok to have everyone be shipping linnen, and be voting to inspect wheat

and we discuss about who to be shipping wheat (3-4 players?)

Please take a look at my post earlier in the page, I think the optimal goal is to find scum with our first inspection & use subsequent days to eliminate from that group. We have essentially a very limited number of actions we can take, if our initial pool of suspects is good we can win the game easily but clearing townreads just means we have to then eliminate more people from the pool of unclears on subsequent days, which narrows down the TD further.

[maxwell]

I think 5 is too large of a pool

if you make it 4 i'd put datisi/maki/SS/ + either NK (if we don't exectue him - and with Tea found he's probably first to go anyway) or maybe someone like Moment/notscience in it if we execute NK

It has to be either 5 or 3 - 4 is splitting the difference to an unhappy middle. If we inspect 5 and find tea, we execute one tomorrow and inspect two of that group in case we choose wrong. If it's three with tea, we execute one and inspect one of the remaining two. If we did four, we'd have to inspect two on day 2 anyway, and leave one player as the remainder - basically the same as five but with lower odds of a hit to begin with.

But, you've named names, so now we're committed to those.

Icon tho seriously when are you gonna stop CCing people who claim your PR

In this setup it was the right move.

[maxwell]

Agreed 100%. Iconeum names the inspection pool, we set it up, and then execute NK15

[maxwell]

i'll post my final 3 tomorrow and we simply execute NK

right?

Yeah, that's fine

[maxwell]

Because we can check a group of people today and get more info that way, spending an entire check on a single guy means we have much less to work with tomorrow.

[maxwell]

Also HARD disagree with NK15 and maxwell that having a claimed PA this early is good. Honestly, PA should probably have gone the whole game without claiming, instead gently guiding us away from investigating the TD, because guess what? EVEN IF Ico had claimed in Post #1, confirmed identity in the first report, and then the slot never made a single other post in the game... that's one less player for scum to potentially guess wrong about being TD.

One less player is not a particularly big deal, we need to pick through players to sort anyway and having conftown direct it is the best possible approach as it avoids any chance of accidentally outing the TD. Agree that follow the clear isn't fun but that's the nature of the beast when they have critical info that we don't. The fear of outing info the scum needs to be balanced with the necessary reality of town gathering info for itself.

Anyway NK15 has outed as not TD and so there is no benefit to not sorting him at some point in the game. Even if we decide he's town for sure, we keep him to endgame and eliminate 2 scum anyway, they know not to pick him. So I don't see a real point in preserving him no matter what. Having an unknown merchant claim means you should resolve their alignment in some way. We either eliminate him now or put him in a check to get a result, and he'd be the first to go on any positive result in a group anyway (also if he's actually town I'm fucking pissed at him and he can sit in the dead thread and meditate on what he's done).

Basically what I'm saying is I'm not reading a single word Moment posts for the rest of the day. He can bloviate all he wants, I don't give a shit.

[maxwell]

In this particular instance though, using the inspection as a public cop check seems smarter. Misclowns are much more dangerous than a sub-optimal inspection in this set up, and while I AM currently scumreading NK15, I'd like to be sure he's not just Town who made a giant mistake scum's taking advantage of. So I want him alive, and I want his ship inspected. If we do get other people on that ship, the only way we get substantially more information is if the result is clean, but then that also helps the scumteam just as much. Putting NK on alone gives us information that we can use to avoid killing a Merchant, and tells scum nothing that they don't already know. This is the correct play.

I know my mind's been a bit scattered this game, but this I am absolutely sure on.

No, this is fucking terrible. I want to lay it out in the simplest terms:

Your plan: elim one player today, investigate NK 15. We enter day 2 with information on 2 players. If NK15 is scum, we have to spend tomorrow's elimination on him by default, and pick a new inspection from there. If he's town, we have to pick new targets anyway.

My plan: We get rid of him today, and investigate a group of people as directed by the PA. We get alignment info on multiple people at the same time. This is far preferable to doing things one at a time: If they're all town, we save time we would have wasted eliminating/inspecting them on day 2/3. If at least one of them is scum, we are guaranteed to eliminate them before day 4, which is necessary for town's win condition, and we get to hunt among those players. This lets us learn much more than we would with a single inspection.

Bolded for emphasis:

Inspecting only one player today is a terrible idea. It deprives town of information we are going to have to obtain anyway.

[maxwell]

Except that having the PA a known force in the game driving all the executions has a significantly higher chance of outing the TD than a carefully playing hidden PA, as now scum will be scrutinizing every single read or post or suggestion Ico makes to try to figure it out.

Also, literally no one is suggesting we just DON'T SORT NK15...

In fact, let's get you "sorted," shall we?
VOTE: Execute maxwell

No, it doesn't. That's so goddamn stupid. There's a significantly higher chance a pool of players decided by group opinion stumbles on the TD by sheer blind chance. You have to investigate people anyway, which outs them. I've said this over and over and I don't know how to make it any clearer.

[maxwell]

That's exactly my point and why the PA outing day 1 is the best possible thing to happen. This is all theoretical at this point anyway; I'd be perfectly willing to continue with this discussion in postgame but for now we have to work with the hand we've been dealt. And to that extent I will say for the nth time: the inspection check today needs to be on a small (3 or 5 player) group of people that is suspected to contain scum. This gives us the most possible information to work with on day 2.

[maxwell]

Okay, what if they're all scum? We execute one, and then what? We check the same people again?

That is extremely unlikely, but: tomorrow, if we find tea in that group, we eliminate one, and re-inspect half of the remaining players in our day 1 inspection, no matter what. If we eliminate scum AND catch them with the second inspection, great! We literally win the game because we had a good pool and PoE'd scum early.

[maxwell]

I have a question about the mechanics, namely: is it actually net beneficial to have investigations or not?

It had better be, otherwise this setup is so scumsided it isn't worth playing.

And I think it is. The assumption is that scumhunting will be more effective than daughter hunting.

I actually think the net advantage of being able to investigate a group of players all at once is really strong if if people have good townreads. Ultimately we can get 8-9 cracks at finding 2 scum within 15 people, those aren't terrible odds. It's only if you miss with most of your reads that things get really bad.

[maxwell]

This is great if it works, but my problem is the only way we get definite information is if the result is innocent. But in that case, scum benefits more than we do anyway because it's removing 3-5 names from their pool of TD candidates. A list that is already down to either 12 if NK is Town, 13 if he's not. Right now we have an opportunity that is unlikely to present itself again. An unconfirmed player outside of the potential TD list, who is in danger of being executed. A clear result on NK and NK alone provides scum with 0 new information, AND saves us a misclown. A guilTea result gives us a guaranTead scum kill, and still gives no new information to scum.

For the remaining checks we can do the small group method, but this particular check should be specific.

I want to scream.

Ultimately, we are going to have to remove names from the pool of TD candidates anyway

. We could do this one at a time, checking one player and investigating 1, over and over until we win or time runs out. This ensures we give as little information to the smugglers as possible. It also gives

us

the fewest chances at a correct hit. If you were to, instead, take 3 of the players you were going to eliminate/investigate over the next few days and check them now, you get a result on them. If it has tea, you know you were right, and you can eliminate from that group of players

like you were going to do anyway

. If it does not have tea

you save yourself several days' worth of wasted eliminations and can start over

.

Doing a group of players on day 1 is the absolute best time to do it because then you can re-check those players on subsequent days. This gives us more information. Checking NK15 alone is low information and antitown.

[maxwell]

That's why we punt him here and now rather than having to continue to fight about it over and over, and use the ability that lets us check a group of people, on an actual group of people.

An aside: I think RR is arguing from a place of genuine conviction rather than disingenuously pushing a bad strategy but an outsider's perspective would be helpful here.

[maxwell]

I'll also volunteer myself to be in that group because I know I probably don't look super great right now, and wouldn't mind getting cleared alongside NK if it comes down to that.

GOD DAMN IT, NO ONE ELSE DO THIS.

DO NOT VOLUNTEER YOURSELF FOR ANYTHING. NO ASKING TO BE CHECKED.

if the PA decides they want someone in, they go in, but otherwise no one should be talking about themselves this way because it's just giving information away.

---

ugly vote from titus, tbh

[maxwell]

Inspect:wheat

fingers crossed.

[maxwell]

Bad pool.

[maxwell]

Radical Rat's early Menalque read where they say they want to lynch him because they can't read him is kinda openly scummy. It either comes from scum angling to make it look like a post which scum would never make, so it looks like town, or town who really just doesn't care about how they look - since that post can very easily be perceived as scummy, and town most of the time care about how they look too.

Okay, but they have 50 posts and that was their first one. Even if it was a weird post, are you bothering to read the rest of their content or are you just picking at something early and simplistic to latch on to because you're not really trying to scumhunt?

[maxwell]

This is a bad pool that I don't understand. Iconeum, I suggest you reconsider.

You're smart enough to know how blatantly antitown this is. If it ends up being a miss, you get to have your say tomorrow. That's really all that should be said on the subject.

[maxwell]

Mena and hel need to move their shipments and we can get this show on the road.

[maxwell]

Idk if I wanna play in a game where Icon is just gonna choose who we lynch for us because that’s not my idea of fun

I prefer the one where we choose between two people for him by voting as normal and then he chooses from there

Was a necessary plan for today. Hopefully not for tomorrow. Nature of the setup is kind of ugly that way and our hand was forced.

[maxwell]

weird post

[maxwell]

Swapping from the named people doesn't really make a difference at this point but notscience's reaction makes me think he's town.

[maxwell]

whatever its fine
its fine
things are fine and things are gonna be okay!!!!!!!!!

if you don't mind me I'll just lurk out until late game ig

just go ahead and cross out names in your PT it's cool

[maxwell]

Anyway, I'll give Maki a day to post and then vote tomorrow.

[maxwell]

I’m amazed that you’re surprised at this when your reaction to mine and others displeasure at the fact that you’ve decided to completely strongarm the game was “lol keep crying”

This was not purely iconeum's decision but one necessitated by the circumstances. I would've appreciated it if you hadn't just tossed out of spite.

[maxwell]

there's no way he just decides to gamethrow as scum because the day was strongarmed, no. but this conversation isn't going to help anything.

[maxwell]

Everyone just take a deep breath and wait for the flips

[maxwell]

Let me see if I've got this straight.

An obvious fake claim made Ico out himself and then they decided to declare the lynch taking away all ability to scumhunt and let scum have a perfect excuse to vote. Not only that they decided to lynch the most NAI/Lurker slot in the game.

Am I missing anything here?

I, and some other people, requested Iconeum do it so as to attempt to minimize spewing the identity of the TD which has already likely had a significant number of damaging interactions. Sorry things didn't tun out the way you hoped.

vote:Maki

[maxwell]

I won't mourn for maki in the slightest but weren't y'all supposed to be shoring up your shipments and investigations before voting the slot

It's been settled. Maki's stuill on wheat but I asked the mod and dead players don't ship anything so it won't affect results.

[maxwell]

WE GOT ONE. Hopefully this means people can calm down a little, end of day yesterday was really painful. We get to play mafia! Thank fuck.

ship wheat
Execute maki

Not executing nk is absolutely the wrong play but fuck it might as well hand the game over to scum

This isn't the post of someone who knows they're about to get guiltied.

This is a bad pool that I don't understand. Iconeum, I suggest you reconsider.

This is.

Vote: Moment

I

think

the play here is to execute one and inspect one of the remaining two, then we have a guaranteed hit tomorrow and can select a new pool based on the flips. Alternately we could submit a new one now but we'd be working with less info/reducing suspects right away which I'm not sure I like but it does give us more flexibility for checks down the line.

[maxwell]

We're not re-investigating people in a new pool because if we miss today we learn nothing new, we either solo investigate today as a contingency or do an all-new group to investigate. My thinking is if we wait until tomorrow for a new pool we can do it based on associations with confirmed scum rather than guessing blindly still.

I think notscience

probably

doesn't pitch as huge a fit yesterday knowing he's about to be caught as scum but that's just my instinct and it was yesterday as it was happening. Could be crazy wrong though. I'm just going to trust Mena on Datisi here.

[maxwell]

I think NK15 looks a lot worse on a notscience scum flip than he does on a moment scumflip.

[maxwell]

I mean if NK is town. It's not exactly GL's logic just I don't see why scum-Moment would not defend town-NK like that.

Whereas scum!moment wouldn’t defend scum!NK because..?

It's white flag and hard defending a teammate who had runaway momentum as the day's wagon is tantamount to suicide.

[maxwell]

This is firing from memory so I may end up having to revise later but

I feel pretty good about these people being town: menalque, username, guiltylion, radical rat
I feel like these people are town but not as strongly: alisae, something_smart
I don't know how I feel about: norwegian, umlaut (recall some townish things about norway but probably need to re-read there)
People I lack any feeling of towniness from: titus, not known 15, hel

[maxwell]

Is Moment scum solely for asking Ico to reconsider? The rest of their posting exudes town.

It exudes the appearance of being town, anyway. I'm bothered by just how hard they went into defending NK15. I need to re-check each of the players though.

[maxwell]

Norwegian over the last couple pages is hella town but also spewing himself not TD which I am begging people not to do for fuck's sake

[maxwell]

Arbitrarily wanting to toss people into the investigation pool right away preflip doesn't sit right with me, my feeling is that we'll be able to guess a lot better when we're sure which of the 3 right now is scum.

Meanwhile, notty is throwing out whatever he can to survive.

What the fuck are you talking about? He's barely said anything today.

[maxwell]

Did Titius just townslip? Well then. Probably need to rethink some things.

[maxwell]

They nullslipped.

Figured scum would be aware of the condition where the game stops when 2 of them are executed but that's not what happened so nvm.

Did Titius just townslip?

No.

Nvm then. We're guaranteed to execute scum at some point, it's not a big deal.

Inspect:copper

Having thought about it, I'd really prefer we use the investigation today as a contingency on one of the people we don't execute, and save the formation of our new pool for inspection for tomorrow when we have confirmed scum. I think it's more important to preserve the day 4 execution rather than get more reports and an informed inspection pool is a better pool.

[maxwell]

Hmm.

[maxwell]

maxwell can you talk to me about your moment read? EE plus notscience screams s v s. EE basically is saying if you don't get this heat off, he must bus. They aren't sorting each other. Why would EE ever vote a townread in this setup? For giving up?

Was a guess based on yesterday but I don't really like anything notscience has been doing today. I'd expect him to at least be trying to offer something useful but he looks like caught scum saying as little as possible to try to minimize spew. Maybe I'm wrong. Consider my vote spiritually flipped to notscience. I don't think we need to sweat today's execution too hard. The one thing I will stress is that NK15 absolutely gets copped on a notscience scumflip.

[maxwell]

Norwee's openwolfing has actually made me less confident on notscience + Norwee. Like, isn't this a game losing play for scum!him? Given notscience is leading wagon and it's doubtful he can change so many people's minds. Also, he went for Datisi over Moment who actually had some initial voters. He might be town if notscience is scum lol. If notscience is town, he can still be scum because he's acting scummy and might just be doing this because he knows scum!Datisi/Moment aren't getting lynched today.

Whoever in that group of 3 is scum is caught and as good as dead, if not today then tomorrow or day 4. Volunteering himself for a check here would be a losing play, correct.

I would like a {Norway/Smart} pool for investigation tonight

maybe Umlaut

but will defer to Ico

I'm back to thinking NS is scum, his latest posts today reek of how I play caught/suspected scum, act all blasé about my execution and shame town while not actually doing anything to push somebody else too hard

I think we do a 3 person pool anyway if we're going that route and I absolutely want NK15 on it. I don't think norwegian is a hit in spite of everything, but he's volunteered himself so I'm fine with that.

[maxwell]

I don't see a good reason not to have NK15 be inspected, even if someone thinks he's town. Why not resolve it? Norwegian has volunteered himself so he can go, third person is the free wildcard pick, just don't make it a townread.

Inspect:Wheat

since that seems to be where we're going.

[maxwell]

I'm voting notscience the next time the votecount comes up and we're putting 3 people in the pool (and I'm begging you to put NK15 in there)

[maxwell]

You know you can say things about that? Or are you expecting us to do it ourselves? Should we vote on names with Hurt tags?

[maxwell]

Okay. I'll try to do something more substantial tomorrow, I'm really stuck with my reads. I think at this point people just need to put their choices for inspection in tags and we can do this democratically.

[maxwell]

I think by interactions, if we assume notscience is scum (and I am doing so) Umlaut actually comes out looking fairly good? Would prefer to keep him out.

[maxwell]

Because i want there to at least be a chance to get another guilty. I’m town and i don’t scumread NK15. Sure it would confirm our innocence, but for me myself it wouldn’t help at all. I’d like to have S_S in there.

This is scum. You're setting it up so that when tea gets found on your ship, we misclown S_S instead of executing you.

I don't know how to tell you this but scum left in the pool is going to get caught anyway.

[maxwell]

I really hate that claim (that big bold "

Enough

" is really lame) and how NK15 has basically excused himself from playing the game, but I may as well provisionally accept it since it gets confirmed tomorrow anyway.

Scattered thoughts:

• I think we all agree Menalque is town.
  
• I've decided Radical Rat is town as well; his gamesolving attempts seem to come from a town place (though also seem a bit like cat-herding; his plan in 460 requires close to unanimous agreement to be workable)
  
• I agree with the arguments that username tone-slipping so quickly is probably a towntell.
  
• notscience' vocal suspicion of the NK claim is weird and pings me
  
• I kind of agree with 493 but given the cat is out of the bag we have to make the best of it.
  
• I think there's a high probability there is at least one smuggler in those who haven't posted since NK15 outed. (Which is six players so that's not a hugely impressive deduction I guess)

VOTE: notscience

It’s not like I’m doing anything with it, it’s just my spicy take

I’m disappointed in you worm, I’m gonna have to drop you in some tequila

This was the second vote on notscience (after username). Umlaut had initially defended notscience against username's attack, but swapped to voting him after NK15's claim. This interaction strikes me as very unlikely to be S/S. Several more posts posts in the way notscience talks to umlaut just doesn't look like scum interactions in my opinion.

I'm comfortable sheeping on this.

VOTE: Execute notscience

Tentative scumteam guess: notscience/Hel/Moment.

Execute: notscience

Decent place to start until I get my feet wet with data.

Popping in for two things:

(1) VOTE: notscience

(2) datisi, how come you didn’t get pissed with GL this game?

These are the follow-on votes. It's not as strong, but given a 3 person scumteam in a 17 player setup, I would think there would be a disinclination to bus. There were plenty of available wagons to choose, it would seem counterproductive to put that momentum on a teammate. So I'd rule RR/Titus/Menalque out for inspection as well.

[maxwell]

I'd probably throw in one of alisae or GL with norwegian and NK15. I don't know. I have no good ideas.

[maxwell]

everyone agrees we want to hit scum with the next 3, so everyone agrees that NK should be included despite most people believing NK is probably town anyway

makes perfect sense right?

not to mention NK is asking for this himself which is?????????????????????

but im fucking done fighting this, he can be inspected if that is his grand desire

I mean, the argument is that it's a safe check that doesn't particularly benefit scum. But if you have a better name to throw out there, you can do that. I don't think I have one.

[maxwell]

I fucking hate being town sometimes


Wait do I hate playing mafia or being town


No I hate being mafia too so it must be that I don't enjoy playing

This setup is, unfortunately, a slog. I don't like having to dance around not outing a super secret role i know nothing about to avoid instantly losing.

[maxwell]

vote: notscience

Wouldn't want to miss out on the wagon.

[maxwell]

The next god damn time I tell y'all someone tripped my scum tell I hope you'll Fucking listen instead of pussyfooting around


Don't ever stand between Kuribo and his prey


Hey notsci, have fun in the dead thread, and I'll make sure your head goes somewhere nice in my trophy room of fallen scum

I feel very dumb, but I'm in awe.

[maxwell]

Well that was useless once I remembered we're playing "Everyone vote who Iconeum says" but I had already started doing it by then so here it is.

There was some movement toward the start of the day but it seemed like notscience had committed to rolling over and dying. Not really sure what that means.

[maxwell]

right now the big movement reads are Umlaut ++more likely town, Maxwell --scummier and worth revisiting - I feel like his analysis to clear Umlaut as town yesterday may have been from the perspective of scum expecting a NS red flip - I feel like he would've been more likely to see where I was coming from re:Umlaut if he had been more open to a town!notscience possibility. Also at the very beginning of D2 he wanted Moment over Notsci.

I admit, my read on notscience has been bad pretty much all game and I'm a little bit embarrassed by it. I got an idea in my head going into day 2 and wanted to be the smart, different one. I definitely shouldn't be above suspicion. The one thing I will push back on was that when I cleared Umlaut, it was

eminently obvious

to anyone paying attention at that point that notscience was flipping red - he didn't bother to defend himself or contribute anything. He just rolled over and died in a way no town does in that position. It's why I stopped advocating a safety check

NS literally not even trying yesterday makes me wonder if there was a reason behind it. (Maybe 2 scum in the initial investigation pool like people theorize) or he just gave up. I’m not sure yet but i find it weird.

It's really puzzling. I'm at a loss for it. I think the likely explanation is the opposite, though? If there's 2 scum in that group, I would expect them to go at each other as viciously as possible, to force split opinions, then the people who were off the wagon likely get copped and people think the one who survives is town. It seemed like he knew most town players were going to be on him and didn't try so as to minimize any sort of partner spew (and to that extent, it's worked pretty well).

I don't have anything of real substance to post tonight, we have 2 scum in 11 uncleared, I think we just form a confident townbloc and check or execute everyone outside of that. Will to look at that tomorrow.

[maxwell]

Titus, give me some of that sweet VCA.
Where do you think scum would be based on that vote spread?

Votes mean basically nothing when we all had to play Follow the Clear - you're better off looking at the organic wagons that formed prior to that. That's why so much of my emphasis in what I was looking at yesterday was on who went after notscience early - in that situation there's much, much less incentive to bus.

[maxwell]

I'll get back to you on that. Like I said, too late in my time zone for me to do anything now but I obviously need to re-assess.

[maxwell]

Townbloc:

username
Menalque
Titus

Not even going to bother explaining these as it'd be a waste of words.

GuiltyLion

- Posts look good, nothing is off there, I just don't have a reason to declare him locktown off the top of my head. Looking at references to notscience in his iso, 679 is kind of a suspect take on username vs notscience, he says of notscience "would currently be okay eliminating there ultimately today, but I think I might want to push elsewhere once I'm fully caught up since that's an easy wagon for scum to let through if it's a TvT". But then, he calls out notscience in 958 and proposes a pool with notscience in it in 1156. 1160 is an excellent callout of notscience and the response from notscience in 1174 really makes me think this is not a S/S interaction. Yeah, add him to the townbloc.

Umlaut

- 331 from notscience looks like scum trying to persuade a townie to vote with them, not talking to a partner, I think. 525 immediately follows Umlaut's vote on notscience, which is something of a weak response. 585 is...I don't know, conceivably could be telling a partner to back down but i think the "i appreciate it" reads more like buddying a townie. I don't really know what to make of 677, which was made in response to GuiltyLion criticizing Umlaut's vote on notscience. Then he turns around to fos-ing him in 1005 and 1094 tries to have him in the pool. I think the way Umlaut went after notscience probably makes him town, I'm getting lazy though and don't want to look at every post. I'll towncase it if people are having doubts. The way he did it in response to notscience doubting the NK15 claim makes me agree with titus, it is basically not umlaut/NK15, not ever. I guess I'd re-evaluate if everyone towards the bottom half turned up town, but then we'd be hosed anyway.

maxwell

- You tell me, I can't read this guy.

Hel

- conversational posts with notscience in 472 and 478. The latter is actually rather odd, she simultaneously criticizes notscience for saying "I respect your decision" to kuribo, saying his scumread on notscience "feels reachy", but then justifies a townread on username in the next line. How can someone have a reachy case and be town? 605 slots notscience somewhere to the top of her readslist but it's unjustified and I don't really see anything in her posts to indicate why she'd feel that way. Maybe the oddest thing is that Hel comes out the gate on day 2 calling for executing notscience in 1440 while having not really attempted to read or evaluate him at all in the latter parts of that day, just a few conversational exchanges with him and that's it. I can see this as something of a prefabricated push. She'd come around to saying she "really likes" Moment in 992 but other than that there wasn't any further comment on or evaluation of the players in the pool prior to Day 2. The confidence there seems especially odd.

Alisae

- basically no reason to townread at this point? This is a totally lazy read on my part. I'll do my homework but they're definitely not townbloc material.

Not TD:

Datisi
Moment
Not Known 15

Out of these names, if we were to re-investigate anyone as a safety check, do Moment or NK15. I think Datisi was the most town yesterday and he actually spoke up and was trying to read people and just doesn't feel like scum anymore?

HURT: Hel
HURT: Alisae
HURT: Moment

[maxwell]

Right, alisae doesn't look good either with regards to notscience but I actually think sticking eir neck out for notscience and calling him town is slightly less scummy than whatever Hel was doing and that'd probably be my execution pick for today.

[maxwell]

Redoing Datisi and moment is gamethrowing.

No it's not? This is categorically insane. They are completely safe re-checks. Prematurely writing them off as town is ridiculous when we have to ability to mechanically clear them at no added risk. I think either being scum feels rather unlikely, but what does it hurt? I think I'm willing to take a shot on one new person in the pool, I don't think that hurts too much, but adding Datisi/Moment back

costs nothing to town

.

If you form a coherent townbloc here, I don't think it should be that hard to find a second smuggler, even if you're wrong on one of your reads and there's a deepwolf, you only need to find the partner, who they can't realistically protect.

[maxwell]

Yeah. I can prove all those outs if you make me but I am supposing scum are competent here.

I cannot understand why you would ever out those reads, hellaciously antitown even if you're wrong about someone. What good is that supposed to do? Just talk about who you think is scum.

[maxwell]

Literally just

read

the remaining people and work from there. If you think someone who has not been inspected could be scum, then say so.

[maxwell]

Redoing this investigation creates more slips.

NO IT DOESN'T????????????? REDOING THE INVESTIGATION

PREVENTS

SLIPS. ARE YOU TRYING TO PROTECT YOUR PARTNER OR WHAT?

[maxwell]

i'm here

reading stuff

you guys should also probably talk about who is the second possible lynch, right?

I made my case two pages ago. Titus trying to deflect from literal safe re-inspections to check as many people outside as possible while publicly outing TD reads is suddenly giving me tremendous pause but if she is scum she's making a desperation heave to save one of datisi/moment and that's exactly why we should check them.

[maxwell]

NK15 is proposing himself in the investigation and Titus accuses him of trying to deflect???? Like what the fuck. That's a losing strategy as scum.

This is to put aside the fact that publicly stating TD reads means fishing reactions from people, which aids scum in the exact way she claims to want to prevent.

[maxwell]

let me put it this way

is it a better plan for me to either confirm i'm ok with alisae as a lynch/i'm really not ok alisae as a lynch

if ok, there doesn't have to be a second name
if not ok, you guys figure out the next one

I think probably we do mena's plan from day 1 and pick two names and you decide.

[maxwell]

Cool

Okay, so unless titus has a compelling reason for there being no scum on the umlaut wagon I think we can all get on board with icon choosing between (maxwell, ali) today, reinvestigating (datisi, moment, maybe nk15) then tomorrow we execute the other in (ali, maxwell) if it’s not GG and then N4 we invest GL if the game isn’t over by that point?

I think there are really good reasons not to see GL as scum. I don't know why at all you'd rule Hel out over him.

[maxwell]

I think a maxwell addition would actually be very helpful because it means scum is getting by pretty well a day early

I think people can weigh in on me and let Ico decide. It's a rather awkward position from my view where I can't really say much, but I understand why people are giving me the side-eye.

I agree with the general proposition of adding a 3rd name to the inspection, though.

Inspect:Wheat

[maxwell]

Okay, you know what, this is taking too long. This is selfish, and I've snapped at people for doing this, but no one is giving input, so put me in. At this point I think it's pretty likely me/datisi/moment returns all-town if alisae isn't a smuggler, and I'd much rather be cleared than be executed on day 4. I really wanted to not give anything away, just in case, but that probably wasn't going to help with hiding anything. Hel is being obstructionist, so let's just ship in copper? I want this day to be over with.

Ship:Copper

Inspect:Copper

[maxwell]

That's a good point. We could include Not Known I guess since he's spewed not!Daughter, although I'm pretty sure he's town anyway.

I've decided to just accept that I was super wrong on him and that my suspicion was all based on emotion.

[maxwell]

I'm essentially prod dodging here, although I've skimmed.

Maxwell proposing himself along with me and Datisi seems like an attempt to poison the well and potentially get one of us on the chopping block tomorrow instead of likely just him. A rather uncharitable interpretation, but the one that most immediately jumped to mind.

Investigating me and Datisi is still a stupid decision, but including Maxwell would be moreso. I would not comply with it.

Adding myself to the investigation is a guaranteed loss if I am scum, but go off anyway. You or Datisi getting executed day 4 would still mean that

I'm

the one to die day 5, which helps me in basically no way

Cool

So can we like

Do it now and end the day because again, bored and want to see a head roll

agreed with this, we need to get the day over with.

[maxwell]

Adding myself to the investigation is a guaranteed loss if I am scum

this is factually incorrect but ok

Well, okay - it's guaranteed that I get

executed

, because on a guilty you hang one person tomorrow and re-check one of the others. Technically mafia doesn't

lose

when that happens, if we're being pedantic about that detail, but I'm not escaping anything. If there's a guilty in that group, you can kill me first.

[maxwell]

It shouldn't be both of us. Three is fine, four is too many. (this is probably all moot as it's just alisae)

[maxwell]

Maybe I've been overthinking it and it's just Moment/Titus

[maxwell]

I'm considering this a moral victory even if scum guess the TD. God, I hate this mechanic.

Anyway, Titus is trying to deflect from Moment being caught, no one respond to her fishing anymore.

[maxwell]

I swear to god if you people make me go back and read notsci's interactions with people again

The only thing you need to read is moment's next post where they ship copper or decide to get guillotined today. This game requires no further thinking.

Ok realtalk on maxwell


I could see that slot being scum based on reaction to the notsci wagon

I just don't want to do the legwork right now and go back and then make the case and ugh like I already did all that shit for notsci and now for Alisae

Prediction: at least one of alisae and maxwell is scum with notsci

That's fair, I had a really bad read of notscience for [reasons]. I've accepted I'm not above suspicion and put myself into the PoE. You don't need to read me or case me, I'll get sorted eventually. I'm fairly confident our current set of moves end with us catching scum one way or another.

[maxwell]

Anyhow, a friendly reminder before I sign off for no one to respond to Titus's rolefishing, at all.

[maxwell]

VOTE: Moment

[maxwell]

ship: copper

We're good to go.

[maxwell]

See. Ico no one listens to you about who is obvtown. They go along when convenient. Let's not lynch Moment or Datisi or investigate them. Put your foot down.

White flagged scum

[maxwell]

I guess I should say sorry for the mess yesterday, we probably had it right to begin with, but I don't feel bad for getting sick of the foot dragging.

VOTE: Alisae

[maxwell]

inspect: copper

[maxwell]

Umlaut was actually my early thought for TD although by endgame I really thought it might be a gambit by NK15. Very well played game by Iconeum.

[maxwell]

I think 5 is too large of a pool

if you make it 4 i'd put datisi/maki/SS/ + either NK (if we don't exectue him - and with Tea found he's probably first to go anyway) or maybe someone like Moment/notscience in it if we execute NK

This was the post. Ico suddenly namedropped a bunch of popular D1 suspects and umlaut's name was nowhere to be found. That was about the moment I went "oh crap umlaut might be TD" and spent my time towncasing him on day 3. I guess I can take that away from the game even if I was kind of crappy otherwise.

[maxwell]

Or maybe master strategist? Idk which category it falls under better

Definitely worthy of some kind of nomination, that's for sure. Getting at least 2 scum in a pool of 4 players out of 15 is about a 15.4% chance - not impossible, but very difficult. Between that and head-faking the smugglers into thinking they were gambiting as the TD, it was a truly exceptional performance.