1) Using VCA to spot evidence of bussing. It’s really hard to find a BETTER example of VCA just screaming major bus than this game state.
A town that was a complete and utter mess (and the evidence supporting THAT interpretation was all over the place: townies self-voting or, worse, self-hammering; constant wagons on flipped towns; a consistent pattern of the counterwagon to a mislynch one day being the actual mislynch the next day; etc), but a day 1 wolf wagon?
Rarely does this happen to a disastrously ineffective town without general scum consent (which usually just means bussing), and if it DID happen, then that suggests a single wolf playing really badly, and then to evaluate THAT possibility you dig into said wolf’s ISO and see if there’s legitimately useful spew anywhere.
2) Using VCA to spot WHO was bussing. This is actually more difficult here, since ALL unflipped slots on the day 1 wolf wagon were bussers, but it’s still very true that looking closely at just the in-game voting behaviors can make people stand out.
Why did Cook’s activity fall off a damn cliff on a lengthy series of mislynches? Why was he consistently avoiding voting on major wagons or linking hands with people that he’d normally be inclined to trust after the day 1 mislynch? Why, if he was sure enough of Azure being scum to not join the Scarlet day 2 wagon, was he then happily enough OFF of the Azure day 3 mislynch wagon? None of these are the voting/posting behaviors associated with any kind of normal townie behavior, and all of them are very reasonably consistent with a day 1 busser coasting like crazy off of whatever town credit he got from the day 1 lynch.
And his extremely consistent avoidance of both Rose AND White on wagons on future days (voted with them ZERO times at EOD2/3/4) suggests that he’s not really interested in trying to leverage the trust he might have garnered from day 1 into any kind of pocketing or strategic engagement (which is an obvious enough potential strategy towards townies there), which pretty strongly indicates that at least one of them is his buddy (normally I’d hesitate to speculate BOTH of them as buddies, but at the least “flip Cook then the next day have everyone choose between Rose and White” seems like an obvious enough VCA-driven process, and then you just evaluate from that point on
Mrs White: pretty consistent bandwagoner. Fourth on day 1 wolf lynch, 3rd on day 2 town lynch, 4th on day 3 town lynch, only early on the day 4 wagon. Voting pattern doesn’t really scream wolf, but doesn’t scream villager at all, and her bandwagoning should have been the subject of more careful investigation (including looking at in-day voting pattenrs to see if she was bandwagoning more frequently as well)
Madame Rose: once you flip Cook as a wolf (and again, that REALLY should have been a focus even before day 5), that day 3 vote park on Cook should blare off all sorts of alarm bells. If she really felt Cook was a wolf, why did she (seemingly) not convince anyone? Similarly, why was she happy enough on day 4 to piss off of that wagon onto a different slot? A useless 1-vote vanity wagon when the other wagons were on town (and you already know by flips that 2/3 of the day 3 wagons were on town) is very reasonably consistent with a wolf dropping down a lazy vote, and is ALSO entirely consistent with a wolf dropping down a lazy vote on a buddy.
3) Using VCA to spot evidence of townie behavior – again, it’s hard, but it’s not really impossible:
Miss Peacock: every single day she was voting on a different wagon, and she was frequently EARLY on wagons. If she’s a wolf, is she just super effective at driving wagons? It’s not inconceivable, but her activity suggests a non-linearity of focus and process, and an ability to convince others (i.e. the points she makes are probably at least credible and convincing). None of that is remotely hard-clearing… but it’s all SUGGESTIVE of town. THAT SAID, her vote on day 1 for Miss Peach had seemingly zero follow-up, and compared to some of the other early-game one-vote wagons (scarlet vs azure most notably), it seems weird that it never went anywhere, AND that she ended up voting WITH Peach on day 3 on Boddy. Overall the voting pattern isn’t bad, but that odd-looking relationship with Peach is probably not a bad thing to be doing research on most of the time.
Miss Peach: The main thing you can see from her voting pattern is that it seemed like she REALLY wanted Mr. Boddy dead (day 2 sole voter; day 3 driving the CW; day 4 driving the CW). She was also one of the three day 4 counter wagons, i.e. prime territory for the day 5 mislynch (which she was). There’s a linearity to that thread presence that should be concerning, so what needs to happen here is to evaluate her process on Boddy for sincerity. It’s not a bad area to be looking at, but the VCA behavior here honestly is more null than anything else.
The Butler: I wouldn’t say that VCA is a major point for or against him to be honest. It’s certainly weird that the day 1 Captain Brown wagon (that he seemed to be driving) never had any members of it flip, but that’s inherently null. Butler was also a notable exception to the pattern of wolves killing off the high posters (which for much of the game he had been). It’s probably worth thinking through WHY wolves shot Orchid instead of Butler n4, since that did seem to largely break the pattern of killing high post count players, but since Orchid was on the d1 wolf wagon and Butler wasn’t, that’s a weak pattern break in the first place, and more of a “think about it more” sort of flag than anything that’s legitimately worse than null to null-scum.
Of course, as it ended up happening, Butler was the day 5 post count leader, and then ate the night 5 bullet, which meant that the overall pattern of “night kill anyone who seems to care about solving the game” in fact did hold, it was just when that model clashed with “shoot a day 1 wolf voter”, they hit the day 1 wolf voter first.
Mr. Boddy: not a great-looking VCA presence, to be honest. Could easily have been trying to save Green day 1, and his only day end votes were on townie Azure and unknown Brown. Easily could be a fairly lazy wolf letting himself sit on realtively easy wagons. PROBABLY the wolfiest of the villager through pure VCA at that point.
Captain Brown: minor town points for being the counterwagon to a day 1 wolf wagon. One does wonder what in the world he was doing self-voting day 1 and then being a total non-factor for days 2 and 3, so looking at that process in particular seems potentially productive. In a world where Green flipped an important wolf PR, you could fairly easily imagine that Brown was a wolf who simply gave up, but since Green was just a goon, it’s hard to imagine why Brown would even consider semi trying to die to have him on day 1. Overall pretty null by a simple VCA analysis though, maybe small town lean due to being day 1 CW.
Mr. Slate-Grey: Discussed previously, but the TLDR of why the hell is THIS guy a wolf when town was enough of a mess without any contributions from him is enough for at the very least an easy town lean
