WW16: The Outlaws and The Olives

[pindicator]

Not reacting to votes was due to Catwalk thinking that me reacting to Day 1 in WW15 was a scum sign. And not claiming earlier, I was hoping I could get enough pressure on Mattimeo and wouldn't need to claim.

As for time to think, trying to rack my brains for more suspects. Bigger stands out a bit for talking about only jumping on if bandwagons form.

Going through the re-read, but here we have it again, why didn't thestick vote for Bigger? He's accusing him as scummy here but no vote

[Gaspar]

Lot of information in there, but a lot of noise as well.

Anyway, there's zero chance I get killed unless the scum are just finishing up a round of bath salts, so I'll save the rest of my thoughts for daybreak.

[novice]

Day 1 is a goldmine of information, but the actual lynch is generally pretty chaotic. I would seriously doubt that the cross game average for day one lynches is any better than random chance.

Probably worse than random, since scum are actively working for a mislynch.

[Injera]

A noisy night. I'm happy we caught a wolf, but obviously chastened.

I'm understandably going to get some heat for my defense of thestick, so let me explain my mindset. I've spent the last three games as a wolf watching the village shoot themselves in the foot day 1. I mentioned this in the lurker thread at the end of last game and Rowain commented that it was a lot easier with a cheat sheet. Having saved thestick from a mislynch last game was prominent in my mind. Funny that I've defended him cross alignment two games in a row now...

Ultimately, I was on a mission to make sure we didn't make a stupid mislynch of an easy target on Day 1, and I thought the argument against thestick was pretty weak. I still think it was, up until his reaction at the very end of the day. As I said in my Gaspar argument little tells matter on Day 1, but I didn't even see the case against thestick until Serdoa broke it down for me. Fortunately this game I don't have a cheat sheet.

So, yeah, time to reevaluate everything. One thing I think we should keep in mind is that it's possible that thestick was bussed. However, I don't think we should care about this at all for at least a few days. If we follow our thestick leads and they don't pan out it's important to have it there in the back of our minds; the villagers that would be willing to radically pivot are likely gone by that point.

[Selrahc]

Can I ask.. has Mattimeo claimed a role name or just a power? Thestick was a "spy", I'd like to know if there is a similar nom de guerre for the cloaker. Is it just cloaker?

[Serdoa]

I'm a little bit stunned how many players right now try to make it sound like Day 1 was sooo chaotic. Excuse me? There was imo not much chaotic happening. We have lynched a wolf, the wolves themselves played it pretty badly and we have a bunch of leads to go hunting tomorrow. Just don't try to get too distracted by the noise the wolves are making and everythings fine.

On that matter: pindicator, we have a wolf who has not voted for the only other viable target at that time. And now we start to expect that is because this target is a wolf as well? I'm sorry, but please explain to me how you would get to that conclusion. I mean, if we had lynched Bigger and he would have been a wolf, would we now not expect that the wolves tried to save him and look at the thestick voters? Yeah, we would... but we certainly wouldn't look at thestick. We all would agree that the wolves obviously tried to get him killed. But now that we have exactly that situation, just with the names interchanged, you tell us that Bigger is probably a wolf as well? Hard to believe - I'd rather believe that thestick was instructed not to vote for Bigger, exactly because they knew that with zak becoming mayor they would lose anyhow, but with him not voting for Bigger they could at least try to incriminate Bigger. And look... exactly that is happening. What a coincidence...

Guys, please, try at least a little bit. Right now you are giving yourself away left and right. Thats not even funny anymore...

[Injera]

I don't think you need to play half a dozen games with someone to get a read on them. I think i have a decent baseline on Qgqqq (from ww15 - and granted, I had several pm conversations about his role that help me gauge his personality) and Merovich (just from him lurking previous ww games).

What are your views on them this game?

[pindicator]

On that matter: pindicator, we have a wolf who has not voted for the only other viable target at that time. And now we start to expect that is because this target is a wolf as well? I'm sorry, but please explain to me how you would get to that conclusion. I mean, if we had lynched Bigger and he would have been a wolf, would we now not expect that the wolves tried to save him and look at the thestick voters? Yeah, we would... but we certainly wouldn't look at thestick. We all would agree that the wolves obviously tried to get him killed. But now that we have exactly that situation, just with the names interchanged, you tell us that Bigger is probably a wolf as well? Hard to believe - I'd rather believe that thestick was instructed not to vote for Bigger, exactly because they knew that with zak becoming mayor they would lose anyhow, but with him not voting for Bigger they could at least try to incriminate Bigger. And look... exactly that is happening. What a coincidence...

Guys, please, try at least a little bit. Right now you are giving yourself away left and right. Thats not even funny anymore...

Thank you for putting words in my mouth Serdoa. I made no such conclusion, but yes - you are right that this is a possibility. And when I look at the possibility, it means I wanted to go back and re-read Bigger's posts. But the more I read Bigger's stuff, the more he looks like a villager. And after my initial vote I keep saying he looks villager to me: his actions, his arguments. Other people keep bringing him up, so I keep looking back because I'm wary against confirmation bias. But when I do, I don't see scum.

After I posted that question, I've been looking at his end-of-day 1 posts, and I think he's villager. Simplest answer is thestick just overloaded at the end and gave up; someone else put that up first (novice?) and I think that's most likely. If you want to think there was a wolf plan, I think the wolves are trying for a Bigger mislynch and having thestick put his vote on Bigger would just make that too obvious. But that seems more complicated when the simpler explanation is probably right.

Happy to answer any other questions you have about my actions, but don't put words in my mouth.

[zakalwe]

Alright, I guess it's time to spill the beans.

My top suspect is Ichabod. This is based on a very strong gut feeling, which I'll try my best to explain now. Remember that I've been looking for people who tried to deflect thestick's lynch at an early stage. Ichabod made a post which looks like an archetypical wolf Ichabod post, right at the time when thestick really needed relief. Thestick had recently surged to a 5 vote lead, with no more than 2 votes on anyone else. (Although Waterbat moved his vote off thestick shortly after that happened, so it was 4-2 at the point Ichabod posted.)

Since this post is so central to my case, I took the time to reassemble it with nested quotes, even if it's a pain:

Bleh, I'm actually going to just walk away for a bit. I keep looking at this sequence of events:

• Catwalk announces he's going to be AFK on Day 1.
  
• I suggest Catwalk might lurk as scum because he's less comfortable lying.
  
• Others agree with that assessment.
  
• Injera leaps to his defense and attacks me.
  
• Catwalk finds he has time to play.
  

And finding it incredibly suspicious. Of course, logically I understand that Injera is unlikely to make so obvious a slip. But I can't stop fixating on it.

Nonetheless, Injera.

I find this post by gaspar a bit suspicious. Meiz kind of thought similarly, but my thoughts are a bit different.

Meiz post:

Game setup stated that there is no traditional seer, so running for mayor is not that big of a risk as usually.

Gaspar, so you're saying that both injera and catwalk would be wolves? If that's the case, wouldn't it then make more sense to go for catwalk, since he has already votes on him?

Gaspar answer (easy one to make, if wolf or village):

No, I 100% believe you and I don't want to start getting specific about people's real lives - I think that's unfair. My comment was more in the generic.



Well, I suppose I am. But I could also conceive a wolf Injera who knows alignment could be defending Catwalk here to gain cred when he does die. I see a wolf Catwalk and an innocent Injera as a less likely scenario.

My problem with Gaspar post is his fifth comment. This one:

"[*]Catwalk finds he has time to play."

What does it have to do with the rest of the post? As far as I can tell, nothing. Gaspar already admitted that his early comment about Catwalk probably lurking as scum wasn't one directed to his behaviour here, but only an hipothethical one. So, I get, from that, that he didn't suspecy Catwalk.

His case in this post, as can be seen by his vote, was against Injera. He suspected Injera due to the Catwalk defense. So why add that little snippet about Catwalk finding time to play? The only explanation I can see for this is an attempt to herd the cats, to add strenght to his argument based on a thing that doesn't have to do with the argument itself, it's just indiciary.

Thing is, that's not how Gaspar usually rolls when he's a villager. He's not a cat herder. If Zak made the same thing (and he did things similarly this game already, like inflating the interpretation of a post to make his case better), it wouldn't be a scum tell, becuase that's Zak's way of playing.

---

The vote against thestick seems like a nice one. I agree with the reasoning behind it, but those multi-quote posts aren't only a wolf thing. I tend to do them when I miss the thread for a long time and I have a lot of posts to read. Every interesting post during the time I'm reading gets quoted and later I comment on some/all of them. But, yeah, there wasn't much of a thread to read when he made that.

So, I wouldn't mind with a thestick lynch, but I don't want to vote for him right now.

To me, this post looks like Ichabod trying to come up with a compelling case, building on some established suspicions but adding his own "twist" so it looks insightful. Only he fails pretty hard, at least in my view. The argument against Gaspar is nonsensical. I was actually thinking at the time that this screamed wolf Ichabod trying to move our attention away from thestick, but I mostly held my tongue because I didn't want to weaken my case by showing too much confirmation bias.

I did pick apart Ichabod's case on Gaspar, though, and he quickly backpedaled furiously:

I recall gaspar saying his vote for Catwalk was a joke one. But that's not exactly the point. It's more subtle than that and hard for me to explain.

Either way, it's not a big thing. As you can see, I'm not voting yet. But I felt in need to share that particular view.

I think I can better verse my thoughts now:

Gaspar post seemed to be more of a "throw suspicions around where they fit" then a "I suspect player X". The line between such posts is very thin, but then again, that's normally what we have to go about early.

By the end there, his argument has warped into something completely unrecognizable.

His tone throughout this exchange is just incredibly subservient. I think he realized how exposed thestick was and really felt on thin ice. Ichabod never rejoined the discussion after this, and as expected, his promised vote on thestick never materialized. It's as if he was afraid to rear his ahead again, for fear of getting smacked back down.

Also notice how he managed to sneak in a comment about me inflating the interpretation of a post. Thestick's post, in particular, although that went unsaid. Classic wolf Ichabod, trying to sneak in backhanded compliments or jabs while seemingly making some unrelated point.

[novice]

I also felt that that post by Ichabod was scummy when I read it, but I had completely forgotten about both it and Ichabod by now. Thanks for reminding us, Zak.