WW 46: Wolves Return to Realms Beyond

[scooter]

Anyway, I'm returning to my gut and voting AdrienIer. It feels like the best bet right now. I feel like Adrien being a wolf would explain the action seemingly being a bit more zen late in day 1 despite a power wolf being on the bubble. If Adrien's got some sort of wolf power too, maybe they had no choice but to hang on tight and hope Bob gets lynched. I definitely don't buy Serdoa's explanation above that they simply accepted it, so this is my best stab at an explanation.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, wow. 9 different players have votes, none have more than 2. This is, uh, not good for the town. 

Let me try and narrow things. Right now, I feel that our strongest hypothesis is that at least 1 of GKC, Adrien, scooter, and Commodore are wolves, because those are the players that voted to help kill Bob. It seems unlikely, for example, taht all the wolves were on Cyne as a sacrificial victim, not when just a few of them could make sure a villager went down instead. 

Now, I know we don't like Rowain's voting, or Naufragar in general, and there are probably people besides Lewwyn who don't like my arguments, either. But I think with 14 hours left we ought to concentrate our efforts where they're most likely to bring success. So, let's run through each of those 4 in turn. I'll start with Adrien, because I thought he was the best lynch at the start of yesterday and that's where my vote is presently sitting. 

Adrien: I feel that of the 4, Adrien has had the posts that are easiest for a wolf to throw up to look busy. For example, #144:

Superdeath because not giving reasons for a vote is bad, but refusing to give reasons for a vote when asked for one is worse (#77).
Rowain looks good to me. Abrasive, asking annoying questions, forcing people to talk.
Scooter is doing a good village job of forcing absentees to talk, but that's also an easy way for a wolf to participate.

That's the entirety of the post. Superdeath is an easy vote at that stage - obviously I was on him - and a weak town on Rowain, but not a lot of substance. A lot of his early stuff is like that. Could be his claimed time issues, but that's also an easy excuse. After hitting SD for a while, he switches to Bob because "Bob should know the meta" on #261. That took us from a Superdeath majority (5-4 SD to Bob) to a Bob majority (5-4 Bob). Later Lewwyn joined, etc, etc, the Bob train happened. Anyway, I think Adrien's timing there is certainly cause for concern. This was also the vote switch that drew pindicator's attention to him. 

Later, he stays on Bob with this reasoning (#307)

Ok I got to reread Bob and Cyneheard, I'm staying on Bob. Cyneheard had some good posts looking into people, Bob basically hasn't.

Again, a defensible choice - but the wrong choice, too. Later, #332, in response to the building train against him, he says that he HAS done reads and prods, but...there's not a whole lot of evidence of that. The reads are thin. The prods nonexistent (lack of time claimed). It's either a very low energy town game or it's a scum game, I feel like. A bit later, he votes Pindicator, seemingly in response to Pindicator coming after him. I can't really follow his reasoning here (#340): 

Noting that Pindi started D1 asking for more content from people, and buddying up with El Grillo. Then he votes Lewwyn, then he goes back to lower content people. Then El Grillo claims he suspects me, and boom Pindi is onto me.

Could be a wolf playing reasonably well while not getting into the brawl, or (and I'm well placed to say that) a lower energy villager. He doesn't seem so low energy though...

I don't see the case against Pindicator from what Adrien posted at all. Pindi started asking for more content from people, well, yes, lots of people did. He buddied up with El Grillo - thankfully we know El Grillo was town! After El Grillo expresses concern about Adrien, Pindi also starts sniffing around...I don't see the scum here. You're going to have to lay it out for me, because this is thin gruel indeed. Finally, to wrap up the day, he swaps off Pindicator back to Bob, to save himself. When asked why Bob over Cyne, "Cyne defended himself better." (#438) I get exactly the opposite read. 

Basically, all of Adrien's day one play was extremely non-commital, low effort, and pointed wherever verifiable at the wrong targets. His defenses of himself were shoddy and his justification for going after Pindicator is hard to see. So, let's look at what he's done today. He defends himself by saying his vote for Pindi made things quite dangerous for Cyne, which is only sort of true - we don't know how many votes the wolves had in reserve, and they could always swap some insurance votes onto Bob at the last minute. Like, say, Adrien? He does offer a few player reads:

Cyneheard gives himself a good reason not to vote for GKC and naufragar in #146

His attack on SD in #246 makes me like SD more. At that moment SD is under pressure and an additionnal vote is not good news for him. If they're together I don't think SD would give him the greenlight on additionnal pressure when he's in the process of understanding what RB WW demands.
While reading cyneheard I find Gaspar's #348 post that I find interesting : he's onto Cyneheard and Pindi, with Scooter as third. Makes me wonder if Pindi's innocent (which explains why Meiz wasn't killed last night) but Scooter's guilty. Will have to reread Scooter sooner than I thought.

Otherwise he says he doesn't have the energy for the game, and acknowledges that it's scummy so far (#527), is (in my opinion) overly hostile towards Charriu, accusing him of lying about the situation at the time of his SD vote (to my mind, Charriu was simply mistaken, accepting correction graciously before Adrien even posted), and another vote for Pindicator at #549:

By starting from the idea that there was at least 1 wolf on Bob, and at least 1 on me, I'm going to state that I'd definitely prefer to vote for Commodore, GKC, Scooter, Pindi or Charriu today. After a couple hours doing rereads (and doing other stuff) I'm still not completely sure about them so I'll stick with yesterday's hunch Pindicator, with Commodore second.

So, Adrien, correct me if I'm wrong here, but as I understand it your argument is that at least one wolf voted for Bob, and at least one voted for you - and of the ones that voted for you you're sticking with Pindicator as the likely wolf? The trouble is, I still don't know your original reasons for voting for pindicator! Then you swap from Pindicator to Commodore, on the reasoning that Commodore voted for you close to the deadline (#553). 

On the whole, I don't like Adrien's game at all. Nothing I've read has convinced me. To sum up:

1)Suspicious votes. SD was an easy train, so was Bob. Adrien's vote put Bob over the top on a known wolf, Cyneheard, and he switched back to Bob at the last minute (to save himself, or to prevent an unpleasant surprise on Cyne?). 
2)His posting has been minimal, pleading lack of time, but the few posts he has made have been sparsely reasoned. He engages little with most of the players in the game, mostly only defending himself against direct attacks. 
3)His reasoning for his other votes is usually very thin on the ground or at times even non-existent. 

Based on this summary, I'm happy with my vote at the moment. Looking at scooter next, since I'm biased in his favor.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Scooter:

Scooter's first serious engagement after the initial jokes and prodding are out of the way is a defense of Naufragar as a confused newbie - a characterization I still think is entirely plausible (it's possible the ongoing Nauf/Serdoa fight is blue on blue, although if I had to choose right now I'd say nauf is a wolf and Serdoa is town). This is at #111. At #205, he gives a handful of reads. Here are two of the more interesting ones:

El Grillo - I get town vibes from him. This is one of Lewwyn's pet things that I don't buy at all. I think his posts have been pretty clear and reasonable, and he's left a good breadcrumb trail in case he does something later that casts him in a different light. I'm good with keeping him around.


Gaspar - This one is odd for me, because a post of his last night bothered me, but I brushed it off as being in line with his playstyle. That said, here we are 16ish hours later, and it's still on my mind, so here it is with the opening intro snipped:

(September 1st, 2020, 20:31)Gaspar Wrote:To me, it seems obvious that nauf and GKC are suffering first game jitters.  THAT DOES NOT MEAN I THINK THEY ARE TOWN.  But it does mean that I'm not going to hang them for early game slip-ups.  I then personally find the long-timers who are parsing them as though they know what they're doing and those that are jumping on their first mistake really suspicious.  I get the value in putting some heat on them to see how they'll react, but given that they're feeling heat before anyone's even posted, what are you really hoping to accomplish by bussing them - do we think the new guys are suddenly going to freak out, declare he's a wolf and out the rest of his pack?  More likely they're going to either a. clam up which is not useful or b. out a town role if they are town and have one, which sure as hell only helps the red team.  None of that is useful to me, I'm trying to find scum and honestly, I do admit to a bias of wanting to give the new guys a day or so to play before we lynch them if there are other, better targets.

That makes the people who know the stuff I've stated above and still persist on busses or scummy follow votes on those guys suspicious to me.  Now its day one - the people here that I know I'm going to suspect based on tone and faulty reasoning more than just votes, but the votes are there and the lazy reasoning is there too.

So as stated before, right now the guys who hit my scumdar hardest are Serdoa, Rowain, Lewwyn, Cyneheard and Commodore.  Pindcator's post that garnered my vote is super suspect.  Scooter has behaved funky like the first five but I didn't get as strong a vibe from him.  I don't have a strong town feel from anybody yet.

This post felt weird to me when I first read it, and after sleeping on it, it feels worse and not better. This post boiled down to - leave all newbies alone, and I find every veteran who has said anything remotely of note at the time he wrote this to be suspicious. That seems like a weird tack to take. I generally agree with him on his reading of how new players are likely to feel, but... I think that's all the more reason to grill them a bit. Day 1 is a crapshoot unless you can pressure someone into a mistake. First time wolves are the best candidates for that if you can somehow find one. Maybe this is purely a playstyle thing, but I'm curious if anyone else felt this was off.

 

He was right about El Grillo, and off on Gaspar, but no one really followed him on that. I don't hold this too strongly against him, since we are all over suspicious (well, not me, I'm over-trusting if anything), but it is a point against. 

Now, this is significant: at #274, he amps the pressure against Cyneheard, quoting Lewwyn asking Cyne for some thoughts and adding,  "I would also like to hear this. SD seems like low-hanging fruit. Cyneheard, who do you have strong feelings about one way or another and more importantly why?" (note that he also re-iterates his vote for Bob in the same post because he expected a vet to not be as frustrated as Bob was - he's not perfect by any means). Anyway, I highlight this because as a wolf it feels unnecessary. He gains little from piling onto Cyneheard at this point, who can reasonably be expected to survive the day, so it's unlikely he'd be doing this purely to earn town brownie points. This was an unnecessary turning up of the heat on a wolf, and I think it counts in scooter's favor. 


Contrast his defense of his Bob vote at #284 with Adriens' above:

So Bob, Cyneheard, and Superdeath are popular lynch targets right now, and there are some compelling reasons for them. Rather than those folks defending themselves breathlessly, I'd like to hear who they think is a better target than themselves and why. Also, who do they think leans town and why? Does their logic make sense? If they provide a lot of reasoned opinions, that maybe makes them worth keeping around because those opinions may be recontextualized by the upcoming deaths.


I don't really care how often you post. Just give me serious opinions when you do, and ignore the type of person to be aghast that you disappeared for a couple hours having a life. If you're going to post once or twice a day, make them good ones. I prefer quality > quantity in this kind of game anyway. My vote is still on Bob because when he showed up, he didn't make much sense and hasn't really provided a convincing alternative. My vote is still very much live though, so I'm open to a few others.

Now, maybe scooter is just a plain ebtter wolf than Adrien, but this post reads as genuine to me. It was exactly what I was looking for from the three lynch targets, because i didn't feel great voting for any of them. Scooter's post has a good idea and is a bit more deeply justified than Adrien's, I think. Just a little bit later, at 287, he re-iterates his thoughts:

Bob - My vote is on him, and I feel pretty decent about it. I don't read his "defensiveness" as meaning much either way, but I do care about the fact that his defense made not much sense, and he hasn't provided any sort of alternative. I get the strongest wolf vibes from him of anyone, so I'm going to default to that.


Cyneheard - I could be talked into him. He seemed kind of exasperated with just a little bit of pressure. I'm not sure that's a tell either way though. That said, his frustration with the game makes me wonder if we should just lynch him. My main concern is if we lynch him and he's village, what did we really learn? I've been hoping I'd hear more opinions about other players from him, because I know him decently well and thought I could get a good read on him. I don't really have one yet though unfortunately.


Gaspar - I pointed him out earlier. He's loosely on my radar still, but I don't want to lynch him. If he's town, I think he's an asset, and statistically speaking he's likely to be town. I think the upside of keeping him around outweighs the risks - at least for the first few days. There are risks, though, because he's an excellent wolf if he drew that.

Again, look at this in contrast with Adrien's reasoning. Scooter is wrong about two of these people, but he gives good arguments for not lynching Gaspar even if he's suspicious, and is plainly open to voting for Cyneheard. Don't focus so much on results, but on the process. Scooter's process here is more in-depth than Adrien's, with clearer reasoning that's easy to agree or disagree with, contrasted with Adrien's vagueness. I'd like to see a bit more on Bob, of course, but the bar here is low. 

At 359, "if we save Bob so we can lynch a villager, I'll have some serious Day 2 thoughts on some people." Lewwyn argues that this is a threat to get people to stay on Bob, however, I don't read it that way - if people stayed on Bob because of this "threat," then...Bob would be lynched, revealed as a villager, and people would look really hard at scooter, he'd have to figure. It instead reads to me as "not lynching Bob and lynching a villager instead will give me some very interesting information on those people who switched last minute." Not a threat, but (grumpy and frustrated) game speculation. 

Let's see...some suspicion of Gaspar for switching off Bob (unfortunate, because Gaspar was of course correct)...Okay, here's a good example of why I'm so biased on the scooter question:

If Bob turns out to be a villager, bummer, but if we're going to lose a villager, I'd rather lose one that is actively making us worse. The way I look at it is our odds at random of hitting a wolf day 1 are low - maybe 20-30% depending on the allocation. Given that they can talk to each other and coordinate, it's lower than that. So Bob is IMO by far the most ideal target because he's either a caught wolf or an anti-town villager. Some of these other players might be more of a loss if they are villagers and get lynched.


I'm not so sure about any of them! I just think some of the jumping with no real reasoning to it is odd, and it's creating an environment that gives a lot of wolf cover.

Swap Superdeath for Bob and I oculd have written this post about my Day one vote. Our reasoning here agrees, we just differed as to who was the greater loss. So, scooter's thinking repeatedly mirrors my own, which is naturally going to give me positive feelings for the guy. I say this, so you all will know my bias. Call me out on the bad arguments I'm no doubt making, and let's hold everyone's feet to the fire here. But so far, Adrien looks like the much better lynch than scooter here. 


At 378, he asks for the case on Adrien. This is later held up as a contradiction when he opens Day 2 open to voting for Adrien, but it's important to note that he says he's open to it in 378, too, just needs the case to be made. My personal read is that he reread with the lynch and night results, and became more convinced of Adrien's scumminess that way, but everyone may not see it that way. He even mentions he doesn't like Adrien's one-off votes at 383. So I think the "contradiction" is overblown here.

Okay, Day 2. Most of this is his back and forth with Lewwyn, which I don't feel like re-hashing in detail since I waded in myself. 

Here's his opening Day 2 post (#444). Again, contrast it with Adrien above:

First, from a meta standpoint, I'm pretty confused as to what happened. I can piece together some of it, but I was under the impression this was a low-power game, but those results hint at quite a lot of powers out there. Either that or we just ... blew through them all at once? I'm a bit too out of date on WW roles to know more - I had to look up Hider on the wiki to have any idea what that was.



As for the actual interesting stuff... I'm not sure what to think. It's weird to me that Cyneheard was a wolf, but he kept his vote on Superdeath given how tight that vote was, and he could reasonably go with a "I'm just saving myself" vote on Bob. Superdeath isn't quite cleared, but he now seems like one of the safer town bets. I feel pretty good about the towniness of Meiz, Serdoa, and Naufrager because their votes on Cyneheard were really unnecessarily risky if they were wolves with how close it came. I'm not quite ready to ascribe the same benefit of the doubt to Lewwyn, who switched last-second when it ultimately didn't matter, which I could see both a villager or a wolf doing for different reasons.


The obvious wolf play was to vote for Bob since Cyneheard was up for a vote, but of course the wolves are not all going to do that. Clearly Cyneheard didn't. Feels nearly certain to be 1-2 wolf votes on Bob. We might reasonably guess there are no wolf votes on Cyneheard because it was close, and there were other options. There's one big caveat to that, though. If AdrienIer is a wolf, that might put them in an awkward spot of not wanting to all pile on Bob, but not wanting to get one of their own lynched if #2 and #3 were both up there. In that case, you might see them spread out a bit more and hold their breath.


I haven't gone through past posts or anything, but my current inclination based on all this is to lynch AdrienIer. He would have been my #2 choice last round, and the night actions make him look worse. Chevalier is another I'm curious about with his seeming throwaway vote, though it would be awfully sloppy for two wolves to both do that on the same target. I did think it was weird overall that we didn't coalesce onto the top 2-3 targets on Day 1, which I think is generally what you want to do as the village. Bob getting lynched with only 6/17 votes feels pretty bad.

Compare the logical reasoning, playing through scenarios, and examining implications with Adrien. There's just no comparison at all. 

Note that I'm not exonerating scooter here. There's nothing that says he couldn't just be a good wolf. But I have to decide who is more likely a wolf and who deserves my vote more. Right now, that seems clear enough to me. 

Anyway, scooter's vote for Adrien now escalates into a spat with Lewwyn. Here's a relevant post:

But you want me to decide based on posts - why? I think 90% of post analysis posts in WW are a gigantic waste of time. They boil down to "I don't like this person's thinking/writing style, so they must be a wolf." It's the astrology of Werewolf. Day 1 was just full of this stuff, and I think it's virtually all completely stupid. I'd rather look at hard evidence which is votes, which is why I wanted a paper trail to be as big as possible for today. Trying to puzzle out players based on motivations and analyzing results (thanks Civ4) has always been what I'm better at anyway rather than parsing wording in posts in a game I haven't played in 8 years.



As for why Adrien. I think it's incredibly likely 1-2 wolves were on Bob, purely for numbers and meta reasons. I know I'm innocent, so that's out. Superdeath is the most unlikely, so I'm crossing him out for now. GKC has given me mild town leanings, so I'm lightly scratching him out. Less sold on that, but I'm trying to narrow this down. That leaves Commodore and Adrien. I would be happy to vote for either at the time I'm writing this.


Between the two, Adrien has two things going for him. 1) People who had a better read than me were pretty skeptical of him even before the night phase. I place a little bit of value in that. 2) The end of Day 1 was weirdly quiet considering we had a wolf quite close to the top, and a lot of players parked on third parties, which in theory should have made the wolves jumpier because there was a lot of potential for last minute vote swings. I was surprised it never happened, actually. That is weird, but it's less weird if Adrien is a wolf. In that case, they were in a precarious position, so they should just hold their breath and hang on tight and not risk the whole thing coming down on them.

The paragraph on post analysis escalates, but I think the c ase against Adrien in the last two paragraphs still holds true. Nothing that has happened today has done much, imo, to alter this line of reasoning: 1-2 of the people voting for Bob were wolves. Superdeath, GKC, scooter, Adrien, and Commodore. Of those, Adrien has the most scummy posts and one of the shadiest voting patterns. Scooter HAS no real voting pattern - after a few prodding votes at the start, he lands on Bob and stays there through most of the day. He's third on the train after Gaspar and Commodore. 

I'm not saying scooter is innocent. But if he's a wolf, he's a good one. I've not seen him make any real specious arguments, no weird leaps of logic - it's all genuine, all in the open, all stuff I can follow along on. I'd keep an eye on him in the days to come, sure. But for now, he seems like an obviously worse lynch to me than Adrien. 

Commodore next.

[pindicator]

As for Pinds latest post here. A lot of text which basically contains a suspicion for Commodore. And little about CMF. I view most of the text just filler, which is Pind's posting style it seems. But in contrast, I'm generally seeing interesting theories for day 1 voting & vote switches, possible agendas behind their posts and whatnot. What I see from Pind is very simple thought process not containing anything from Day 1 events. Yet he has clearly gone through the events, urging scooter to do the same. Sorry Pind, I'm not trying to be rude, but instead explaining why I'm still stubbornly voting for you.

Rowain you are being disingenuous - I voted for Cyneheard as a test, because he provided me with the voting tags. If I had tested it on ANY OTHER PERSON that would have been suspect. Moreover, I was the one who had the most telling engagement with Cyne, after which the wagon on him started in earnest. Probably if that day had lasted longer, I would've switched to Cyne, but I absolutely disliked bob's tone and didn't want to switch at the moment.

This and the references to earlier posts make me believe GKC strongly believes he was one of the main parts in starting the Cyneheard train. I'm doubtful if he as a wolf would be trying to play this card to gain credibility so stubbornly. Feels more frustrated for me not understanding the signs. I'm back to pindicator while waiting for Commodore & Adrien to start scum hunting.

GKC, unfortunately no one will take a look at your naufragar accusation if there are no links to the posts you mentioned. Regardless, I want to hear your rest of the take on players. You mentioned somethign about CMF, but others as well.

Okay, now I'm starting to feel you are disingenuous Meiz, because you are mischaracterizing and oversimplifying my posts. Suspicions are one thing, that's good town play, but ignoring the parts of my posts that don't fit your theory and then ignoring me calling out the parts that you miss is making me think this attack is forced.

To tunnel vision past my Lewwyn interactions is one thing, but to ignore me bringing that up as a counter point entirely is willful. You do a quick oh let's look at GKC for a sec- nope, back to pindicator! But then you also over simplify and dismiss the long post from early today, saying that all I do is talk about Commodore and waste space. Do you see nothing of the interaction with AdrienIer there, nothing of the willingness to test that i might be wrong by seeing how he will vote on another suspicious target? Nothing on the benefit of finding town reads in a game where i don't know the alignment of anyone else? Or do you see and intentionally choose to ignore that?

Meiz is like a dog with a bone

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Commodore:

Early game jokiness, looks like our meat starts at 168, accusing Lewwyn of wolfiness with Gaspar because they weren't really attacking each other, just throwing shade. He also defends SD as just being SD, which, fair enough. He votes Gaspar as the scummier of the pair, which, oops. 

So, first big post is obviously wrong. Points against. Easy mistake to make, but I gotta mark it as I see it. 

At 187, he defends his terseness due to family and real life obligations, but says GKC is playing more smoothly than Nauf, so he's happy with his vote there. Now, I have to say, so far the writing and reasoning reminds me more of Adrien - short, quick, easy to write and digest. It's impossible to distinguish this writing style from wolfiness or simple time pressure. My opinion is that I'd like to see more if I were going to nudge Commodore towards the town. 

At 201, he praises an El Grillo post (good! Brownie points for praising a townie), and pressures a lot of people, especially scooter (his name in bold) to post more:

El Grillo Wrote:Rowain, why would I vote for Lewwyn? Just because I disagree with him on my own innocence? I like his activity level and there are enough other players who seem content to sit on the sidelines for Day 1 without much engagement. I want to hear more from them and will vote accordingly.

I want to call this out as a really good post, and one Serdoa/Naufragar should take to heart. El Grillo, you seem like a Wrong Villager. Just don't vote for a townie and you can even make it to Right Villager.

Cyneheard, Bob, Gaspar, SD all need to check in today. And Scooter, please check in with substance.

Scooter's only posts to that point had been defenses of naufragar as a confused newbie (apart from the joke posts), so I think this was a fair callout by Commodore. Scooter's next post is his first long list of reads. So on the whole, I think this is a good post. I'd say it nudges me (slightly) towards Commodore town. 

What I don't like, though, is Commodore's continued terseness on voting. He runs down the list of votes:

Superdeath- Easy mislynch as noted. But his going silent under pressure is suspicious a bit...he's got a job that walls him away from the forums pretty strictly, if I'm remembering right, but he's going to have to talk or he wins first lynch by default. The votes on him are CMF (time-strapped), Adrien (kind of low-key game), Lewwyn (loving life), and Naufragar (tunneled all to hell on Serdoa?)


Commodore- The case against me is, if I understand, terseness (ElGrillo), Being my Werewolf Nemesis (Rowain), and...convenience plus no better option? (Scooter) I get a town, blank, neutral vibe from my respective interlocutors so please explain the case better to me.

GKC- Only two remaining accusers are AWOL. He's not vibing scum at the moment to me, and I expect them to hop off when they come back.

Pindicator- Lurker (Cyneheard) and Guy Who I Find Suspicious and Is Also Lurking (Gaspar). I think the case is some variation of "feels bad, man", who knows where they'll go when they grace us with their presence again.

Naufragar- Serdoa's got his vendetta thing, and GKC didn't like the Naufragar attacks? I get the case but I don't see a strong lean.

Lewwyn- Pindicator says he sees what I see but like everyone prefers not to vote with me.  Bob's stuff is stale at this point because, again, ghosted. I could join in on this although I feel like Lewwyn has generated enough chaff at this point my targeting is confused.

Adrien- Meiz notes he's being smooth. He is.

Note that each player only gets a line. Now, again, this could be due to lack of time, but it's also an easy list for a wolf ot make. Morever, note that it's mostly summaries, with his opinion, without much argument. Arguments take a lot more effort from wolves, I think, since they have to make 'em up from whole cloth, knowing they're false. Emotions nad reactions, though? Those are easy. "I like this." "I don't like this." Better is "I like this, because..."

Let's see...second vote for Bob after Gaspar. Says "Bob needs to talk a bit more." (210). Commodore will stay parked there for the remainder of Day 1. In the meantime, there's a few filler posts, nothing substantial, until we get to a defense of himself and superdeath from Rowain at 231. Easy to quote in full, because like all of Commodore's posts, it's terse:

@Commodore
My reason for voting you is your fast defense of SD. A thing a WW loves to do. In case SD is town Once he is lynched you can point on your defense of a townie and second if this is standard SD-behavior he is a lynch waiting to happen and those are better left for later days for the easy win.

SD behavior is so far anti-town and if he is town I do hope he changes it during the ~20 hours left.

I don't see a good reason to jump on the SD waggon now and while I'm willing to give naufr,CMF (and in some small extent) charriu a pass for voting SD now I'm baffled that Lewwyn is still happy sitting on him.

The levels of WIFOM bafflegab here are smothering me, help. I'm your tunnel target because I "defended" SD...in the same post where you defend SD here at much more damning juncture?


Okay, I get it, I guess. SD's current play (or lack of play) is bad for us, absolutely. But in the jokey early phases, I just cheerfully pointed out his silly Serdoa vote was fairly par for the course. I'm not looking to score town points there, I'm looking to land a nice burn. He's educable, he's not doomed to be a millstone on the village's neck. I get the logic of "better to lynch an easy mislynch than another villager", but I'd rather lynch a wolf.

What do I think about this? Well, I think Commodore mischaracterizes Rowain's argument: Rowain claims that a quick defense of another player is sometimes wolfish, because if the player gets lynched, the wolf can point to his defense, and second, if SD is a townie, the wolves want him alive to draw some of the heat off of them through his suspicious behavior. Then Rowain says he's not going to vote SD right now, expressing a hope that SD improves. Commodore calls this a contradiction, but I don't see it.  He then proceeds to agree with Rowain that SD is educable and not going to be amillstone on the village's neck (I'd say so far he's been mostly absent from our neck entirely, if you ask me). 

I don't draw any strong conclusions from this post, but so far Commodore doesn't seem to have the same depth of analysis that scooter did. He's a lot closer to Adrien's level, in my estimation. Thin, quickly written posts. ANother long chain of single sentence throwaway posts, quick re-iterations of points previously made, nothing of much note other than the style of post itself. Another example (282):

Lots of despair around here as I head to bed; Bob isn't making me regret voting for him with his...defense? The expected grumpy grousing isn't going to sway anyone. Cyneheard is responding very strongly to what looks like a single vote. And Superdeath's defense...ain't much, although it seemed both sincere (null tell) and uncoached (mild village tell).


Probably won't be posting until nearer to the deadline (14-month-old may have plans otherwise), but right now Bob seems the best vote of the three.

Again, the argumentation is entirely absent, but "Bob seems the best vote of the three," I suppose because he's grumpy, which is scummier than "responding strongly" like what Cyneheard is doing.What I don't like here is that I get no sense of why Bob is the best vote, compared with Superdeath or Cyneheard, when at this point we know that he was, quite possibly, the worst vote of the three. I think scum are more likely than town to have short posts thin on reasoning, I think town are more likely to have real, understandable analysis. That's the hypothesis I'm working from here. So far, Commodore is not looking good via that lens. Another example at 315:

1. Lewwyn and Gaspar have been verbally critical of one another without ever mounting any serious critiques/attacks that could lead to an actual vote train. This is a pretty typical wolfpack interaction, distancing without substance.



2. I'll cop to a bias towards newbies, or at least being more forgiving of clumsy play first-timers. I've leaned more village with Superdeath and GKC, a little more scummy on Naufragar. Nothing glaring yet, though.



3. I meant that Pindicator also got weird vibes from Gaspar/Lewwyn but rather than join me on Gaspar, he voted Lewwyn.


4. Adrien has actually not said much more to change my opinion. I might be able to re-read, but given school is about to start...no promises.

A series of short responses to direct questions. The only argument made is that Lewwny/Gaspar are critical of each other without mounting "serious" attacks -> This is wolfpack behavior. Of course, now we know that Gaspar was town. The other responses are mostly devoid of content - no opinion on Adrien (the first opinion was "he's smooth"), lean village on SD/GKC, scummy on nauf, no reason why given for any, and "weird vibes" from Gaspar/Lewwyn. 

The next substantial post is a criticism of people jumping off the Bob train. 

In all seriousness, I'm not assured of anything right now, but I do find it suspicious how this Rally to Save Bob is being spearheaded by some of the people I was nervous being on his train with. If Bob is a wolf, the pack must be pretty happy to have a murky *two* other candidates available.



On the other two trains, Cyneheard reads to me as genuinely flabbergasted and drained. Oh course that doesn't mean he's not also a wolf, but I don't see the skepticism about his defense. AdrienIer is floating a little less now, definitely not clear but I've yet to see any red flags.


If Bob get lynched and he turns wolf, I think we need to carefully look at who switched to save him. If he turns village, I suspect that at least one of my fellow train members is a wolf, and we might want to look who undermined the Cyneheard train that was rolling along.

Note that the only real read given is Cyneheard, who comes across as genuine - oops. Adrien has no red flags, though. There is a bit more reasoning in the post, in the last sentence, some "if-then" statements on Bob's fate. I do like that! That's what I want to see all the time. But it's a very small amount of signal in a very large amount of noise. How much as Commodore genuinely contributed? What new insights or ideas have we gotten from him? ANy, really, so far? I dunno, this whole exercise is giving me a bad feeling. 

Well, this post (452) is helpful, though:

Okay, so if understand ElGrillo's role correctly, he hid behind either Cyneheard or Gaspar (both fine choices for scumminess IMO) and when his shield got gacked, so too did he. Logically, the other explanation is that we have three killing role/factions, which...is not a conclusion I like. Tough luck there ElGrillo.



Cyneheard's death makes sense as a vig kill; he was a lynch target with a legit train. His death definitely accelerates our process. So, good shot, vig. A serial killer is possible but I feel like the meta for a SK is that he wants to help the wolves more early, and the shot was pure village help.



Gaspar baffles me a bit as a target, he was definitely lynchable...I was going to vote for him. Unless it's a hilariously high-energy effort on a wolf-Lewwyn's part to clear himself? Or the wolves cottoned on to Gaspar's potential for a power-role? He needs to be examined. Good game Gaspar, you played well enough to get nightkilled.



I actually had the thought over the night that the low-switching end of Day 1 might mean we didn't have any wolves on the block at all, but that's clearly not the case.

The final tally of day 1 with colors:
Bob (6): Commodore,scooter,El Grillo, SD,GKC,AdrienIer
Cyneheard (5): Gaspar,Meiz,Serdoa,naufragar,Lewwyn
AdrienIer (3): pindi,Charriu,Rowain
SD (2): CMF,Cyneheard
Lewwyn (1):  Bob

My crazed pegboard self *really* wants to say that Lewwyn is still Gaspar's scum-buddy, but I'm worried about WIFOM on that one. Of the people who voted to lynch Bob, ElGrillo is blue, my PM is blue, and Superdeath's early clumsy play makes me lean town strongly on him. GKC is still giving me town leans, so William of Occam says we should start with Scooter or AdrienIer.

 

There's a bit more here, the highlighting of names is very helpful. Now, it's also interesting that he goes for Adrien over scooter. Right now Adrien is my prime wolf candidate, so I must interpret this action as pro-town. It doesn't exonerate Commodore, of course, as he could be throwing his buddy under the bus knowing the heat would be on the two of them today, but he could have gone for scooter instead, so I'll note it that I interpret this favorably to him. 

At 488 (skipping an amusing line about Lewwyn "gushing squid ink" at everyone, which I appreciated at the time and again on the reread):

As Lewwyn is implying, Scooter. His slime-levels make me uncomfortable voting with him even on Adrien.


I still don't trust you, Lewwyn. But if you had the cast-iron balls to post that mega Gaspar smear while pack-killing him, you deserve a while longer.

I really want more here. Why is scooter slimy? I've got lots of his posts up there. I don't see the sliminess at all - was it voting Adrien? But you were voting Adrien to start, too! This is undoing all the brownie points you earned. There's just no argument here. Why should I vote scooter? "because he's slimy." Why is he slimy? Well, unmentioned. Votes without reasons, I think, are scummy. Contrast this with scooter voting for Adrien (and for a while, Lewwyn, above). When you put them side by side like this, the contrast between the players is clear. 

501 is better:

Tally as of post 496:

Lynch votes
3 votes: AdrienIer (pindicator, Rowain, Charriu)
3 votes: Scooter (Commodore, GeneralKilCavalry, Lewwyn)
1 votes: Pindicator (Meiz)
1 votes: Chevalier Mal Fet (superdeath)
1 votes: Serdoa (naufragar)
1 votes: naufragar (Serdoa)
1 votes: Lewwyn (scooter)

 Okay, I don't have a ton of time, but I feel like some players are getting ignored in the Adrien/Scooter/Lewwyn discussion. And perhaps me, and/or Naufragar? I have vague impressions, which barring a full reread may suffice. 

The final tally of day 1 with colors:
Bob (6): Commodore,scooter,El Grillo, SD,GKC,AdrienIer
Cyneheard (5): Gaspar,Meiz,Serdoa,naufragar,Lewwyn
AdrienIer (3): pindi,Charriu,Rowain
SD (2): CMF,Cyneheard
Lewwyn (1):  Bob

Cyneheard's only buddy in the end on Superdeath was CMF. I believe CMF when he says he's strapped for time and doing methodical reviews. I don't ding him for not being hyper-involved...but I also believe that Cyneheard's grim despair was sincere, so obviously CMF isn't off the hook. Neutral lean.



AdrienIer isn't looking great, so I do give mild points to Pindicator, Charriu, and Rowain for their votes. They certainly didn't lynch a villager, so that's better than my record. I've liked Charriu's sparse comments, although I don't clear him of course he's seemed to make a best effort to keep up with an overwhelming game with limited time. Pindicator seems to be trying to hunt, but his signal/noise ratio is a little muddy thus far. Rowain, I'll be the first to admit to having a difficult time to reading, but I have my strongest useful town read for him. He's been working hard to bring out information in a way that I think helps the town, by prodding and poking, and his votes seem to have actual teeth. 



I don't think a vote for Cyneheard saves someone *if* they were online near the deadline. That's all the voters except for...oh. Crap. Gaspar. Well then. Meiz has been giving me as mild a read as I ever get from him. I utterly and unequivocally reject any metagame exoneration of Meiz here; Thrawn absolutely seemed sincere about being overtaxed, but he was willing to give it a go, so it could have been he was a loyal wolf gamely trying for the team. That being said, I still like Meiz as somewhat village just given his play. Serdoa leans village to me, but he is a good player, so I don't trust my read. His spat with Naufragar kind of strikes me as monomaniacal but Naufragar returns it with vigor, enough so that I'm beginning to vibe scum Nau-direction just because it's the easiest gambit in the world to tunnel as a wolf. Lewwyn...chaff, good stuff, bold stuff, scum stuff, more good stuff...like I said, he's successfully cowed me by sheer weight of posting from trying a good hard scum-scan on him, but I don't trust him at all, particularly when he was so clearly setting up that he was willing to jump *off* Cyneheard at that deadline.


I think we're covering thems of us who kind of manslaughtered Bob. I'll bet with six voters and a wolf on the block at five, there was at least one wolf in the mix, and possibly two. Adrien and Scooter are who I look at most closely but General Kill Cavalry might be playing one hell of a great first game. And hey, Superdeath might be surprisingly smooth.

So we get some more coverage here. Again, it's more quick summaries - each player gets about a sentence, with a bit more substance on Meiz, Serdoa, and Nauf. Eh...this post is a neutral lean for me, too. Could easily see a time-pressed townie or a wolf writing it, so it's a null result. Later, he tells me that scooter is feigning his annoyance at Lewwyn, and that seems wolfy. Pindicator votes for him, and Commodore responds (561):

I had to go re-read the start of this day because I only skimmed it with how busy yesterday was.  I wish I hadn't committed myself to so many things right now or that this game had started a week later - however, I have some time now.  (Later today I'm taking the pup on a hike with a friend - excited for that!)  I'm also probably not going to be on at the deadline tomorrow.  Taking the dog to the coast for the day and deadline is 9am local time; I hope to be on the road before then.  I will do my best to read and get a post up before I go.

Full disclosure:  I skimmed all the naufrager stuff.  Only have so much time and would rather stay focused on several trains of thought than scattered over all of them.

The person who I expect to know both of these things, the person whom I feel has a good sense of people's personalities and how they act and who is pretty much famous for it here, and the person who has played enough games with scooter to know how he is well enough to know better also posted this:

As Lewwyn is implying, Scooter. His slime-levels make me uncomfortable voting with him even on Adrien.

I still don't trust you, Lewwyn. But if you had the cast-iron balls to post that mega Gaspar smear while pack-killing him, you deserve a while longer. 

He's also been relatively quiet since.

That all took me an hour to read and write up.  Have to get ready for other things, may not get back until after returning from the hike.

Feel you about the time crunch at the moment, have it myself. So's I'm clear, you're voting me because:
A. You see Scooter as sincerely flustered. 
B. You think I'm knowledgeable and savvy enough to see this, ergo I'm deliberately misreading his beflusterment.
C. Thus, Commodore is a wolf (are we all accepting the logic of one of Commodore/Adrien/Scooter at least is scum?)
Okay, I can follow this fairly simple logic. I don't agree, though. Scooter is savvy enough to choose to express annoyance or not, he is absolutely in control of that. Nothing I've been reading has contradicted my initial impression of "pressured wolf" here.

Actually, uh, Commodore I think perfectly captures my thoughts here, too. I DO think he's misreading scooter, deliberately. I think scooter was genuinely frustrated, because *I* often felt genuinely frustrated and it wasn't even directed at me. When you couple it with his light posting and play earlier, eesh. Commodore says he disagrees, though. Why? Well, Scooter is savvy enough, and nothing has contradicted his "pressured wolf" impression. I want to point out that there's no argument there. It's just "yes, scooter totally could fake it," and "I feel he is a wolf." 

And that's really it.

On the whole, I don't feel good about Commodore after reading through his contributions. He rarely offers original insight or analysis - instead, we often get a quick opinion, with little justification for that opinion. It seems low-effort and disengaged throughout, exactly the sort of thing a faking wolf could do. Does this prove Commodore is a wolf? No, of course not. Do I think it's more likely than not, at this point? 

...yeah, I think I do. That's the overwhelming impression I walk away with. 

Is he a better lynch than Adrien? ...no, I don't think so, not at this point. Adrien I think has offered even less than Commodore, and everything I said about him still holds true. If Commodore is village, he is contributing a bit more than village!Adrien is, and the town would feel his loss more than it would Adrien's. So, my vote stays.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I know I said I'd do GKC, but I'm exhausted at this point and I sincerely doubt he's going to leap out as a better target to me than Adrien or Commodore at this point, so I'm going to delay that until tomorrow. Right now I'm open to voting for either of those two.

[pindicator]

Quote shortened to the interesting bit.

But that is not what AdrienIer has done! Instead he has gone from easy low- content pick of superdeath to easy low-content pick of Bob. What first caught my attention is that both came in quick response to other people being put up. It was right after Rowain pushed Commodore and Comm was getting some attention that he voted superdeath. And now with Cyneheard getting attention he's suddenly on the Bob wagon despite it not being a dig for every crumb type of vote. But regardless of that or whether that has anything to do with anything, I don't like that he is buddying up to one low content person, taking him under his wing, and then jumping right over to another while saying we have to put in the effort to find tells. The actions don't match the words.

So do you thing both Commodore and Cyneheard are Adriens wolf-buddies?

Funnily, I did draw a line between Pind and Cyneheard for Pindicators timing to vote AdrienIer   The feeling is enhanced with him mentioning Cyneheard multiple times, asking others opinions of him. I recall him townreading Cyneheard earlygame. Anyways, I do find it funny how he suspects Adrien for the same connection, perhaps being self aware of his own rescue vote 

Re-reading Meiz's day 1, and I must have missed this when it happened because here he is misreading and/or misrepresenting my positions again.  I never gave Cyneheard a townread.  I did ask people their positions of him - one of which was AdrienIer after his post where he said he re-read Bob & Cyneheard and thought Bob was scummier.  The other was scooter as scooter had been on Cyneheard early in the day and then hadn't mentioned him for a while.

Meiz, why didn't you vote me end of day 1?  As your posts go on throughout the day you get more and more targeted on me and talk less and less about Cyneheard.  You were asking people what they thought about pushing me, but you didn't want to be the first to be on that wagon?

[Meiz]

Rowain you are being disingenuous - I voted for Cyneheard as a test, because he provided me with the voting tags. If I had tested it on ANY OTHER PERSON that would have been suspect. Moreover, I was the one who had the most telling engagement with Cyne, after which the wagon on him started in earnest. Probably if that day had lasted longer, I would've switched to Cyne, but I absolutely disliked bob's tone and didn't want to switch at the moment.

This and the references to earlier posts make me believe GKC strongly believes he was one of the main parts in starting the Cyneheard train. I'm doubtful if he as a wolf would be trying to play this card to gain credibility so stubbornly. Feels more frustrated for me not understanding the signs. I'm back to pindicator while waiting for Commodore & Adrien to start scum hunting.

GKC, unfortunately no one will take a look at your naufragar accusation if there are no links to the posts you mentioned. Regardless, I want to hear your rest of the take on players. You mentioned somethign about CMF, but others as well.

Okay, now I'm starting to feel you are disingenuous Meiz, because you are mischaracterizing and oversimplifying my posts. Suspicions are one thing, that's good town play, but ignoring the parts of my posts that don't fit your theory and then ignoring me calling out the parts that you miss is making me think this attack is forced.

To tunnel vision past my Lewwyn interactions is one thing, but to ignore me bringing that up as a counter point entirely is willful. You do a quick oh let's look at GKC for a sec- nope, back to pindicator! But then you also over simplify and dismiss the long post from early today, saying that all I do is talk about Commodore and waste space. Do you see nothing of the interaction with AdrienIer there, nothing of the willingness to test that i might be wrong by seeing how he will vote on another suspicious target? Nothing on the benefit of finding town reads in a game where i don't know the alignment of anyone else? Or do you see and intentionally choose to ignore that?

Meiz is like a dog with a bone

For the first part, are you referring to the idea that you were focused on Lewwyn despite me claiming you were not? Sorry, I was not focused on that yesterday and dropped the vote back to you (before going to bed) just due to not feeling the lynch of GKC. I didn't go back through your posts and even think about it. But yes, I did read your counterpoint and I'm wrong that you completely ignored Lewwyn.  It was mild though from my perspective, as I did not understand the Bob train comment to begin with. As for the mischaracterization of your longer post, I regretted typing it soon after as it was not fair. Tunnel vision at it's best.

Quote shortened to the interesting bit.

But that is not what AdrienIer has done! Instead he has gone from easy low- content pick of superdeath to easy low-content pick of Bob. What first caught my attention is that both came in quick response to other people being put up. It was right after Rowain pushed Commodore and Comm was getting some attention that he voted superdeath. And now with Cyneheard getting attention he's suddenly on the Bob wagon despite it not being a dig for every crumb type of vote. But regardless of that or whether that has anything to do with anything, I don't like that he is buddying up to one low content person, taking him under his wing, and then jumping right over to another while saying we have to put in the effort to find tells. The actions don't match the words.

So do you thing both Commodore and Cyneheard are Adriens wolf-buddies?

Funnily, I did draw a line between Pind and Cyneheard for Pindicators timing to vote AdrienIer   The feeling is enhanced with him mentioning Cyneheard multiple times, asking others opinions of him. I recall him townreading Cyneheard earlygame. Anyways, I do find it funny how he suspects Adrien for the same connection, perhaps being self aware of his own rescue vote  

Re-reading Meiz's day 1, and I must have missed this when it happened because here he is misreading and/or misrepresenting my positions again.  I never gave Cyneheard a townread.  I did ask people their positions of him - one of which was AdrienIer after his post where he said he re-read Bob & Cyneheard and thought Bob was scummier.  The other was scooter as scooter had been on Cyneheard early in the day and then hadn't mentioned him for a while.

Meiz, why didn't you vote me end of day 1?  As your posts go on throughout the day you get more and more targeted on me and talk less and less about Cyneheard.  You were asking people what they thought about pushing me, but you didn't want to be the first to be on that wagon?

Misremembering. As for the vote, there wasn't any interest besides Adrien's vote agaisnt you. My option would have been to switch my vote away from Cyneheard, and pushing Bob as a more clear lynch candidate, which I wanted to avoid. At that point the last minute vote switching back and forth just felt unnececcarily chaotic.

While typing this I realize I'm overly stubborn with you. My instinct is telling me that wolves wanted to push an alternative town-train to keep Cyneheard safe, and your vote for Adrien fits the bill the best.

I really like CMF's take on the players above. The simple explanation is that AdrienIer is a genuinely time-pressed wolf playing a simple game. The stillness of the end of day would explain this as well. And as a big plus, his role reveal would give a lot of insight on your end of day.

[Rowain]

Kudos to CMF for his elaborations

If Adrien is a wolf then pindi is cleared and both Meiz and GKC should be under scrutiny. If Adrien turns up as town then pindi is IMO a wolf which would push Meiz into town-ranks.

SD has again been invisible and that is a problem. Sooner or later he has to be lynched.

But for today I'm happy with resolving the Adrien-pindi- problem.

AdrienIer

[Serdoa]

You basically stated: "Yeah, everything you point out is correct, my play can't be explained further and it is understandable that I come under scrutiny. HOWEVER how dare you to talk about that at this time."

That is correct. Again I know how my voting looks and I was surprised that so far nobody has pointed it out. And thats why I was surprised when suddenly 24 hours after CH was dead an attack came from you. From someone who had reread Day1 at least once. That is a fact that remains as strange and questionable as my vote no matter how tiring this makes you feel.

Ok, lets set this straight first: I have not re-read Day 1. That is also apparent by my posts. Lets look:

18:00 - Night ends
18:30 - Info why I did not switch to AdrienIer -> Dinner
19:55 - Pointing out a post by nauf I didn't like
20:42 - Replying to nauf
22:35 - Another reply to nauf
---- SLEEPING ----
08:28 - Explaining GKC how nauf has misinterpreted / misconstrued what Lewwyn said
08:54 - Short post on why I think the meta-speculations are leading nowhere
11:02 - Replying to you Rowain, because you pointed out that so far I've only looked at nauf (1)
14:30 - Posting that I have been re-reading from the start and am currently at page 22, pointing out how Cyneheards posts could implicate nauf
14:56 - Replying to Meiz about my feelings on nauf
15:16 - Replying to nauf about how I feel about GKC
18:40 - My post on your voting and general what I realized about how the day unfolded

So, having my post-history laid out before you (which you could have looked up yourself, but I guess it wasn't that important, your main point was just to deflect my attack on you by pointing to anything that could be construed as "strange"), including the timings, can you see now, why your attack upsets me? Because you make it sound like I should have pointed that out much earlier, when in fact the earliest would have been like 5 hours earlier than I did, and that only if I had not concentrated on Cyneheards posts first.

You also come back to your vote all the time, I will therefore point again out, that I find the whole string of events worth a look, not just one vote from you.



(1) Your remark is true, but if you look at the timings you might realize that the days and nights of this game end with me having around 4-5 hours before bed and when I come back, 12+ hours have gone by. So if a post piques my interest before bed, I will respond to that (as I did after N1) and not start re-reading, looking at vote histories etc.

On Tuesday it will be even worse btw, because I will be off to work in the morning and probably not able to post before 17:00 the next day, maybe later depending how much I need to read, so 24+ after the night results come in. You can be certain I will point out funky behavior at that point, no matter if 24h have gone by which apparently for you is the cut-off period after which one (or only I?) is not allowed to point back to what happened.