I thought my analysis factored that in, but I’ll reiterate: septimus’s catch is right on and makes me strongly suspect Mahaloth is a spy.
Two of those accepts seem pretty reasonable. I’m as confident Johnny is not a spy as I am Mahaloth is a spy, and he’s on the team. His “approve” makes sense. sinjin is on the team, so his “approve” makes sense as well, though his loyalty is ambiguous, IMO. The combination of TexCat AND Storyeller confuses me. Following the Johnny=Resistance, Mahaloth=spy train of logic, at least one of TexCat andStoryeller is a spy. If both spies, sinjin is probably the bad apple on the proposed team, and Group C is clean. If only one of the two is a spy, only one spy voted for the mission. Mahaloth did a head fake to vote for the mission, but ultimately didn’t. This implies that sinjin is Resistance and that Group C has two of three spies.
Approving the current team won’t prove either theory on a fail, so the team should be rejected. If it fails, either Storyteller or Mr Shine is a spy. The next proposed team should be the same one Terminus proposed. Maybe sinjin gets swapped out for somebody in Group C, but I’d like to see the previous team come up again. If it fails, I would be confident that sinjin was the spy. Storyteller and TexCat should not be on teams until we can determine which is the spy or if both are. If nothing else, Mahaloth’s approval should throw doubt on the current proposal.
When one plays this game in person, how does the resistance team make progress? Listening during the spy phase for noises? Otherwise, it’s just a crap shoot.
It’s shocking how effective turning to the person next to you and flat out asking “Are you a spy?” is.
This is vanilla Resistance. Avalon is a variant where there are special roles, the most game changing being Merlin and the Assassin. Merlin knows all the spies, but they don’t know him. In the event of a good guy win, the assassin tries to “kill” Merlin. If he picks the right good guy, evil wins even if they lost three missions.
The other variant adds missions that are given out by the leader. I’ve only played with these once, so my memory is sketchy, but they’re things like forcing a player to commit to accepting or rejecting a team publicly before others commit or allowing a non-leader player to look at another player’s allegiance.
Both of these add to the information available, which probably helps the good guys more. Also, I find that five players strongly favors the good guys. Six did as well, but less so, IMO. 7 is a sweet spot, I think, while 8 felt like it favored evil.
Mahaloth did a “head fake.” It’s not clear whether his Accept or Reject was the feigned one. In the event that Group A (Tex, Story, Maha) has THREE Spies, both Story’s accept and TexCat’s Accept were Scummy and we should assume Terminus’ team was UNclean.
My segue into “If Terminus’ team was clean” was unclear; I should have started a new paragraph. I was suggesting that Hooker’s scenario was unlikely but if true would imply that Group C has TWO Spies, which increases the chance that Hooker is a Spy, so “blowing smoke.” I suppose it’s barely possible that Mr Shine is a Spy, and the six Townies are Terminus’ team + Hooker + Story but that seems VERY far-fetched.
I called Sinjin “likely Spy” just to emphasize that Mr Shine seems to me to be the “Towniest” of the possible leaders remaining in this round, and based on the assumption that Scum liked Terminus’ proposal. It’s possible that Terminus is the Spy instead of sinjin, but time is running out – we’ve got to make assumptions.
In any case, I’m almost certain that Terminus’ team had at least three Townies. If one of the alternate leaders (Sinjin, Hooker, Story) will commit to proposing a team consisting entirely or almost entirely of the four I find most Townish (Johnny, Terminus, Mr Shine, myself) then I’ll send another changed-my-mind PM to MentalGuy and wait for that proposal. If not, I think the present proposal may be our best hope now, even though I’m only lukewarm on Story.
I was editing my post, with its unlikely cases, and exceeded the 5-minute limit.
I wanted to mention that the above possibility, with Group A having 3 Spies and Group C zero seems unlikely and not worth considering, at least until we’re trying to make a 5-player team.
I continue to urge my earlier view: Group A has 2 Spies, Groups B and C have 1 Spy each.
This game is crazy to me. It seems like everyone is saying “pick my team or I won’t vote for the team” Seems like an easy way for scum to win. How can we decide on a team when EVERYONE has their own idea of who should be on the team. Terminus changed his team to meet the requirements of others and then the others still vetoed it. WTF. I thought he was being exceptionally nice about the whole thing. And then he voted against his team too, bleh. Give me mafia wifom any day vs this. Sha me now Naf.
I like this Game; it’s more interesting and fast-moving than the Mafia games I’ve played. (If everyone were in the same time-zone, maybe it’d be even faster. I might become a night owl again just to play this game. )
The experienced players have emphasized that Rejections are key to acquiring information. I’d vote Reject now, but am uncertain about the remaining leaders.
sinjin, will you tell us about your own proposal if the present one is rejected? With the high suspicion on the remaining possible leaders (Hooker, Story), I think there’s an excellent chance you would get your own mission Accepted.
I agree that two spies in A is the more likely scenario, but the other would come up 1 time every 8 times the 2 spy scenario does and cannot be ruled out. I like it because it solves the spies completely, but that’s wishful thinking. I’m not saying the 3 spies scenario is a lock, but it does make the “anomalous yes votes” make perfect sense. If it’s not the case, one anomalous yes is a Resistance member getting played.
I’d commit to Johnny, Terminus, and you. I’d like to put myself as the fourth, but I fear that would be voted down. I’d be willing to go with Storyteller, but I think that’s a 50/50 shot.
and I’m requoting it mainly to remind myself who’s in each group. One big point to note: Johnny Bravo doesn’t appear in any group. I know that’s because septimus, by assuming two spies in A, clears Johnny - but for the sake of completeness, he should appear in group B.
Secondly, does nobody else have any concerns about this:
Because were septimus a Spy, I suspect other Spies might take this as guidance on how to address the risks of Double-Fail. The second paragraph (“watch out chaps, they might talk about voting strategies!”) is cute, but come on - it’s not just me, right?
I’ve been thinking about this, and have concluded it’s a better team than the one proposed by Mr. Shine. Even those suspicious of Hooker may agree that the chance Hooker is Spy is less than the chance Story is Spy – not only do we have to worry we’ve guessed which is the only Townie in Group A, we have to worry that ALL THREE in Group A are Spies, and there is no right guess.
I hope players will announce whether they’d Accept Hooker’s proposal. I don’t want to Reject Mr. Shine’s mission unless I know Hooker’s will be Accepted by six.
I’m being strongly reminded of why I failed basic Logic in college.
Septimus’s thought process about Mahaloth’s potential stealth communication at least passes the sniff test, and I don’t like that Mr. Shine nominated one of the three people from the first group without any good reason. So I’ll vote to reject this one and I guess we can see if Hooker plays us straight.
Fair warning: I am already about 65% lost and that number will only increase as we go deeper down the rabbit hole without any hard evidence. I’m having a lot of trouble tracking the large handful of hypothetical “if->then” statements being thrown around.
I think that in this particular game the “scum” really benefit from the forum format. More talking just means a worse signal-to-noise ratio for us, since we have no lynches to confirm or deny our theories.
I agree with Johnny. I think people are making logical houses of cards that I either can’t or won’t follow through and completely analyse. All I can say is that I will reject any proposal by or containing HookerChemical
Only a very tiny bit. Storyteller and I have already discussed methods spies can use to communicate. Story noted that the spies will find a way to communicate, and I discussed one that is much better suited for TT play where it’s harder to keep track of the exactly what was said.
Sinjin will propose a team as well. There are three more bites at the apple. I’d like to see sinjin propose a team without himself, though. I’d like to see Terminus’s team minus sinjin plus somebody from Group C. On a fail, we would know there is a spy in Group C and who it is. We would also know that there is probably a spy in Group B. If the mission succeeds, we have that success and an indicator that that person from Group C was clean.
It is a house of cards, but the only other options are worse. If we don’t assume 2 spies on the first mission, we’re left with no actionable suppositions and no theories to build around. It’s better than
Mr Shine, would you commit to a team proposed by me with Johnny, Terminus, spetimus and a fourth member from Group C picked by Johnny if I proposed it?
Well, it’s been pretty quiet. Personally, I don’t think that’s helped me much.
Given the paucity of hard data, I think we have to go back to the soft data of who’s saying what to who, and how we feel about that. Dusting off the old Scumdar 5000, in other words.
I am getting a really hinky feeling about septimus. We HAVE to assume Mahaloth is a Spy, so we HAVE to assume there were two Spies in mission 1, so somehow we HAVE to assume Mr Shine isn’t a spy. It feels less like a house of cards and more like a shell-game.
I further don’t like the way Hooker has dismissed my concerns about septimus laying out an explicit strategy for spies to follow to avoid Double-Failing. Other people have talked about the possibility, sure. But septimus has gone beyond that.
I’m almost tempted to Accept this mission because I think there’s a good chance there’s two Spies on it. However, if I’m right then the strategy for dealing with that was already laid out, so I don’t see the benefit.
I honestly don’t understand most of what’s being said in this thread so far. Septimus and HookerChemical seem to be building complicated arguments with sets of players and if-then statements… but always predicated on some assumption that’s entirely shaky as far as I can tell. I entirely agree, as someone or other noted above, that we need working hypotheses, but that doesn’t mean that any hypothesis will do… and it certainly doesn’t mean that the hypothesis that would be most useful if true should have the advantage.
Much of what septimus and HookerChemical are saying starts with the idea that there were two spies on Mission 1. I see no evidence to suggest this. I see much more evidence to suggest only one:
Having thought about it, it’s clear that the optimal situation for the Spies is exactly one Spy on a team. The Mission 1 team was accepted rapidly and with minimal “reject” votes, suggesting to me that perhaps the Spies were happy with it because it contained one and only one Spy. If there were two spies on Mission 1, I think there might have been more effort to reject it by the Spies. (Obviously, this is pretty much speculation, but what the hell, right?).
There was only one “mission fail” vote. Obviously this could reflect either coordination or just plain luck on the part of two spies, but it certainly doesn’t disprove the one-spy hypothesis.
If there are two spies, Texcat’s immediate reaction post-results makes no sense. In such a scenario, she is a spy and so is Mahaloth (you don’t know that for sure, but I do), and yet she quickly jumped to the idea that we would reject all three of us in all future missions… an approach that would badly hurt the Spies if indeed Mahaloth and Texcat were Spies.
On the whole, I reject the two-spy hypothesis as less likely than the one-spy hypothesis. I think there was only one, and I provisionally think it was Texcat.
I think part of my disconnect is that it’s clear some folks are playing this game as a straight-up logical exercise, trying to brute-force a solution with numbers and such. I don’t think that’s much fun for me personally, and also I’m not good at thinking like that. Trying to identify spies by looking at behavior is more interesting, and more likely to be effective for me personally.
So here’s the deal: I think Mahaloth, HookerChemical, septimus, and I are the four players most likely to be Resistance.
I know I am.
Since I think there was only one spy in Mission 1 and I think it’s Texcat, I’m provisionally clearing Mahaloth.
Though I disagree with their approach and their conclusions, Hooker and septimus seem to be earnestly, and in great detail, attempting to solve the game. While it’s possible they’d go to the same lengths to confuse the Resistance as Spies, the tone seems honest and in good faith.
Thus the team I am most likely to nominate if I end up as leader will be those four. I would in such a case certainly listen to arguments to swap out one of the other three for another player more likely to be Resistance, but I’ll certainly nominate myself.
I have thus far voted to accept every team that’s been nominated (actually, I haven’t yet formally cast a vote at all, but only because I know that counts the same as an acceptance). At this particular moment, I’d reject a team including Texcat but probably would accept anything else; I haven’t yet puzzled out the ideal strategy for deciding whether to accept/reject.
Terminus Est - reject
sinjin - accept
Stanislaus - reject
TexCat - reject
Storyteller - accept
HookerChemical - reject
Mr Shine - accept
Mahaloth - accept
Johnny Bravo - reject
septimus - accept
The vote is 5-5, but a majority is needed to accept. The mission is rejected.
The team that was rejected was:
Mr Shine
Terminus Est
storyteller0910
septimus
sinjin needs to nominate a team of 4 player to go on a mission (mission 2.3). sinjin please PM your nomination before 10:00 am central time tomorrow (November 14, 2014).
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