Interesting point that was ignored in game thread. It sort of segues into the following question, but only in the need for a disclaimer “Assume Town didn’t think of Chronos’ point.” :dubious:
Assuming the chance that a Doc existed was at least 85% or so, I’m still doubtful that Town’s strategy for Night 3 was best (and wonder if my comment #1031 was ignored because it was thought likely to be scummy obfuscation).
Playing as they did (Jailing Cop and letting Vig and Doc cancel each other),
[ul][li]Town wasted a Cop investigation.[/li][li]Town wasted a Vig kill.[/li][li]Town gave Scum an unimpaired chance at killing confirmed Townie. (This may be minor, and Scum took a luckier shot anyway.)[/li][/ul]
Surely an Investigate and Vig-kill would have done much more to further Town’s chances than confirming what was already strongly suspected. Anyway, whether a Doc existed or not was likely to become clear in a Day or two even without any special “test.”
The only flaw I see in this thinking is the loss of a Cop if Doc didn’t exist. But
[ul][li] A Cop that must be Jailed isn’t worth that much anyway.[/li][li]The Jailer could have been given WIFOM advice like: “Your intuition’s been pretty good. Go ahead and Jail the Cop if that seems wise to you.”[/li][/ul] Chronos has given a good reason why the chance of Doc’s existence was less than Town thought. This might argue against my thinking; however, since this reason wasn’t brought up in the game thread, it wouldn’t explain why my comment was ignored there.
I think the full claim going on now just about seals the game. Mental Guy needs one more investigation to shift the numbers completely towards a Town win, which means the Doc should be willing to be sacrificed as Night Kill.
6 confirmed to 5 unknown (or better 5 confirmed and a scum).
If MentalGuy dies during next Night, 5 confirmed to 3 unknown.
If Vig dies during next Night, then 6 confirmed (from investigation) to 4 unknown.
I can’t see a scum win in this situation. I think it’s game over time.
Yeah, with the Scum hitting a vanilla and the Godfather dead, it looks over to me, too.
Quoth sachertorte:
Not only that, but three of the four dead Town were Vanilla.
Of course, Town had a lot of luck and a decent helping of skill, but I think the setup was also biased towards Town to begin with. The thing with an open setup is that all of the power roles are confirmable, and there were a good number of power roles here (more than there were Scum). Red might have been counting on the Bomber to thin the ranks more, but even at that, she would probably have waited as long as possible before setting off the explosives (since doing so costs two Nights of planting more), which would give those power roles plenty of time to act.
Man, this game has been a blast! My play was inexcusably bad this round, so I’m looking forward to the next game to improve. I was sloppy and unfocused, and it really hurt my ability to contribute. I’m actually glad I died last night, because I was a distraction to my team.
Lucky for me, town didn’t need my help! Red, when you get a chance, could I be spoilered?
Neither ed nor Zeriel voted for Mahaloth on the days he drew votes (and OAOW only drew one vote, from pedescribe), so scum will be shooting pretty much blind if they try to take out the Doc first.
I don’t see anything obviously wrong with analyses of the state of the game giving the win to the town. It shows how important the confirmed-pool win is. Good game, all!
If only my fellow scum had taken my advice to target the investigator on Night One. With the chance to recruit a sleeper, the risk of accidentally killing a sleeper, and the danger of a letting the investigator live, the risk of not killing the protected (and hence role-blocked) investigator was one they should have taken.
More thinking on loopholes: What if there’s something that Town is assuming is true, but isn’t? I’m having a hard time thinking of anything, there. My first thought is, what if there’s no Doctor after all? But that can’t be: The test night had no Vig kill, and peeker (the claimed Vig) confirmed that he did take the shot. He could be lying Scum, of course, but then he’s the last Scum, and will be killed by the real vig toNight for the win. He could be lying peeker and still be Town (he’s done crazier things), but then, we also have the fact that Suburban Plankton was an awakened Sleeper, which should in itself also guarantee that there’s a Doctor.
A Townie power role could, I suppose, have misunderstood the plan, and falsely claimed vanilla, while one or both Scum claimed power and got away with it. But even assuming such colossal mis-play by Town, which of the claimed powers could be Scum? I don’t think even peeker would dare false-claim Vig, since he couldn’t have possibly known that the real Vig was slacking. Mental Guy’s cop claim is verified by his correct identification of Drain, and a false claim by either of the claimed Masons would mean that all three of the real Masons must be asleep on the job. Further, at least one of Zeriel or special ed must genuinely be the third Mason, or one of the claimed Masons would have pointed out the discrepancy. So the only possibility I see left there is that one of the remaining Scum claimed nonspecific power role (which means Zeriel or special ed) and the real Doc claimed vanilla for some reason, and Mental confirms ed, so it’d have to be Zeriel. If this were the case, Scum might be sitting tight and hoping that the Doc remains AWOL, but it’s an awfully narrow scenario.
Alternately, Scum might just be insisting on playing it out, possibly to see how long they can last. If this is the case, then both Scum have way too much time on their hands.
Well, I wouldn’t want to call it until after the Day’s lynch. The town is kind of floundering on that point. It probably doesn’t matter, but what if the remaining scum can change votes just before the end of the Day and get a power role lynched? It’s remotely possible if the town’s votes are too scattered. The claimed masons need to pick a lynch target and bang the drum until everyone is following them.
That said, Town should try to make sure the vote leader (whoever it is) has at least a 3-vote lead on #2; I think actually a multiple-way tie and nonlynch is a more likely scum-wrench than a lynch of a Town power role.
At this point, the only reason I can think of that Scum haven’t given it up is that one of them is either Manwich or Guiri (that is, someone time-shifted relative to the rest of the thread) and hasn’t really had a chance to look at the math, and their partner doesn’t want to give up unilaterally.
This game seems to have been decided very early by the loss of Pleonast. There were a lot of town roles, especially after the sleeper awakenings yields a doc. When they had to face a confirmed cop early, they were extremely lucky/good to hit the jailor soon after but should have realized that a doctor was going to make the town have to play extremely sloppily in order to come remotely close to losing. I concur that the scum should have at least considered not seriously recruiting and instead giving off fake chicken messages a few times before trying to recruit townies they suspected to be Masons. That was perhaps their only major mistake other than Pleo getting meta’d out early, and they ended up with a lost game extremely quickly.
The first time I read this I thought you thought we had thought that Idle was a Mason when we sent him the chicken on Night 1.
I was honestly surprised that Suburban did indeed end up being the Sleeper. The odds were kinda long on that on its own, and I think relaying the chicken message may have gotten a non-sleeper Suburban some gambit-paranoia attention as the game went on, in light of the slip, which is always good. Since we were already bleeding and at risk of we or the Vig killing one of the sleepers as time went on, faking the messages incurred its own bundle of risk.