Hmmm … interesting that more than one person protected Visorslash. One explanation could be that his Scum Buddies protected him. Another explanation is that his Mason Buddies protected him.
In any case, Inner Stickler seems to be tied to Visorslash in some way. Of course, this could be a direct buddy-buddy connection, or it could be an indirect connection (as in, Inner Stickler having an action where he protects the second-place vote getter, regardless of who it is.)
Oh I wasn’t offended, just admitting that it’s very tricky to actually implement 
And a reason for allowing PM’s etc between players just became clear:smack:
I’m still kind of curious as to how much HP the Demon Lord has, and if he can be killed though.
None of them. I can’t affect the vote total beyond my own vote. I suspected there would be something like this, but I didn’t expect four somethings. Looks like a 2-vote margin won’t be enough.
Fascinating.
I missed the extra vote on Gadarene and the one on Mosier. I speculate that they are separate players (although can’t prove this, and the vote charger roles in Malazan are a counterargument).
The three late votes for Mosier are probably a single power; one-shot, I hope.
Normal, the vote for Silver Jan was basically insurance against the possibility of not finding a better candidate before Day’s end. Do you think it would have been better to place the vote with no explanation? I don’t.
I’m alive! 
Here’s how this is going to go:
(1) I’m going to point to my post after day was called where I think I’m the lynch and express my desire that town win the game.
(2) I’m going to state that because this was (in my mind) effectively a dead-post, I would have no motivation to be less than honest about my affiliation, and therefore I am an obvious townie.
(3) People are going to say that it could all have been part of some elaborate ploy on my part where I knew (under this theory) that I wasn’t going to be the lynch despite my leading in votes at the end of Day.
(4) People are going to call me scummy for thinking my “dead-post” clears me.
(5) People are going to call me scummy for pointing out my “dead-post.”
(6) People are going to call me scummy for making this list.
Does that about cover it? Actual thoughts about actual things later.
Whoops, forgot one:
(7) People are going to call me scummy for predicting that people are going to call me scummy.
Missed one.
Not much effort at all. And I’d prefer to be seen as clearish so, y’know, Town doesn’t waste a lynch or a vig on me.
One thing I’d like to do at some point is go over the wagons and see who voted me when and for what claimed reason. Voting me on the basis of a “me too” vote that I later elaborated upon is reeeeeeeeeeeally flimsy, especially when I’m a lead wagon. I don’t buy that everyone did it in good faith.
No, I think it would have come off as more “real” not to work in such a top-down fashion, nor to overdo a simple vote to such a huge extent. This is what your post looks like:
– hmm, bad bandwagon here, probably on a townie
– hmm, let’s examine his voters one by one and see what looks bad enough to vote for
– hmm, let’s pick one of several more or less equally bad-looking options and dress it up with a full post-analysis that turns up really nothing more damning than the original “this vote is not good”, then place a vote anyway
And the bit I chopped off, about Astral (and Gadarene) and how you wanted to (and ultimately did) come back to them later – it just feels all backwards to me in terms of priorities, MHaye. Silver Jan had no votes and hadn’t been the subject of much discussion. Astral did have a vote or votes and was the subject of a lot of discussion, much of it revolving around Gadarene, who was a potential lynch target. Now what’s more important for a townie to figure out under limited time constraints – getting a handle on a situation that could affect the lynch, or getting a vote on the record, given an expressed interest in doing both things but a lack of time to do it in? I’d think the former. And what did you actually prioritize, and to what extent? The latter, and to a great extent.
Your whole Silver Jan post could have been summed up in a paragraph or so, or even less: “I’m suspicious of Silver Jan for voting Visorslash on such a thin reason and not unvoting him (also on a thin reason). I’d like to get it on the record before going on to the other interesting stuff. Vote Silver Jan.” The end.
Everything but that is window-dressing, misplaced to boot, and to me at the moment, not terribly convincing as being anythign other than a big show of trying to do the right thing as a townie.
Well, Gadarene, really all those points could be boiled down to:
– somebody used a lot of effort to keep you and/or Astral alive
– that somebody is not a good guy in the game
– that somebody is either framing you, at great expense unless those extra votes are in fact unlimited, or has a different interest in keeping you alive and kicking
The rest is not worth discussing.
That’s not true, actually. My points are going to my post that I made when I was lynch leader and I assumed I was dead. At the very least, my post should be considered a data point towards my townieness. If you want to believe that it was an elaborate ploy because I somehow knew that the lynch would end up getting flipped, there’s nothing stopping you, but it certainly isn’t the simplest explanation.
How do you know this? While disrupting the lynch is pretty scummy, vote powers are generally a town power. It’s not completely out of the question that a town player could have choosen to save Gadarene. At the very least, we shouldn’t completely discount that idea immediately, especially as it seems likely more than one player affected the vote.
This part I agree with completely. It’s very pro-scum to leave town’s top targets (me and Gad) alive for town to worry about toMorrow. It would seem to implicate scum having some agenda, but with multiple players affecting the vote (as seems to be the case), we can’t draw any conclusions with certainty.
I will also again point out that I am apparently one of the “town’s top targets” because (1) I piggybacked Guiri’s vote of Astral early without explaining my read sufficiently at that time; and (2) I was unable to post this weekend. That’s it. If someone would like to present a more elaborate or detailed case on why they think I am likely to be scum, I would be interested in hearing it, but those two points are what everyone’s votes have boiled down to so far. And, frankly, that’s not a good case.
Dopers fall prey to voting inertia too much, in my opinion. Someone becomes an early target for x reason or y reason, and then they stay a target throughout that day and later days often for no other reason than that they were an early target. In the beginning, however, we have very little information on which to base our decisions. As we gain information, we as Town should be willing to let our reads be flexible and dynamic, to adapt to the present game-state rather than simply thinking, “well, people thought Gad was scummy at the beginning of day 1. He’s a good vote.”
Particularly when the reasons for finding me scummy at the beginning of day 1 are, as I’ve said, a load of quaffle.
After the Silver Jan vote, I make some noise criticising it, and MHaye says something like “fair enough, it was weak anyway”, which – fine. he had stated his intent to review Astral previously, so I don’t have anything to say about that aspect.
For the record, I can’t see what Astral is saying here at all, never mind the vote.
Apropos of nothing, I disagree. But that should be no surprise.
You know, I do recognize that Astral could be scummy with scum sauce (just look at that vote count) and you as pure as the driven snow, but you’re still slinging it around pretty heavy here. I know your playstyle as well as anyone, and it still struck me, once Astral had pointed it out, that you’d managed to go half the day without commenting on anything remotely vote related at all. Correct me if I’m wrong – night is a good time for that sort of thing – but I think that you generally do, when you’re town. You might not place a vote, but you’re in there somewhere, one in a while, saying something. If find this to be a valid vote, if also a really easy one that a scum Astral could toss out without breaking a sweat. (For that matter, it would be an easy vote even if he’s scum with you.)
Hold up a second here, I remember this from the first reading as being something I wanted to point out. So voting Gadarene woudl be defensible if Astral had expressed suspicion of Gadarene over Visorslash. Astral actually HAD questioned Gadarene a couple of times, versus Visorslash not at all. Does that not demonstrate the requisite level of suspicion, right there? It should not take much, and you yourself state that you have no issue with such a vote being placed as such.
Also, how is Gadarene having voted for Astral supposed to be a point AGAINST Astral’s having enough suspicion of Gad to return the favor if he felt the urge? It should be the opposite. Your argument here is muddled, you seem to be trying to make him look more suspicious than he is, despite the veneer of fair-mindedness.
All in all you have turned up no reason so far that you yourself should find Astral worth voting for, save for one reason that is IMO precisely backwards.
Well fine. But what does that have to do with you?
No way. I would never in a million years consider that first option as an explanation for Astral’s words. IS’s "he might be trying too hard to look townie’ rings true. This does not, this is a scummy PIS accusation right out of Drain Bead’s textbook, IMO.
Oh, so it might be nothing.
Argh, this cannot be real! Does anyone else see this? It’s fake contemplation, IMO, it’s all for show.
And so, at the end of it all, despite
– believing the vote switch in itself would not be suspicious if Astral showed enough suspicion of Gadarene over Visorslash
– failing to demonstrate (or demonstrating with backwards logic) that Astral had not met that threshhold
– qualifying every single statement he made about six ways to Sunday
he votes for Astral. And the thing is, I could buy a townie MHaye voting Astral merely on the play style thing. If he’s innocent, it’s as valid a point from his perspective as I think Astral’s [would be/would have been/was/pick the right tense and mood please] from his. But it’s surrounded with too much excess verbiage – much of which I have significant problems with on its own merits – to ring completely true.
And finally, this bit?
I’m going to pull a Pizza here. Rhetorical question? That you answer yourself? You sure aren’t trying to convince anyone of Astral’s guilt right here. No, you’re trying to convince the townies that you have a good reason for changing your vote. That’s what scum do.
But the thing is, if scum, you WOULD have known, or at least known it was a very strong possibility, that you would live. So you’d have had all the motive you’d need to make such a post. IMO that makes the whole thing WIFOM of the purest sort and not worth discussing.
Totally unlike your reason for voting for me at the beginning of Day 1, right? 
Re: Normal Phase’s entire case on MHaye.
I agree, completely. You’ve phrased my own suspicions better than I probably could have. There was quite a bit pinging me about him, but I was struggling to put it into words.
Hoo doggies, this is a big load of WTF.
Is it possible that one of the anti-Mosier voters had their votes tripled? Or quadrupled, I guess, since it looks like there were four extra votes. But why is one of those extra votes anonymous, i.e. not credited to askthepizzaguy? And ditto the extra vote on Gadarene? Did whoever placed the extra vote on Gadarene know that someone was placing a fuckton of extra votes on Mosier and try to save Mosier? But then wouldn’t it have been smarter to just add the votes to Astral, who’s in second place? Are the lost hit points definitely related to the “I’ll protect you!” cries? Why was someone (Inner Stickler if the color is chronologically correct, which I don’t see any reason to doubt) so determined to protect Visorslash during the battle? And it looks like he had reason to, considering Visorslash was obviously being targetted for whatever reason.
To address Gadarene’s “I said Go Town! after EOD so I must be Townie!” point, it’s a good one, except I’m pretty sure I’ve read games where a lynch leader proclaimed “Go town!” before the final color was at last reported and they flipped scum, only then to get all “mwah-ha-ha!” in their real final comments.
Plus, the fact that you weren’t lynched could indicate that you knew you weren’t going to die, so that last heroic “I regret I have one life to give for my country!” moment was merely a way of looking good.
*And on preview I see that Normal Phase has just pointed out the same thing I did about Gadarene’s noble goodbye speech. Ah well. *
… Or you could really be Town, and it’s just a coincidence that someone saved your ass.
But I still don’t understand why the extra votes wouldn’t have been placed on Astral since it would’ve taken fewer of them to save Gadarene. In fact it looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to save Astral while pinning the blame on Gadarene by tossing off one vote on Gadarene just to… y’know, I have no idea how to end that sentence. What was the point of that one-off Gadarene vote unless it was someone trying to save Mosier, someone who apparently know about the extra vote mechanics?
Is someone trying to cast blame on the Mosier voters, or the Astral voters, or the Gadarene voters? Or on Astral and Gadarene themselves? Is it someone not aligned with any of those three groups and/or suspects?
Holy crap I am confused. I think I’ve just described a conspiracy involving almost everyone. If anyone knows their Agatha Christie classics, it’s like…
Murder on the Orient Express
… only with blame instead of knives in the dark.
Seriously, people: W. T. F.?!
The first part is based on it being explicitly said that the traitor is pulling the Demon Lord’s strings, and three of the extra votes being explictily attributed to the Demon Lord. You’d have to do a lot of convincing to get me to belive those three votes came from anywhere else. The single ones on Gadarene and Mosier, sure, they could be from anywhere.
I have some issues with you singling out that last statement of mine when I’ve said or implied elsewhere that I have difficulty believing that the traitor would use such a strong power just to frame a couple of townies when he could instead use it more productively to save scum. And I’ve also had I have difficulty believing the power is unlimited. It would be a brutal blow to the town’s ability to lynch scum, if so.
There’s a bit of wiggle room in the gray area there; I don’t consider it a slam dunk that either of you are scum, but I’d still bet that way if I had to.