Yes, terrible. But no worse than redirecting the Patsy kill onto Capt. Klutz would be. I hope **Koldanar **calls Mafia’s bluff. I don’t think Mafia will kill Lutha. Mafia needs Lutha votes to win.
But if not, I am fine with being the one killed instead of Capt. Klutz. Why not make Mafia guess what **Koldanar **might do?
Scathach has still not checked in. This is not good, the Day is short and there is a rather crucial decision to make. If she does not participate, there won’t be much choice but to lynch her.
JohnnyBravo and Biotop (and anyone else really), what do you think the mafia plan was? And when did they put it together? Why carry it out at that time in that Day?
Um, if you are town then this puts us at LyLo. Yes, we hang the exposed scum, but then we are still at LyLo for the final scum.
If we lynch scum toDay then town can afford 2 mislynches. If we get it wrong the town can afford only one more mislynch (which is a long winded way of saying that we currently have 2 mislynches available). Note that if we mislynch the Patsy and they take out the false claimant then there is still only one more mislynch available.
DAY is the same 4 days it’s always been. Plus 2 extra hours, thank you very much.
I’ve been going over this an awful lot. It all hinges on two questions:
First, let’s look back on what we knew just after the hawkeye/Texcat claims.
[spoiler]
Confirmed non-scum:
Captain Klutz
MHaye
Koldanar
Sinjin
Unconfirmed players who have claimed VT (one scum minimum):
Johnny Bravo
Biotop
Plumpudding
Raventhief
**Unconfirmed players who have claimed patsy **(one scum minimum):
Texcat
Hawkeyeop
Unconfirmed players who have not claimed at all: (zero scum minimum)
Scathach[/spoiler]
Let’s say hawkeyeop is town, and he chose to claim because he did in fact decide, “fuck it, no more reason not to claim.”
In that circumstance, it makes sense for Texcat to fake. Why not? There was nothing for her to lose at that point. But now we have to question why a scummy Scathach would have jumped on board. Scummy Scathach would have been much better off claiming VT and hopping into the larger pool of unconfirmed townies. Remember - at that point the only thing we knew was that there was a minimum of one scum in the VT-claimant pool. Scathach could have gained a lot of cover by not bothering to fake claim patsy.
But then we have to think about the blackmail plan. The whole plan hinges on the patsy potentially being mislynched and Koldanar redirecting the kill to a townie. Scathach has to fake claim here to force the potential mislynch.
So the plan makes sense, and in this scenario it only could have been hatched after hawkeye’s claim since they couldn’t have seen it coming at this point. And when we consider the speed of Texcat’s counter, they probably didn’t hatch the plan in that interval. So Texcat’s counter is purely opportunistic.
But it only makes sense if hawkeyeop’s claim timing makes sense, and his timing is way too convenient for mafia’s purposes.
Now let’s look at it from the other direction. What if hawkeye is scum?
If hawkeye is scum, then it means the patsy plan was hatched before the claims happened. Hawkeye claims and then Texcat counters almost immediately. In this circumstance, Scathach not only is incentivized to claim but would be foolish not to! Two free scum kills! I would have done the same thing, and I never would have thought through whether I was playing into a trap of some kind.
But in this scenario, it was a trap. The scum needed there to two be two patsy claims after Texcat died to make sure that there’s a chance of a patsy mislynch.
So we’re playing Occam’s razor here with the two scenarios.
Scenario one: hawkeye is town.
[ul]
[li]Hawkeye chooses to claim under no pressure whatsoever.[/li][li]Texcat makes an immediate and opportunistic claim.[/li][li]Scum hatches the plan.[/li][li]Scathach false claims, creating the opportunity for a patsy mislynch.[/li][li]Scum make their offer.[/li][/ul]
Scenario two: hawkeye is scum.
[ul]
[li]Scum hatch the plan at any point, possibly even several Days ago.[/li][li]Hawkeye false claims, so that:[/li][li]Texcat false counters, forcing:[/li][li]Scathach to counter for real.[/li][li]Scum makes their offer.[/li][/ul]
So - what do we think? Did scum come up with this plan quickly (it was just about 24 hours between hawkeye’s claim and Scathach’s claim), or had they been planning this for a while? Did hawkeye’s claim make sense, or was it too convenient in the context of the plan?
If scum have been working up to this, then hawkeyeop is scum (the double-false claim does not make sense if it wasn’t for the purpose of the plan).
If this plan is simply an opportunistic “ah ha!” moment, then Scathach is scum.
If hawkeye’s claim timing is reasonable, then Scathach is scum.
If hawkeye’s claim timing is too convenient, then hawkeye is scum.
And since I didn’t say so directly, I think that the cult daykills can only imply that mafia was leading up to this. Without some sort of concrete reason, killing cult over killing confirmed townies is a low-value move. I haven’t looked back yet to see if every cult daykill happened when there was a confirmed townie on the table.
I think most of this had to be planned on the fly.
Even if a bit of this was preplanned, any Mafia scheme would have had to have been pretty vague. For instance, they couldn’t have known that the final wolf, Nanook the Alpha Wolf, was going to leave the game and take a claimed mason on the way out. They couldn’t have known **Lightfoot ** was the Zoning Inspector and not Patsy, or that she would make a vague claim at all, or that Wolves would kill her. And it more than strains credibility to suggest that **Koldanar **was kept alive by Mafia so that someday, if everyone but the Patsy had claimed and the Wolves were all gone, Mafia could force him to redirect the Patsy. (And I understand you are not claiming any of this, Johnny Bravo. These are just examples. I’m only trying to point out there is only so much advance planning that could have gone into this.)
Where the game is right now is a result of many many entirely independent unpredictable events.
The Mafia* could* have seen the benefit of being able to someday control LUTHA by threat of kill. But much more than that seems unlikely, IMHO.
Thanks Johnny, that mirrors a lot of my thinking on the matter.
If the plan was to blackmail the cult into redirecting a Patsy kill, this could only have any chance of working if the Zoning Inspector is dead (otherwise they could block the lutha redirection). LightFoot’s death occurred on Night 9. Note that mafia would have wanted her alive as they did not know whether she was the Patsy or the Zoning Inspector. As it happened, she was killed by the wolves, which was very fortunate for the mafia.
The blackmail plan does require that the Patsy is known, however, it does not require an extra exposed scum. I am having trouble seeing why TexCat did not simply claim Patsy, getting the counterclaim, then blackmailing lutha. There is no need to expose a second mafia member.
There is another problem with the blackmail plan: to carry out their threat, mafia need to have enough time to kill all of lutha. But mafia are in the awkward position of deciding their Daykill before seeing the actual results. Lutha could have ‘agreed’, lynched the Patsy, but then not redirected the kill. Mafia would now be exposed and not have enough time left to kill off lutha, so lutha and town would share the win.
My concern with mafia/lutha was much simpler: if we had mislynched yesterDay, mafia could have simply ordered lutha to vote for whoever they say, otherwise they will kill off lutha. That would result in either a mafia/lutha win, or a town win. I don’t know what lutha would have done, but it was certainly a concern. I was very glad that we did get scum yesterDay, as now mafia do not have time to eliminate lutha (as long as we lynch accurately).
So I am still having trouble seeing why scum felt it necessary to expose 2 of their number.
Previous Days have been 5 days, Nights were 2 days. So 4 days 2 hours is a shortening. Perhaps more importantly, the Day started early.
Still, pokes are up to the mods and you can’t say what (if anything) you are doing in that regard, so I’ll leave it there.
I am really struggling to find a reason for scum to expose 2 of their number in Patsygate.
It can’t be just to force the Patsy into the open, as they could have done that by simply having TexCat claim. So what were they thinking? Lets look at the 2 cases and try to reconstruct their thoughts.
Case 1 - Hawkeyop is scum
The mafia are scheming in their hideout. TexCat is a comfortable vote leader, which will leave them with just 2 members left and town having 2 mislynches available. Hawkeyeop now says “I know! I’ll claim Patsy. Then you can counterclaim. Eventually the real Patsy will counter. You, TexCat, will probably still be the lynch, but we can then try to blackmail the cult. If they don’t co-operate, we still have a good chance of mislynching the Patsy. After all, my claim is more believable because [reason 1].”
Case 2 - Scathach is scum
The mafia are in their hideout, TexCat is a comfortable vote leader. They are feeling a bit despondent. Suddenly there is news: “The Patsy just claimed! Now what do we do?” **TexCat **says “well obviously I’m going to counter. I’ve set up my breadcrumb on Night Zero (with thanks to Guiri, for making sure that came out into the open - Night Zero 396). So there’s some chance I’ll be believed and we can at least get a mislynch out of this”.
Later on, it’s not going too well. TexCat says “Now what? Maybe we can try blackmailing the cult. But to make sure, I think Scathach should also claim Patsy. This will help us because [reason 2]”
I have no idea what [reason 1] and [reason 2] could be. Any thoughts?
The plan only works if town lynches a patsy. Town only lynches a patsy if there are two viable patsy claims and if the blackmail plan is delivered by a confessed mafia (who obviously cannot also be the patsy).
So in Case 1, why does hawkeye think his claim would be more believable? Ask him - he made a point of giving us plenty of reasons why his claim should be believed. Like I already mentioned, it sounds like he was expecting counterclaims.
In Case 2, why would Scathach claim patsy? Because without the third claim, how on earth would the blackmail work? Imagine a scenario where Texcat delivers the same blackmail plan (lynch the patsy and redirect to a known townie), but there’s only one claimed patsy. They could still do the “keep your votes off of mafia” thing, but it’s a much weaker plan without the redirect scheme.
The only thing that’s constant in both cases is this: Texcat’s claim was never going to believable. She was on record as being strongly in favor of the patsy claiming immediately. That alone was reason to ignore any patsy claim on her part.
So, have we had everyone still alive checking in yet today? We are still at the point that the mafia can be the last two votes on someone for the hammer, were someone to reach 4 votes.
So far, I’m on the side of Hawkeyop is our patsy, and Scathach is our scum, but I’m not 100% at all (maybe 75/25).
Johnny, I’m having trouble reading who you truly suspect still - are you not sure?
I think Hawkeye and Biotop are the remaining scum. I do not think his claim timing makes sense in the context of the rest of the game.
But I will be following klutz’s vote no matter what due to the six vote hammer.
I think **Scathach **and either **plumpudding ** or **Johnny Bravo **are the remaining Scum.
**Hawkeyeop **made the Night 0 comment about “fair to Scum.” I still maintain Scum would not do that. I have ridden that horse all game. No reason to change now.
**Vote Scathach **.
I will be teaching class all Day. If **Scathach ** shows up to make her case, I will take it into consideration this evening.
Okay, this is meta:
Something that has nagged me since early game, and this may just be me, is that many of your votes seem simple, easy. You don’t vote easy, you think, you analyse and you seemingly dread to place a vote as town and you pour everything out. I have a gut feel about you, you’re a great scum, and player in general, and you’re difficult to pin down. Right now, I’d expect town Biotop to try to puzzle this situation out, for example. You’d consider every angle, post every thought, try to get feedback and solve this. Instead you seem overly optimistic, instead of trying to come up with solutions you’re coming up with additional obstacles and ploys benefiting scum. Your “lynch me, I’ll prove you wrong!”-ploy sounds like empty posturing to me.
I guess all of this is vague, my gut usually is, but I know I’m town, I believe Johnny Bravo is town – He’s been playing a solid townie game all game, especially late game – and I believe Raventhief is town, beginning with her having no idea how the Hitman/Outrider roles work together with me N1(?).
A question: Why do you believe Raventhief is town? Have you already explained that and I missed something?
That leaves you as the last scum.
Other than that, it would be great to hear from Scathach before EOD!
I explained why I claimed when I did, but to provide a little more info of that Day specifically, it was my 2nd post of the day. My first post was to clarify how people were left in the game, as I had generally lost track.
The reason I wanted to know was so I could do the math do figure out if their was any scenario in which a surprise Patsy could be useful. I couldn’t think of any, so I claimed.
I mean it isn’t like the patsy claiming was an unforeseeable event. They certainly could have discussed what they would have done in the event of a Patsy claim. It also isn’t exactly a complex plot. A day is plenty of time to decide to pull of this gambit.
I think the blackmail was a might as well, going to get lynched anyway type of thing. I expected the mafia to try to recruit the 3rd parties and not threaten them, but it makes sense for a dying scum to make a play. It is the only way for scum to communicate to third parties without revealing themselves.
This is where I think the scum logic falters. Why would Texcat false claim? If I’m actually the Patsy it makes sense. Texcat was getting lynched anyway, so she tried to bring the heat on me and when that failed Scathach claimed. Note: that by the time Scathach claimed, it was clear Texcat’s defense wasn’t working.
However if I was scum, I don’t see the incentive for texcat to counter. Why not just wait for the real patsy to claim and let me battle it out with them. In that scenario a Texcat claim guarantee she gets lynched, but if she doesn’t, she may very well continue to live. What is the point of Texcat false claiming if she knew I was going to get countered anyway?
I already explained that. Texcat had to ensure that the counter happened before she died, or else she couldn’t make the blackmail threat. She had no guarantees that the real patsy would counter before EoD, but adding the false counterclaim made it much more likely that it would happen.
The patsy blackmail scheme was only possible because there were two non-Texcat patsy claims at the time.
Hawkeye, who do you think is the scum out of the [johnnybravo/biotop/plumpudding/raventhief] pool? And why?
Biotop, why do you think I am scum? As of yesterDay you said I sounded pretty towny to you and that you would vote me if Texcat flipped town (which obviously didn’t happen).