Another thing I want to observe is that when at the end of Day 1 I commented a list of possible powers that I did not know what my power was, but that I knew that it was none of the above nobody wondered how I knew that. There was a reason for me knowing that. I don’t know in retrospect whether I woud have given the reason if asked, but nobody even asked.
I notice that there’s mention that the Cop should target likely scum.
But here’s the thing…
Most of the time it’s better for the Cop to confirm town than to find scum. At a high-level this is because while finding scum guarantees the wrong person won’t be banished, finding town also guarantees a wrong person won’t be banished. But town still has to banish the scum and town is unlikely to learn much more from the banish then they do from the investigation. Death reveals can give a little more info, but that’s at expense of more discussion and knowing you have a confirmed townie whose entire voting history and discussion can be trusted, especially if the Godfather is not in play. Even with a Godfather, it’s still better to get a pool of probably-confirmed townies. There’s a reason mid-game Mason reveals are a huge bonus for town. Exiling/killing an investigated scum results in a redundancy.
And most of the time, the mechanics will bear this out. There are certainly situational exceptions, but Angel should be looking to confirm town, not find scum. If you have more confirmed town than scum, and there are no more extant extra kills possible. Town will win the game if they just start exiling from the unconfirmed pool.
Good strategy in general. However, if there are only 3 scum in this game - and with the numbers that’s certainly possible - then obviously if you find the last scum at this point, town wins. So with two scum down, it’s not a bad idea to try to ferret the last one out while you can.
That said, I suspect there’s more going on in this game than just 3 scum based on what’s happened so far, so I think your analysis still holds.
Lots of people say this, but it’s just not true. Finding a lot of confirmed Townies is good, of course, but that doesn’t say anything about finding one. And, of course, finding a lot of Scum is very good.
I mean, ultimately, no matter what the Detective does, Town still needs to banish the Scum. That’s the same if they’re finding them directly, or finding them by process of elimination.
I think the concept of “confirming Town is better than finding Scum” comes from an overreaction to the also-wrong notion that “there’s no point in an investigation that doesn’t find Scum”. Certainly, confirming even one Townie is a good thing; it’s just not as good as finding Scum.
Another way to look at it: A detective gains information, and the more information gained, the better. The most information is gained from someone who has a 50% prior probability of being either. But Town always outnumbers Scum, so the prior for any given player will always be less than 50% scum, and the person closest to 50% will usually be the person who has the highest chance of being Scum. In other words, the detective should investigate the person whom they’re most suspicious of.
This can change if there’s some other source of confirmed Townies, such as masons. In that case, it might be that even though Scum aren’t the majority of all living players, they might be the majority of the unknown players. Then, it might be better to find the remaining Townies than to find the remaining Scum. But you’re extremely unlikely to get to that state from the detective’s investigations alone.
What an … interesting… cast of characters.
And in the game too.
I thought that because that was a scheme I would think up as scum, redirecting myself onto another player to preserve my power, so then I could claim (town) redirector later if I got in trouble.
That’s why “scum wouldn’t do that” is a two edge sword. In most cases it’s more beneficial not to do crazy schemes, and thank you to those who saw it had no scum utility for me to fake my claim, it drives me nuts when people think I’m scum just because I’m me. But then again the whole “scum queen” thing came about because I am willing to try out crazy schemes.
Of course I don’t yet know if I’m right, but I can totally see a scum team of Biotop, Thing.Fish and Mahaloth coming up with that scheme. (I mean that as the utmost compliment.)
And Kudos to Pardel-Lux for what may have been the game-winning play N1!
I wasn’t initially suspicious of her because in every game we’ve ever been in, she reads me as scum. Now, I wonder.
I apologize if I contributed to this feeling of cliquishness. I haven’t played in 5 years and I was just really excited to see my old friends again. I didn’t intend to exclude anyone, in fact I was trying to be welcoming to new players, but maybe toned it down a bit after people were reading it as scummy.
DOUBLE VOTE MHAYE
Thing.Fish masterfully manipulated me into being sheepish about my suspicion of him. (I was suspicious, even though I didn’t voice it, and was initially considering investigating him, but decided it made more logical sense to investigate Mahaloth because Mahaloth very often is executed on D1, and in this case, when he was the front runner, the train very quickly changed tracks to kill LH75.
I am not sure we have won yet, and now I know I could have played a much better move. But there was no way for me to work that out before knowing what I know now. Me is, as I said at the start: non english native speaker, overthinker.
I am not sure. Active players are not supposed to read this thread, but there is no way of making sure. To avoid cheating I will say: not yet. Even if it helps our team. But it is evident when you know it. Let’s say it is about who I was instructed to target. And the word “target” was what let me into the wrong rabbit hole.
If you are really impatient I could PM you, I guess that is allowed. Right, @Chronos? But patience is a virtue.
AngeloftheNorth, I just want to come in and apologize for lying to you as well. When you draw a Scum role, you can’t bother with the niceties of truth. But I did not like doing it. Wish we were on the same team. I miss our games.
I guess we have a vig in our team and (s)he killed you, but I must say I still don’t know how they found you out, I did not supect you at all. Perhaps a ricochet? I am really curious.
On the subject of being sorry for being Scum and having to lie: as a newbie I think the role of Scum seems much enjoyable. I would have liked to be Scum! Alas, I was assigned a different role. Which was also fun 
Oh, and @AngeloftheNorth: welcome to the dead players thread! Forgot to be polite in my previous post. Sorry! Pressed reply to soon. What was I thinking?
Personally, I put almost no weight on “Scum wouldn’t do that”. Is “that” something that helps Town? Then Scum would do it because they want to look Townie. Is “that” something that hurts Town? Then Scum would do it, because they want to hurt Town. The only thing that Scum wouldn’t do is something that helps Town in a way that can’t be credited to them, and in that case, we never even need to consider it anyway.
I prefer to ask myself whether there’s Town motivation to do something. Town motivation is simpler, because Townies don’t have divided motivations like Scum do. This still isn’t foolproof, of course, since sometimes Townies do something that “Town wouldn’t do”, just because they made mistakes. But I think it’s better than “Scum wouldn’t do that”.
Probably, as I think it’s probably something that anyone could deduce, based on what’s now known. Think about what @Pardel-Lux 's role PM must have said.
Are you still holding a grudge about the loss of Mafia V? I thought you’d know by now.
Grudges. Are. Bad.
Just because I, as the backup Cop, saw through your attempt to claim Monkishness, doesn’t mean we’re not on the same side in this game, right?
Right?
Probably? Probably is not an answer: say yes or say no, you are the Master, you decide. I abide.
Ahahaha, yes, I was referencing that, but I was trying to think what you were in that game. All I could come up was “Magician”, but I remembered you were on the good side while I was on the bad…oh, and it took you awhile to even get in on that Day. Day (and our ruse) had gone on for awhile before you had made the first post. Pretty sure we would have swayed them if it wasn’t for you.
No worries,
I will wait until all is revealed. 