The Syndicate

Oops, missed the Linki - yeah, I spent a lot of time this game agonizing over what information I could legitimately reveal, and how. Logic is easy to manipulate, but I feel the same way about instincts and feels - you don't even really have to manipulate them, you can just make them up, and nobody can tell :-/
I guess manipulation is kind of the point of this game though.

And no offense taken, or intended of course.

Flyin' High wrote:
Nev you played an amazing game as Zodac. One thing I've been curious about, how were you so sure I was civvie? Did it have to do with the numbers of civs, mafia, and indys before I died versus after?

Good game everyone!!! And congratulations to all of the winners.

Yup, that's it exactly. My numbers power was really specific - I got to know how many people were on each team including individual indies, so I knew that bobs first unfortunate recruit was also a baddie. I also knew bea was civ after her Rez, which is why the confused 180 happened.

After that Rez poll, wherein I had enough info to select only definitely civs, I decided that a civ win was unavoidable if I sided in with them. And then after the secrets came out, and the civs knew that I could win with them.. Our odds got really good.

My picking dom was a real stroke of luck though - I thought he was on a team, because he seemed too informed for such a low poster, but it turns out he was just lying low and reading everything. I couldn't have played like I did if he had been alive, because a recruited Zodac would have way reduced chances of winning.

And I was so sure SVS knew who I was because she addressed one of her comment on Zodac to *me* despite it being a reply to Russ. Overall I had so much info that I had to keep a lot of notes just to recall even the things I definitely knew.. It was fun for me, but I felt a little like I was ruining the game the whole time :-/

juliets wrote:I don't understand what happened to all the other people who were alive. I thought maybe they blew up but I don't see any post saying that. Someone, what happened?

They all won - the endgame is down to boomslang (who is Cohen) and bea (who is a civ that voted for Cohen). Since nobody else remaining voted for Cohen, it's really a choice between the two of them, and MP just distilled that choice down a bit.

Fortunately not randomly blowing any of us up just beforehand :-)

Also, I feel like the way I played my role kind of broke the game, and I didn't intend that to happen. I apologize for that.

When moriarty mentioned me early, I hinted a little because I thought I was going to get creamed in the lynch vote, but them MP gave us a code to break that clarified my win condition to such a degree that I was left in an unpleasantly safe and powerful position :-(

So I pivoted into coalition-building, since I did still want to win in the safest way possible - when god gives you pie, you eat pie.

Also, I am happy that the boxes didn't explode and kill us all! :-)

I voted bea to win, because I'm pretty sure that was the plan we all would have followed.

I am impressed by how close boom got though! Not at all an easy role to manage.

You're just the only living person who has voted for him. So if you died for some random reason tonight, he could again win with the civs. Not advocating for that, just mentioned it as an aside.

I agree, it would only be logical to lynch you in that case.
I plan on voting for you tomorrow.

We will still need to lynch boomslang, unless Bea dies tonight in a mysterious sock-motivated explosion of some kind.
We'll probably need to do it twice :-\

The logic that he's cohen is solid, though far from proof.. but he hasn't really argued the point.
Of course if whatever is in these packages kills either of them, that could easily change.

linki: OH GOD THE SUSPENSE! :-)

I'm going to vote for Elo, because Hedge's defense is plausible, despite having no confirmation.

I believe she is hinting here, is anyone aware of corroborating evidence?
A night power that targeted Hedge but didn't turn out to hit her, perhaps?

That would persuade me to vote Elo instead today.

S~V~S wrote: For instance, helpful as he was, I really do think DH was bad. I was trying to find a chink in his armor when he got Red Roomed.

I agree with you there! And yes, it was tough to stick anything to him, since he stayed with analysis and avoided opinions.
My reasons for suspecting him revolved around finding flaws or missing conclusions in his analyses..
one can't ever be sure someone didn't really just miss some facts though.

S~V~S wrote:Hedgie, however, has said a bunch, and none of it really made me feel better about her. I would not be surprised if they both were bad, tbh.

I would be!

S~V~S wrote:A few people seemed to be implying that DF had hinted at a certain role. Maybe it was a real hint, maybe it was a fake one, maybe it was a freaking coincidence. But a hint means someone is a civvie, right? Should that be orange, lol?
Memo to all, if I ever hint again myself, shoot me, K?

I am not lumping him into the 'mostly trusted' category on the basis of a simple role hint.
There are observables in play, and I would love to explain, but I think that pushes the rules too far.
But you won't be able to figure it out just by reading his posts.

Hedge: I have an excellent reason for trusting FH, and it is not based on her argument earlier.

S~V~S wrote:Well, in Avant at PA, he killed everyone who opened the package, lol. So that is my experience with Sockses bearing boxes.
So as i see it, our options are Elo, FH & Hedge, right? Based on what I have been reading and who has been presumably cleared?

I seem to recall someone describing another game in which each box had a button that deactivated your bomb, but I could be misremembering.

I'm pretty sure FH is civ, she's been in my 'trusted' list for quite a while.

There are lots of thing I (for example) do not know.
How would you like me to take them under consideration?
Should I make illogical decisions based on the fact that my logic might be wrong?
Should I vote roughly randomly to compensate for the chance that MP is just messing with us when he tells us things?

Please, recommend some specific alternative course of action while you rail at my behavior.
Any ideas what this "boom" might be, or how we could prepare for it?
Should we lynch boomslang first, based on your feelings about his behavior?
What role do you think he has, and how would lynching him again help us win in that case?

Linki mp - interesting!
And I am confused that they would choose her, since she was one of a small pool of suspects.
Still, I suppose the odds she would waste a Rez to kill herself to throw off suspicion are a bit remote,
so I'll pop her up into the probably civ category with DF.
I wonder if maybe Henderson is still around? That would explain the very odd choice of target.
I suppose BB is still unaccounted for, so that might have been the alarm clock going off.

Linki mp again..
Bah. I hate guessing games!

To SVS's point about theories and confirmation bias; it's certainly a valid concept, but I don't think that's the case here for me.
It might have been relevant to my prosecution of Bea earlier though.

FH - I don't know that he's cohen or anything, I just don't think he's fetus.
It's totally possible that he's a civ with a protection item and just behaving oddly now,
but I can't make his behavior since his lynch fit anything but cohen hoping that bea and elohcin somehow die.
Actually, I think he's probably given up, since that's basically a rational reaction in his situation -
elo could realistically die, but I don't think it's likely that bea will go soon.

Since you also asked me, I'll tell you who *I* would suggest: Hedgeowl, Elohcin, or Spacedaisy.
That group of three people almost certainly contains the remaining baddie(s).
I have no solid evidence to suggest that any of them is more likely than the others,
but my inclination is towards hedge, as I described earlier.
FH's point about her vote timing on Epig is also a good one, though nowhere close to what I would call 'evidence'.

Elo would be my secondary choice - some of her posts ring of faked cluelessness to me.
I buy that she's not paying much attention to the game, but it seemed excessive.

And I don't think you're the logical NK target for them SVS, but it certainly seems likely to be one of the people we're expressing trust in.
I think on that front we just have to hope for that 40% failure rate.
Of course they don't know who is holding the shield at the moment, do they? :-)

S~V~S wrote: Would you prefer to lynch a baddie who is not as dangerous, or take a chance at this stage of the game guessing?

"Not dangerous at all" is how I would phrase it. Not with as large a group of known civs voting as we have today.

And I would prefer to guess among the unknowns than spend two days lynching a known cohen, yes.
Because spending those two days lynching cohen twice gets us:
1) a dead cohen who is not voting (slight positive)
2) who doesn't need to be lynched later (unimportant - after the baddies are gone, we can take as long as we like lynching him)
3) and one nightkilled civ.

And then we are in exactly the same position, of educated guessing among possible alternatives.
Net effect of lynching cohen before 'guessing' among the others to find the remaining baddie(s): one extra dead civ.

I understand the reaction - I hate lynching semi-randomly as much as you do.
But it is *the right move*, regardless.
If we are unlucky, and have to lynch all three of them before we catch the bad guy(s), we *still win*.

An *unlynchable* vanilla civvie, but I agree with your logic about Mongoose.

I guess creeper could have been blocking her some of the time (and certainly would have, if he's known she was penny)

A quick extra thought - MacG's kill *might* not be announced if it fails, since it would be publicly confirming that player as a civ.
We have a number of unexplained (and failed) kills in the thread - epig was incinerated N6, and DH survived incineration N7.
If those were MacG's kill attempts, then I wonder if the attempts would get not-announced if he tried to kill someone that died anyway?
It seems unlikely, since several of those nights only one person died.

Did Mongoose list DH as civ in her lists?

I can't see any good explanations for why they wouldn't have gotten at least any *attempted* kills -
even if they tried to kill someone that died anyway each night, there's still be an entry in the log about it - 'tried to kill X, but failed!'

If you look, that same night BWT also survived a kill attempt by the creeper, which apparently *also* didn't take away a life.
I think BWT had the shield that night, unless someone strongly opines that that isn't the case ;-)

But percy couldn't have stolen that kill from Jack, because he used jacks power on a different night (which apparently didn't grant him a kill).
And since percy didn't get a kill from Jack, I wouldn't think he'd get a kill from MacG either.
Jack had already been found, so it couldn't have been a Grady offer.

I'm left with no good explanation for how that kill attempt happened,
which in this game generally suggests that there was an item involved.

Elohcin wrote:I hate this guys. Mongoose. I really did think you were good.

I think we really ought to try Boom again. So many of us just have no clue on the others and I am afraid we will just end up lynching another civ. In my mafia career, I have seen many roles where players are unlynchable, but there are usually conditions. I think it is time we try Boom again and hope his conditions have changed.

His conditions are either (a) he has exactly two death avoids, of which he has used one or (b) unlynchable until meatboy finds him a fourth time, which hasn't happened yet.
or (c) He had an item of some type that we don't know about, and is really a civ, but I think that's a bit unlikely.

I'm pretty sure he's cohen, in which case lynching him won't accomplish anything unless we do it twice -
since he's got no dangerous powers, and we have a large enough civ block that his vote shouldn't offer a threat, I don't think lynching him asap is a good strategy.
And if you're faking, that one was better than the last one.

MacG is probably already dead, I guess.
It's possible he was found last night, but someone would have been a little more noisy in Mongoose's defense I should think.

Rereading DF makes me think he's most likely civ, though I can't be fully confident about that.
Reading SD tells me absolutely nothing except that she seems to be a very nice person.

Here is my trust list:

Trust: SVS, FH, Lizzy, BWT, Nevinera, Bea
Most likely Civ: DF
No Idea: Elo, Hedge, SD
Probably not Civ: Boom

I would be ok with voting for any of the three in 'No Idea', but I think after rereading the three of them, I like Hedge best for Creeper.
No evidence in the thread, just a general instinct. (And mine have not been really good historically).
I also think that that last comment about Zodac by Elo seemed maybe a little *too* clueless, like she might be trying to pretend that she doesn't know what's going on.
And there is absolutely nothing on SD. She's not putting her neck out or anything, but I suspect she never does.
Blank slates make me nervous >.<

RIP, Mongoose (who is not martell).
I hate this guessing game, I'm going to do some more rereading today.

I'm not feeling elo again - if she isn't cohen, then her reaction seemed more civ than desperate baddie to me.
And since I did that reread I have had the feeling that she's barely been reading the game -
that remark about Zodac is completely typical of her this game.

Either she's a masterful actress, or she doesn't have teammates feeding her explanations and advice.
I still have no feelings either way about mongoose, but she's acting the most like I think *I* would behave in a situation like the baddies must be in now.
So I'm going to vote there also tonight, and hope.

S~V~S wrote:So who do you think IS Fetus? Or Creeper?

I don't have any idea who is the creeper, I'm afraid..
I recommend that you read back over my last few days, though -
Knowing what you know I know you know I know, of course. ;-)

I think he's Cohen. Which is not exactly "bad", but probably needs lynching.
No rush on that though.

I certainly don't think he's fetus, though I suppose he could be the creeper if he got a protection of some kind from somewhere.

Boomslang wrote:Well, I guess Zodac didn't get the memo regarding the usefulness of an Elo lynch to the baddie-hunting cause. For all reasons previously outlined, I'm very inclined to vote her again today.

But let's think about the likely outcomes if you vote for me again today. If I'm Fetus, you can't kill me until BWT passes his random search, which is basically a coin flip and a potentially wasted lynch. If I'm Cohen, you'll have wasted a lynch on an almost entirely harmless indie role. If I'm MacGuyver, I'm invincible until Penny dies, so you'll gain no new information from my lynch (unless timmer was Penny, in which case you'll be killing a civ).

So if I were in your shoes, I'd be searching for a better target than me.

I agree with paragraph two.

Do you have any other explanation for why the creeper would be killing on an odd night?

If Big Daddy (Bouncer) dies, Creeper stops blocking every night, instead blocking every odd night, and tries to kill a player every even night. However, it has only a 60% success rate of killing its target.

I really think the whole 'merged teams' thing is really unlikely, and not worth considering in real analyses.
I don't know if it was the manipulators saying that or not, but it just doesn't make sense.

The manipulators' kill moves around as the members die - that kill should exist until all four of those characters are dead.
The VGV kills are not like that - the members of that group have powers that expand if certain other members die, so that there should always be someone with a kill.

I don't see any reason to expect that if Martell 'joined' the VGV somehow, she would no longer have the power described under moriarty as passing to her - if any of those four characters are still alive, one of them ought to have that kill.

On the other hand, Creeper is supposed to kill on *even* nights, not odd nights. That makes me suspect that our double-day, while incrementing the visible 'number' of the night, may not have incremented the 'oddness' or 'evenness' of the night - that would make some sense, as it the power is described as 'adding a day', not 'removing a night'.

So we probably couldn't conclude anything about the Manipulators just from the lack of a kill from this last night.
On the other hand, they didn't kill anyone on Night 10 *either*, which means they probably were all dead before then :-D

linki Mongoose: That makes sense. But if he survives we still won't know who he is, because as cohen he'll still have an extra life left, and as MG he wouldn't die. We'd be faced with the same decision again. Add in that he has no other powers if he's cohen, and I don't think killing him is urgent.

Wouldn't Catherine have gotten moriartys kill if she were still in?

I don't think Fetus is very likely.

I think Cohen is more likely.
I suppose it's also possible macguyver is still out there though.

timmer wrote:What if because of that mass red room yank, we're down to just one baddie?

That'd be sweet!

bea wrote:also- timmer - you made all this - which theory do you think is most valid?

I think they're all predicated on some assumptions we don't know are true.

Currently the only explanation for there being a tie that I can find is percy - I think that he would be able to pick thomas at night and get the tripled vote the next day. There could be items that do something similar, but percy seems most likely to me.

@MP (when he gets back) - can percy use Thomas' power in this way?

I don't think I'll probably get through reading Mongoose today (we've got a major application deployment I have to work on).
I find her generally somewhat suspicious, but I'll need to read her again to get a better read :-)

So I just reread Elo and Boomslang.
My conclusions are not strong, but Elo reads through like a crazy busy person who's not really playing,
and boom reads like an attentive player who's not putting arguments out of his own.
It's tough to give good examples of that sort of thing,
but fortunately they're both very short reads if anyone would like to review and weigh in.

After that read-through I wish I could change my vote to Boomslang - there's nothing solid in there, and no strong "You're a baddie!" argument to be made,
but I can't help feeling after reading through that he is being very careful about what he says.

Not necessarily a baddie trait though - does anyone know how careful he is normally?

I liked the cut of timmer's logic, but I don't agree with some of his assumptions.
I'm focused on how the tie could have happened, though I know there's always "it was a random item!"
I'm leaning towards a percy power right now though.

Good luck Zodac, I'll see if I can come up with anything useful to help.
For what it's worth, I think the Elo-Cohen hypothesis is pretty reasonable,
but I'll go reread the posters today, when I have time.
Let's not have another Devin, eh?

Bea said she still had the shield then, that it gets handed off every two days in this game.

I don't think it's rumple, the odds of that seem slim.
He'd need two manipulators voting in a tiny, detectable group - recipe for disaster.
And they wouldn't try to save elo unless she was a third manipulator..
I don't think there are that many left.