Martino

It is unfortunate that most of the discussion has been focused around Rafay. However, it was important to convince the town that it is not in our best interest to lynch one of our powerroles. Unfortunately, very few people seem to agree. Anyway, I am voting for KevinH because I suspect him more than anyone else. He is usually arguing strongly in favor of not lynching anyone on D1 because we might just accidently lynch the cop. This time we have someone who claims to be a powerrole, and now KevinH is voting to lynch him. That simply does not make sense based on his usual playstyle. So I am wondering what caused that change. However, KevinH has chosen to ignore my questions about that.

Well, the game will not end after night one. If he survives N1 because he can absorb a nightkill as the SK, he will die N2. So those 16.7% don't really matter. In the other scenario he survives because we lynch the SK. That seems like a pretty good scenario to me as well.

Actually, while I strongly disagree, I can at least understand that you might want him to claim. However, I cannot understand that you still think it is even a decent idea to lynch him. He is a dead man. No matter what we do, he will not make it to the end of this game. If he is scum, then the other scum faction cannot afford to let him live (since they know he is either oposing scum or a powerrole). If he is a power role, then both scum faction cannot afford to let him live. Why would we get rid of our 22.7% chance of lynching a scum to lynch someone who is going to die anyway?

Wow.The cop is less dangerous for the scum than the vig/roleblocker? Just wow.

FYI, you typically use that phrase when your changes actually make a difference. Lynching a possible power role to deprive the scum of fake claiming is a terrible strategy. It is on par with mass suiciding to prevent the scum from killing us. Our work is to eliminate the scum. It does not matter whether we lynch them or they die during the night. Also, forcing a power role to claim does not exactly coincide with preventing the scum from increasing their information advantage. Who is a powerrole is the only information they do not have yet. Yeah, this is where you show that you haven’t even read most of my posts. I did absolutely not claim that they want to keep the vig alive because he might kill a townie. I said that if Rafay is the cop, they must kill him. However, if he is the vig or roleblocker, they might let him live for a while. They might do that to either confuse us or because they hope the other scum faction kills him. As I said, you might want to actually read some of my posts before replying to them. I have already explained this before. Anyway, the main point is that there are two scum factions. Yes they want to kill the powerroles. However, they would prefer to not use both their NK on the same target. If Rafay is the cop, it will definitely be worth two nightkills. So they won’t worry about possible wasting a nightkill and they will target him. If he is the roleblocker or vig, they might not necessarily want to target him tonight. They could hope that the other scum faction kills him while they get rid of another townie. As long as Rafay’s powerrole is not known, it forces the scum to take a guess. Do they target Rafay and risk having both nightkills target the roleblocker/vig or do they target someone else and risk having the cop alive for another night? Actually, their win condition is only partly different. Just like us, the mafia needs to kill the SK and just like us the SK needs to kill the mafia. As I have explained quite a few times now, no matter whether Rafay is a powerrole or a lying scum, the other scum factions knows that he is one of the more dangerous players out there for them. For us, he is actually beneficial to the town if he is a powerrole, or he is one of the bigger dangers out there if he is scum. That simply means that it is more important to the scum that he dies than it is to us.So they are not doing our work for us, they are doing their own work. Which might coincide with our work (if he is the other scum faction) or it might be very harmful to our cause (if he is a powerrole). If you want to trust a role claim after night 1, you are simply taking a gamble. You are praying that the scum did not kill that role. There are 3 powerroles among 12 players. In addition, there are two night kills. That means that the odds of a powerrole being NKed are a little over 50%. Trusting a roleclaim after night 1 is a huge gamble even if it is not Rafay that got NKed.

if I actually had a good argument? Have you even been reading your own posts? You first state that there are serious cons to letting Rafay live if he has a power role. In the next post you say that it would be an excellent play for the scum to kill rafay and that we should, therefore, lynch him. My argument is plain and simple. Rafay is a dead man. He might be beneficial to the town, he might be harmful. He is definitely harmful to one of the scum factions. Therefore, it is more important to that scum faction to kill him than it is to us. Therefore, we should not do their work for them. In addition, I don't want him to claim a specific role, because it would make it easier for the scum to decide what to do. If he is a cop, they will want to kill him. If he is a roleblocker or vig they might want to let him live for now. Regardless whether he is a cop, roleblocker or vig, we want him to live. Therefore, getting that information out in the open does almost nothing for us, but it greatly helps the scum make their decisions. Finally, in this set-up we cannot completely trusts roleclaims after night 1. It does not matter if Rafay is the one getting night killed or anyone else. The scum could kill one of our power roles and then they could fake claim. Therefore, we cannot completely trusts someone who claims simply because there is no counter claim. For this point it does not matter whether the one getting nightkilled is Rafay or someone else. As a result, lynching our powerrole simply to prevent the scum from getting the opportunity to fake claim makes no sense.

Uhm, what? If killing Rafay would be an excellent scum play, it would be a terrible idea to lynch him. We would be doing exactly what the scum wants to do. Why would they care whether they kill him or we lynch him? In fact, if we lynch him, they will get to kill another townie tonight. So they would prefer that. As for him not claiming this early if he indeed has a power role. What makes you think he would be more likely to fake claim early? The moment he claimed powerrole, he signed his death warrant. As a pro town power role, it would be in his best interest to at least make sure we don't waste a lynch on him. As a scum, he would gain very little by making a fake claim that early. Moreover, if he fake claimed, he could have just claimed cop and tried to get the real cop to come out. That way the scum could at least eliminate the cop tonight. Anyway, the most important point is not that I think he is more likely to be a power role than scum. The point is that regardless, the other scum faction will have to kill him off at some point. So there is no reason for us to take a gamble. Sure, if they kill him and he is a pro town power role they will know that role is dead. But if they randomly kill someone else they could also hit a power role. So we can't put too much trust in roleclaims anyway.

I completely disagree that it is a horrible option if he is scum and we don't lynch him today. We are not the only ones that know he is either scum or a powerrole. At some point, the other scum faction will have to take him out. To be honest, they will have to take him out sooner rather than later. They can't risk him being the cop and finding out who they are, nor can they afford to let him live and allow him to kill them instead. We know there is a possibility he is bad for the town and a possibility that he is good for the town. The (other) scum faction knows that he is bad for them whether he is scum or town. It seems clear to me that it is far more in their best interest to kill him quickly than it is in ours. Also, are you seriously saying that it would have serious cons to not lynch him if he has a pro town power role?

This is all exactly why he should not specify which powerrole he has and why we should not lynch him. You should always put the opponent in a position where he can make a mistake. If he roleclaims, the mafia will know exactly what to do. Like you said, if he is the roleblocker they might very well let him live. However, if he is the cop, they want him dead, even if that means possibly having both nightkills target him. So by forcing him to claim, we will make it very easy on the scum. On the other hand, right now they are in somewhat of a messy situation. They probably want him dead, but like you said both factions would prefer there to be two nightkills. So they will have to make the decision. Do they target Rafay and ensure a powerrole dies, but risk having only one night kill? Or do they target someone else, hoping that the other faction kills Rafay? If he is the roleblocker, the first decision is probably the wrong one. If he is the cop the second one is. So they are put in a situation where they could very well make a mistake. In any case. Your eagerness to lynch a possible pro town powerrole goes completely against your normal follow the cop strategy. Normally you argue in favor of a no lynch on D1 because we might accidently lynch the cop. This time we have someone claiming to have a powerrole and you vote in favor of their lynch?

What exactly are we going to do with that information? What difference does it make whether he is going to claim Dietician, Vigilante or Roleblocker? I know it would make a difference as to what the scum might do. They can't allow the dietician to live, but might be willing to let the roleblocker live another day in the hopes of us lynching him.

Most definitely not. Typically you want as little to be known about our powerroles as possible. The more the scum knows, the easier it is for them to make the right play. Since we haven't even had a night yet, we don't need to know whether he is a cop or a doc. In either case we don't want to lynch him. However, the right play of the scum depends a lot on whether he is a cop or a doc. Besides, if he is scum, specifically claiming cop/doc might tempt the real cop/doc to counter claim. We don't need that. Rafay is dead. At some point or another one of the scum factions needs to kill him off. They can't risk him nightkilling them instead (or if he is the cop investigating them). They need him dead, there is no reason for us to do their work for them. Especially not since we could very well kill off one of our powerroles.

Rafay has claimed to have a power role. There is no way we should be lynching a potential power role on day 1. There are only two options. Either Rafay is a power role, or he is lying and is scum. Clearly, if he is a power role we should not lynch him. The best part about this set-up is that even if he is scum, we won't need to lynch him as he will most likely not survive the night. The other scum faction will know that he either is a powerrole or the other scum faction. That seems like a prime nightkill target to me. Even in a regular set-up, you don't lynch someone who claims to have a powerrole on day 1. The risk of lynching your powerrole is simply not worth it. Moreover, there is plenty of time for the claim to prove false if he is scum.

I will be voting for whoever has the most votes between Nerau, KevinH and Euclid. There is no reason to still have your vote on Rafay. For now, that means I'm keeping my vote on KevinH.

@Euclid: I somewhat agree with you. However, I'm a bit hesistant to give him a free pass because he is new. I've seen that excuse being used by a scum once too many to give it any weight. unvote vote KevinH We've had this discussion countless times before. Until we have lost the game, the vig/lynch is always numerically more likely to target a townie. That does not mean that it is in our favor to sit around until we have lost. Some general thoughts: Both Rafay and Kilgor are playing like they played last game. That does not mean they are town, but I also would not draw the conclusion that they must be scum due to their playstyle. In any case, at this point I would rather not lynch Rafay.

First you wonder why people still have their vote on Rafay while there are better targets out there. Then you follow that up by voting for Rafay. That does not add up. Besides, I don't think Rafay is all that scummy. unvote vote Commander Shepard

@Dietician claiming debate: The problem with the dietician making subtle claims against his guilty target is that these kind of clues are far more likely to be picked up by scum than by the townies. The scum know that they are scum, so if someone starts making a weak case against them out of the blue, they will quickly realize what is going on. Now, eventually some townies might realize, but it is questionable whether enough townies realize to be able to get the lynch the dietician wants. Even if that does happen, the dietician will have a huge target on his back since he has pretty much cleared himself by outing one of the scum. So in this case he might as well have claimed. Now, I do agree that in a regular game, I would prefer the cop to take that risk and try to get some more results before he claims. However, with 3 kills each night, I simply think the odds of him getting nightkilled before being able to reveal any useful information is too big. Remember that we do not even get to know his allignment if he is nightkilled. So his subtle hints will most likely be lost. So you might find it scummy all you want, but I will repeat that I believe the dietician should claim once he has found a cannibal. With some bad luck the whole game might be over for the town by the end of Night 2. There simply seems to be no time to wait around and sit on a guilty result. Very similar to my opinion on Lyner. The only contribution he has made has been him advocating lynching the inactives. While I agree that inactives can be frustrating, they are not more likely to be scum. So also in his case it seems like he is simply looking for an easy lynch. Besides, he should know from last game that D1 discussion can definitely uncover scum. It doesn't matter whether it is D1 or D4, by putting some pressure at the right time you give them the opportunity to slip up.

I would take my 75% odds of lynching a scum.

Ok, I am back. It is nice to see that this game has started with a high activity. My notes about most of the discussion so far: I don't think KevinH did anything scummy, so I am not sure why he quickly attracted 4 votes. I also don't think KevinH did anything early on that makes him town, so Reign of Terror stating that he believes KevinH to be town is interesting as well. I like KevinH's idea to plan for our Vigilante. With two hostile night kills, I think it is vital that we use 'our' night kill well. I think the idea of making "shadow votes" to determine who the vigilante should kill is good as well. However, I would suggest that the vigilante is not completely bound to killing the one with the most shadow votes. If he strongly believes one of the other choices is more scummy, he should kill that one. His later suggestion that the vigilante kills someone who attracted many votes but was not lynched is interesting as well. It of course depends on the outcome of the lynch. If we end up lynching a cannibal, then the person with the second highest vote total would probably not be such a great target for the vigilante. Kazio suggests the Vigilante should kill inactives. I don't necessarily like the idea of simply killing people off because they are inactive. It does force the scum to be more active and that gives them more opportunities to make a mistake. However, I am not sure the percentage of scum amongst the inactive players is significantly higher than amongst the active ones. So it looks a lot like a random kill though with the benefit of forcing the scum to be somewhat more active. I would prefer to target suspicious players over inactives ones though. Commander Shepard brings up a good point about the Dietician. Normally, I am in favor of playing it rather conservative as a town power role. You know that you will die the moment you reveal yourself, so you should have enough information to make your death worth it. However, with three possible night kills each night, I think that the risk of our dietician being nightkilled is too large. So I would propose that he claims as soon as he finds a cannibal. Finally I will: vote Lyner Lyner seemed to be the most vocal about lynching me because I was inactive. I announced in the sign up thread that I would be busy until today, and Kazio and a few others even clearly mentioned it here. Therefore, it seems like he is just looking for an easy lynch rather than trying to find scum.

I prefer a 2 week deadline as well.

I'd like to join, though I won't have much time before Thursday.

Night 2/Start of Day 3, I was actually not convinced you were a townie at all. However, having jumped high and low for two straight days to try and get you lynched, I figured it would be more productive to focus on the other scum first. That being said, after Rafay voted Preston I figured he must be the second scum. So had Xarastier not voted Preston and had you nightkilled Preston, I most likely would have lynched Rafay the next day.

@Preston: Night 2 I realized you were the cop. In hindsight I should have figured it out during D2. However, for most of D2 I was absolutely convinced that Imran was our cop. Since he completely switched his opinion around during the night, I was convinced that he got a scum result on CoD. However, I did not want to force him to claim since I figured CoD should be a clear lynch anyway (which I still believe he should have been). It was only when he got into trouble and still refused to claim that I figured he was not the cop. However, that unfortunately lead me to conclude thate CoD and Imran were scum together. Anyway, I think I would not have claimed in your position either. If you had been nightkilled, it would have been extremely obvious that you got a guilty result on EM, so no information would be lost. This way you at least had a chance to get in another investigation. Still can't believe they lynched you though. EM claimed three investigations in two nights, that was pointed out, and still people followed him. After I read EM's explanation, I really wanted to quote it and post "OMG ... we took our dog ... uhm ... like to the fish shop today ... because the dog likes going out and meeting new people. (http://diablowned.com/ for those that don't get the reference.). However, I figured whoever was scum with EM might actually follow him on that defense and expose himself.

Wth. There is no way we should have lost this game. Certainly not today already.

I am still not convinced everyone should roleclaim, but I agree with Rafay and Xarastier having to roleclaim.

It's not going to change our lynch regardless; rather if we HAVE both a doc/jailer and a cop, then both being known can mean that the cop can claim and safely do their investigation tonight on Rafay/Xarastier. If we have a doctor + cop, doctor protects the cop. If the cop still dies then the doctor lied. If we have a jailer + cop, the jailer can jail one of Rafay/Xarastier while the cop investigates the other. If the night kill ISNT blocked, then the one jailed was not scum (or the jailer lied). If the night kill is blocked or scum chooses NOT to kill to try and mess with us, cop will have an investigation result. So I think having the info out here now to coordinate these tests is in our favor. -Preston Hmm it is actually an interesting point. It really depends on what our powerroles are. If we have a cop+doc combination, it is clearly in our best interest if they claim today. If we have a roleblocker, it is also in our best interest if he claims today. He could publicly state which of Xarastier/Rafay they are going to roleblock. If there still is a kill, that means the other of those two is scum and we win. If there is no kill, we lynch one of them and, should that turn out to be a townie, roleblock the other one the next night and win the next day. However, if we have either only a cop or only a doc, they should most definitely not roleclaim since it would simply end in their death. So, it kind of depends on what you prefer. I think I would still favor waiting another day before roleclaiming. If we have a roleblocker, he can still do his job without roleclaiming. We will only get into trouble if he gets killed tonight, since in that case we would not know who he roleblocked. However, that can easily be remedied by all of us listing who we are going to roleblock if we are the roleblocker. Then if he gets killed tonight, we would know who he roleblocked and thus we would know that that person was not scum and we lynch the other of Xarastier/Rafay. Basically, that means that we only gain something by roleclaiming today if we have both a cop and a doc. However, we would lose our powerrole if it turns out that we have only a cop or only a doc. The tricky part here is that the scum has had two opportunities to investigate a townies role. It seems unlikely that they investigated Imran, so I would say they investigated two people who are still alive. Evidently, the first one was a townie (he would have gotten killed otherwise), but we don't know about the second one. In any case, with 4 townies alive, even if they have found two townies so far, they have at least a 50% chance of killing off our powerrole tonight. So that actually makes me lean more towards a roleclaim. I think I need to consider this for a bit longer, since I have been flipflopping between pro/against roleclaiming while typing this post. You are right that Xarastier's and Rafay's votes could be distancing votes. But there is also the matter of EM calling me out yesterday when I made a post assuming Xarastier was a townie (posts #195 and #196). I don't think EM would have called me out for that post if Xarastier was his partner. I would think he would have been happy with me implicitely stating Xarastier was town. Still, I am not ready to conclude that Rafay must be the second scum, but he is higher on my list than Xarastier.