night falls. the cult gathers. no words are spoken. everyone knows their purpose, everyone knows their task. bears must be punched. it is the only way. hoods cover faces, hiding identities. arcane symbols mark the walls. NOW, a voice echoes from the great deep. WHO SHALL PUNCH BEARS THIS EVENING?

the stars are measured, the ledgers consulted. two bears must be punched this night. but who shall punch them? the time has come to decide.

1. Rag
2. Neo
3. Mown
4. Zinger
5. Tevish
6. Squinty
7. Rubik

Rag chooses the first team.

for flavor stuff, so everyone knows and no one gets caught in flavor traps: the Commander is called the Cult Leader. they know the identity of two of the spies. the Bodyguard is known as the Keeper of Records. they know the identity of the Cult Leader. vanilla resistance are bear-punchers, described in their PMs as initiates. vanilla spies are nihilist spies. the deep spy is known as the nihilist assassin. they are unknown to the Cult Leader, and at the end of the game if the Cult wins then the assassin gets one chance to guess the Leader's identity to steal the last win away. the other spies do not know which of their comrades is the assassin.

Rag, go ahead, Imma give you 72 hours 'cause it's a weekend but normally these'll be 48.

i nominate neo and mown to punch bears

well that didn't take very long.

Team Leader: Rag
Team:: Neo, Mown

still weekend, so 72 hours to vote.

Rag, why not put yourself on the team?

~SE++

i didn't want to seem selfish

Part of me wants to refute the team over that. I feel like loyal bear-punchers should generally put themselves on missions. After all, each bear-puncher knows himself to be loyal, while a spy can put their buddy on the mission to tank it. Yeah, the two-man missions are safer, because if the spies tank them, we know a lot about who the spies are, but that still gets us a failed mission, and I dont want that

I'll be honest, there's no way I'm going to approve any first teams when the person picking the team is not on it. Even if I am.

Gonna be voting no.

~SE++

This team has spies on it and I'll be voting it down. #nuffsaid

why not

Why do you guys insist on making me spy every time, except when Merlin is in the game, which is when it's the most fun. I hate you all.

Not sure where Zinger's wealth of confidence comes from, but I should probably assume that Neo is a spy from here on regardless, unless rag is going deep. Or going really shallow.

If the leader is town, they would always want themselves on the team, as that would mean they know 50% of the team alignment (at this point, at least). If they are a spy, then they are clearly putting a spy on the team, hoping it loses, or playing some odd meta-game early on.

Either way, with the added roles this time, I doubt any mission will pass for a while, since there's actually more information to be gleamed during the propose/vote no D1 phase.

so you're confident that both me and mown are spies?

I have no confidence in anything but my own alignment right now. This could be your first game, or you could just play differently than I...or, you could be trying something that I just don't see.
Doesn't matter - I'm not saying yes to this team. Way to early to put blinders on for anyone.

if you're more confident in your own alignment than mine, then shouldn't a team with you on it be as viable from your perspective as a team with me on it is from mine?

This is kinda interesting because Neo and Mown are the next leaders. If we assume Rag is a spy and one of Neo and Mown is a spy, Neo and Mown shouldn't send themselves (because we think they've a better-than-average spy chance) because we feel they're likely to be spies, as per voting down this team. In short, we need a team A consisting of two of Zinger, Me, Squinty, and/or Rubik based on what we're assuming here I'm not familiar with resistance, but I know from TableTop you get two spies in a 5-player game so I guess you'd have three here? If there are two in the first three players in the list, there's only one in the rest of us, which leaves us enough Bear Punchers for winning teams.

Is there any actual reason to believe that me and neo or mown are spies?

Not Neo or Mown, just you.

~SE++

If neither Neo nor Mown were spies, RagSpy wouldn't have sent the two of them, IMO. Why would a Spy send a clean, loyal team?

So they look good.

~SE++