- Your Point #1: A townie should examine all players with suspicion
Basic, true. But a player must also form and eventually pursue opinions.
Correct. But as I noted back on D2, you have only ever pursued opinions that implicate players involved in high-profile scuffles. Day 1, you declared a vote on me despite agreeing that my Rag-cult stance was correct; Day 2 you placed a vote on KoD immediately after Rag implicated him, then switched back to Rag as soon as KoD fought back.
By your own admission earlier in this very game, it is tempting but dangerous to pursue only the obvious cases, and yet you have done exactly that. Even you now, it seems as though you have only turned against CL after I began to bring pressure against you and KoD.
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When a counter-wagon to divert lynch shows up right at the end, it's kind of sus. But let's put that normal situation aside from the moment: there is little reason for a town member who believed Rag to be scum to swap to Naga over Rag. We all kind of assume that the inactives are town at this point, I feel. After all, scum are still getting their hits in, so they're not BOTH inactive at the very least. I even argued yesterday that Naga alive was basically negative utility, but your own arguments today have suggested how that thinking may have been flawed: Living or modkilled, Naga is the same burden, it only matters how close the game APPEARS to be to the end. To this, a townie with no conviction votes Naga yesterday. A townie with any conviction that they may have found scum votes scum.
A counter-wagon is suspect when it arises to preserve a player of dubious alignment. (Or, to a lesser extent, when it succeeds in rescuing a player whose alignment we cannot ascertain.) It is not suspect when it arises at definite risk to the participants for the sake of preserving a player they believe to be town. But Rag
was town, Rag already had 4 votes, ergo there was no functional risk to CL and I if we were scum by jumping on (or immediately joining) what would have been an essentially unanimous decision.
Moreover, you confuse the notion of conviction. I stood very firm through the D2 with regard to my position on Rag, and I exposed myself to considerable risk by defying the supposed 'town' consensus. I voted Naga because the case was tolerable, because their death would not have been a true net loss to town, and because voting anyone else would have guaranteed the success of the anti-Rag wagon.
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- Your Point #5: Rag lynch was "safe" for Scum
I feel this is quite incorrect. Scum would know that Rag would flip town, and also that they would be functionally obligated to kill Zinger (a rag voter) in order to keep the suspect list open. That leaves three votes on rag. You propose Scum would hide two of them to one "safe lynch" in such a situation? I don't think so. The safer place would be out of that wagon one way or another -- scum looking to be safe want to Nader vote. And wouldn't you know it, the Naga counter-wagon showed up after discussion had largely zeroed in on Rag, so the outcome would be largely known. And who voted for that? Rag himself, of course -- Rag would want to live. And you and CL, buddies suddenly moving in step together.
The safest place for scum to park their votes is
certainly not on the anti-majority option. As you correctly note, Rag's positioning against her own lynch is obvious, so by joining her wagon scum would have exposed itself to the obvious association of being the only two non-Rag players to join the anti-majority. This is not safe. In fact, as you have so conveniently noted yourself, it is patently unsafe: it draws a correlation that no self-respecting scum player would ever want to draw to themselves or their partners.
Whereas, of course, the Rag wagon allows for a certain pleasant plausible deniability in that there are a) other potential fall guys and b) a confirmed but misinformed town (Zinger). Not only was it substantially safer given the ultimate 4-3 vote split, it would have been even safer as a 6-1 decision (or, even, as a 5-2 decision). There is no workable or reasonable motivation for scum to band together on Naga in such circumstances.
[quote You jumped for a wagon that was broadly acceptable and not particularly indicative of anything. [/quote]
You know full well that I didn't jump, Mr. Misleading Verbiage. I voted at the end of the day according to lines of play that had been laid out before me. You
know this.
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I find it much more likely that active scum would read the discussion and quickly adopt a non-confrontational vote position.
Ah, yes. Non-confrontational is
exactly the word to describe my play this game.