Dies to Removal

GG. I definitely don't blame anyone for my mislynch, that was a tough situation with a lot of unknown variables in play. We could only speculate about what was really going on there, and taking us both out wasn't a bad call given the available info. I really enjoyed the mechanics of the game, and they also wound up being very decisive, and pretty well balanced. Nice work, Stardust.

Lurking and full participation are definitely a couple areas we'll need solutions to. Lord McD did a terrific job of capitalizing on a lurky town meta, just blending into the back ground noise, only losing due to good ability-usage by the town, rather than any behavioral mistakes or clues that he made. Major props there.

I do wish the town had more interest in trying to learn and do more behavioral analysis, researching, and taking public stances. We were wide open to LMD's lurker strategy, and while both the town and Stardust made repeated efforts to prod people into posting more, we just didn't have enough people yet who wanted to really dive all the way in and sink their teeth into the game. Mojo/CK was almost mislynched based purely on our activity problems. That was definitely my achilles heel, here. I just couldn't generate enough data to clear or analyze people effectively, apart from D1.

If folks are interested, I'd be happy to write up an expansion on some of my old articles dealing with behavioral analysis, and what to look for. If people have a better idea of what to talk about, and what to look for, maybe it'll be easier to have better conversations about tells and behavioral analysis, and it won't be so much a few of us standing in a room looking at one another, crickets chirping. There's a lot of different ways and styles to go about it, different from my own, but at the very least I could provide a starting point and a vocabulary for people to start developing their own methods.

Puzzle pieces:

295

334

339

365

366

392

394

397

My opinion of the red posts are that they lean mostly town. I think that town read still holds true, if we're in a one-scum setup.

Imopen, not so much. PBPA him, tomorrow. See what else turns up.

Early thread also disproved that CK and I were on the same scum team together.

Reading Mojo/CK as hard town, based on early interactions. Dechs is still hard town, always has been.

If you're looking for a conspiracy theory alternative for Imopen being scum, that leaves Red or LMD.

Of those two, I'd much prefer Red over LMD. LMD's just been innocuous. LMD's been quiet, but I've never sensed any artifice from him, or reticence in sharing his views.

Red should chronoboost CK for tomorrow, or he'll owe the thread an explanation. If he does, you'll be able to check out both Red and Imopen, hopefully.

The one thing that gives me pause about Imopen being scum is the same thing I've struggled with, all day. It makes very little sense for a single-scum Imopen to pull a gambit this way. The blowback the following day would almost certainly kill him, unless he has a buddy. But it involves some pretty funky, highly speculative abilities on the scum side for there to be any possibility of Imopen NOT being scum, especially given the failed vig kill on him.

IDK, maybe Imopen's just going for a hail mary play, since his buddy was already dead and he backed himself into a corner on giving some kind of cop results. Maybe he hoped that he could convince the town to follow his bogus results twice, and excuse the first time as someone messing with his ability.

Your play is either Red or Imopen, and given the failed vig-kill against Imopen, the implausibility of his cop-ability taking only two-days to build, the difficult of his claimed ability to sabotage, and his early game interactions, I'd give the nod decisively to killing off Imopen tomorrow.

Don't overthink things tomorrow with random theories about sabotage devices you don't know exist. Imopen's scum. Hopefully, he's scum by himself, and he has a broad-based immunity of some kind which fouled up RN's results on him. Hopefully, Stardust didn't build a game with only a single mislynch margin for error. That would be sad.

I've been doing the reread myself that I suggested you guys should do. I've already found some interesting tidbits. I'm debating between posting them, or simply suggesting that you guys go looking for them yourselves. Giving a man a fish, vs. teaching him to fish.

I suppose I could give you some hints, at least. Imopen's early interactions with both me and GR have some interesting implications. That's a good place for you guys to start looking, if you want to try honing your skills.

Why would I bus GR so hard, when no one else was interested?

Why would I then go out of my way to get Ham, a townie, lynched?

Why wouldn't I lynch Imopen, when he was at three votes, free for the taking?

Why has Imopen been so keen to be vigged, instead of lynched?

Why did I go to so much effort to make cases, while most of the town lurked?

Do you think the scum have a master builder?

Do you want to figure out the truth, or just guess at it? Do you want to research cases, or just vote with your gut? Do you want to look at evidence, or roll dice?

Here's my challenge to you and Dechs. Before you place the final vote that ends the game, do one small bit of real mafia research and make a decision based on your own judgment of what you find. Go back to day one. Read my interactions with GR, and his with me, up until his death. See how those interactions strike you. Do they look like a townie hunting scum, or not? And while you're at it, you may as well keep your eyes open for Red and Imopen, and what they were up to at the time.

It's not a long project. You don't even have to write a PBPA summary, just say how you came down. But just for one brief shining moment, I'd like to see someone else in this town go back, and play this game as it was meant to be played. And if you fail at it, fine. At least you'll have tried, and next time, you'll have a little more experience.

I'll trust imopen on this one I guess, tomorrow is important though

vote azrael

If I were scum, why is Imopen still alive? Why wouldn't I have killed him last night?

Why was Rezombad the mafia kill, instead of the guy who's now claiming cop?

Why did the scum miss a kill on night one, if not by me blocking their kill?

Why did Imopen survive CK's vig kill, which we should know from reading the thread, wasn't faked by Mojo?

Screw this

vote imopen2

If we can't have both, I'd rather have imopen2 lynched. He's been passive enough that the choice is easy.

Vote Imopen2.

You guys know why.

This is a PM that I sent to Stardust just now:

[quote="Azrael']
Post-game, the debate over whether I should have been unilateral and taken out Imopen when he was still at three votes is going to be interesting.

On the one hand, it'd be easy to say with hindsight that it'd bring the game home for the town. But it's also against the spirit of the game and the general rule that it's better to talk through every possible permutation of the scenario that needs to be addressed, and decide things as a group with the benefit of the group's knowledge. Is it really a win, as a team, if one player unilaterally picks off all the scum? And I hate the idea that one player, even if he has some amount of special knowledge, should make unilateral decisions about the town's lynch.

I guess it comes down to fear and faith. I'm used to working with towns that have faith in me, and in towns that I can have faith in. When that's not the case, maybe a different set of rules are called for. I've been wanting to cooperate with the town throughout the whole game, to reach decisions together, to not be the lone wolf making all the choices and all the analysis, but maybe I should have recognized that a partnership is only possible if you have partners who buy into the same process as you.

I guess my focus has been more on making this the kind of place that I want to play mafia, and playing the style that's worked for me in the past, then on recognizing the situation for what it is, accepting it, and trying to win this particular game by adapting my tactics to an entirely different, less serious meta. Hmm.[/quote]

IDK if it's too late to try to figure out how to make this work, whether there's still time to change my tactics to fit, but I guess I have to try. I'm not even sure how to begin, though, or even if I ought to.

Like, railing at people to do behavioral analysis like I'm used to doing isn't doing any good at all. That's out. Doing the analysis myself isn't working so hot either, even with GR, only the deadline and the complete lack of anyone else doing cases has made the lynches on GR and Ham go through.

But I don't know how else to play and still be effective in case-making. I guess I could try to go with being less oriented on the details of the case, and more effective in being persuasive and clear? Put all my effort into the presentation, since the details are too boring and arcane? Huh.

I don't know think that's quite right, though. It's not that people aren't talking about detailed subjects, it's that people are looking at the detailed subjects, evaluating them, in strange ways. Be persuasive in the details that do interest people, I guess. Control frustration. Set reasonable goals and expectations.

Back to work.

Final sentence of the last post is critical, but I'm reraising this point that you glossed over, as well. Do you think I'm dumb enough scum to let a cop nab me when I could have stopped it, Dechs?

Your theory requires me to be that dumb.

Mafia is won by looking at what IS certain, at what you can see is true, the patterns you can see in player's words and thoughts.

And what IS certain right now?

We've got one claimed cop saying you're scum. We've got another saying the first one is town. We've got a claimed failed vig that doesn't mean shit.

IF ANYONE IS GETTING HUNG, Az, YOU'RE IT.

What's certain right now is that every time I try to direct people into actual behavioral analysis, they don't want to do it. And at this late stage, it wouldn't even do us much good here, because the two players that need to be read most badly, RN and Imopen, were allowed to camouflage themselves all game amongst a crowd of townie lurkers. You could try reading me behaviorally, but no one's got the patience or experience to do it properly.

We could have made this work if the other players cooperated with my plans to make a simul-lynch happen. But everyone's already submitted all their plans.

We could have made a lynch on Imopen work, but you seem ready to come up with a thousand role-based reasons to ignore the failed vig, while ignoring the equally plausible thousand role-based reasons and behavioral reasons that Imopen's result on me is just as unreliable as the failed vig.

If the scum have the means and the desire to tamper with a vigilante device that they may or may not have known was coming, how much more so would they have had the desire to tamper with Imopen's pending investigation, that he telegraphed to the entire thread for no good reason?

If you're discounting the failed vig as good evidence, why are you still trusting the investigation to be accurate?

Now that's WIFOM.

No, that's a valid question. I'm supposedly smart enough to anticipate a vig and counter it, but dumb enough to not want to kill a guy who hated me and declared he had an investigation, because I wanted to use wording supplied to me by Rez in a quickchat to verify myself as a master builder rather than just, say, NOT BEING INVESTIGATED BY A COP

Oh shit, that could explain why Rez died.

Oh man. I'm just helplessly staring at my screen in disbelief at this point. This is like the most epic example of how possible tells are awful that I've ever run into.

Mafia isn't won by dreaming up scenarios that COULD be true, and COULD prove that someone is scum. You can make up plausible scum narratives for most anyone, at anytime.

Mafia is won by looking at what IS certain, at what you can see is true, the patterns you can see in player's words and thoughts.

If I were building sabotage devices, seems like it might have been smart to sabotage the guy who said he was going to investigate two people tomorrow and went on record that he hated and suspected my guts against all reason. Just saying.

Instead, I supposedly killed...Rezombad? Because I saw the vig from mojo coming on D1 but didn't see Imopen coming when he shouted it from the rooftops?

And I not only gave up the mafia NK, but prevented a town controlled vig on top of that, and then stuck my neck way out to save CK and kill Ham after bussing the hell out of GR on day one?

Apparently, I'm the WORST mafia player of all time.

It's not like we've seen any of your inventions do anything to verify you're a master builder.

So I pulled the running out of pieces bit out of my nether regions?

And there is a whole universe of abilities that would be reasonable to expect for Stardust to give the scum. For instance, a broad-based immunity to town devices.

A device sabotage is perfectly reasonable to expect from Stardust. It would also explain the no night kill Night 1 because there should be only one scum left. Using the ability takes the place of the night kill (according to Stardust's previous setups). Boom. Solved.

...but we had a kill on the night that you theorize Imopen was tampered with...

How about that saboteur ability we're theorizing? We knew day one that MoJo was building a day kill. Sabotage it at night, it fails during the day.

I guess. But again, we're operating WAY off in conjecture land here.

For this theory of yours to work, we're assuming that imopen's ability was tampered with, AND that CK's vig-kill was tampered with, by a third-party, without any reason to believe that the scum have one of those abilities.

Plus, if it were a sabotage device like you said, then I don't think Imopen should have gotten any results. It should have simply failed to work, as did CK's vig.

*frowns* A RB at the source from a Master builder could have worked, I guess. Mojo said he was firing, at *someone.* But that's only plausible if the scum have a master builder.

I don't buy that they would have had TWO RBers, one of which was day capable, in this game.

Where did I say that? I don't believe the two scum team, so of course I'm not implicating CK set up his buddy. Of course there's no room for LMD or CK to be scum if Imopen is scum. There's only one scum left.

A failed vig kill means nothing to me. I'm telling you, I set up a town on town failed vig and it won me the game.

I don't see how the logistics could possibly work here. The scum jailer/roleblocker was already dead.

Your theoretical scum in this scenario would have needed to have either:

A) Another day doctor or day RB ability. (Note, GR's abilities could only be used at night, so even a copycat ability wouldn't work.) That's not believable.

B) A master builder ability , which he somehow knew to prepare on N1 to gain himself a day doctor/RB ability.

Mojo didn't vow that he was going to blow away Imopen the next day. If he had, yeah, you could argue that he could have set up a failed vig. I'm guessing in your scum game, you knew that the vig was coming, and so you were able to counter it because of that, right?

The scum didn't know that, here. If they didn't even know it was coming, how could they have stopped it?

We have a verified, failed kill on Imopen. CK isn't lying - look at the thread. And if CK isn't lying, Imopen is guilty as sin. No townie was responsible for that failed kill, and no scum would have used a protection ability on Imopen during the day, on Day Two. You don't have to take it on faith from me, think it through for yourself.

This is the exact reasoning I used to push the final mislynch to win the game as scum in Gone Postal.

Did you have the actions of every single townie and scum player accounted for, in that game?

Do we in this game?

Didn't think so.

Thank you for seeing through Az's manipulative bullshit

Also, you're looking at this completely backward. What scum would have been "setting this up", way back on D2?

What scum would have had an ability to use to protect Imopen, during the day, and WANT to use it, when he could have reaped a free kill by letting it happen?

We've verified that the kill could only have come from scum. If you think that some friendly scum helped save a townie Imopen...I don't even know what.

Red alignment is linked to Imopen*.

We have a verified, failed kill on Imopen. CK isn't lying - look at the thread. And if CK isn't lying, Imopen is guilty as sin. No townie was responsible for that failed kill, and no scum would have used a protection ability on Imopen during the day, on Day Two. You don't have to take it on faith from me, think it through for yourself.

This is the exact reasoning I used to push the final mislynch to win the game as scum in Gone Postal.

Did you have the actions of every single townie and scum player accounted for, in that game?

Do we in this game?

Didn't think so.

Yes...we do. CK and I have had this conversation twice, back and forth.


All living players deny responsibility. So, all living townies are ruled out.

GR was already dead, so it wasn't him.

Ham declared at post 861, IIRC, that he was building his bat device. Rez built his comm device. I stated this publicly, while he was alive, and he did not contradict me. That's everyone.

Are you fucking kidding me? We have no idea what LMD has or hasn't done. We have no idea what CK really has done. We have no idea what Red has done. We have no idea what you've done. Any one in that list could be scum and setting this shit up.

Are you arguing that CK claimed a failed vig on Imopen to...implicate his buddy?

And Red's alignment is linked to CK. There's no room for LMD or CK to be scum, if Imopen is scum.

We have a verified, failed kill on Imopen. CK isn't lying - look at the thread. And if CK isn't lying, Imopen is guilty as sin. No townie was responsible for that failed kill, and no scum would have used a protection ability on Imopen during the day, on Day Two. You don't have to take it on faith from me, think it through for yourself.

This is the exact reasoning I used to push the final mislynch to win the game as scum in Gone Postal.

Did you have the actions of every single townie and scum player accounted for, in that game?

Do we in this game?

Didn't think so.

Yes...we do. CK and I have had this conversation twice, back and forth.


All living players deny responsibility. So, all living townies are ruled out.

GR was already dead, so it wasn't him.

Ham declared at post 861, IIRC, that he was building his bat device. Rez built his comm device. I stated this publicly, while he was alive, and he did not contradict me. That's everyone.

We have a verified, failed kill on Imopen. CK isn't lying - look at the thread. And if CK isn't lying, Imopen is guilty as sin. No townie was responsible for that failed kill, and no scum would have used a protection ability on Imopen during the day, on Day Two. You don't have to take it on faith from me, think it through for yourself.

This is the exact reasoning I used to push the final mislynch to win the game as scum in Gone Postal.

Did you have the actions of every single townie and scum player accounted for, in that game?

The other four townies get to finish building powers and Imopen can retry the cop thing so we can be more certain.

Please explain how Imopen coming up with another cop result tells us *anything*.

We still have only chance to lynch correctly. We can either trust Imopen's word today, or trust his word then, and a 2nd result that could be equally fake makes no difference.

The advantage of taking an actual lynch shot today is that it won't end the game. We'll have two shots to get it right, not just a single one. It's less useful to worry about mislynching, than it is to worry about the consequences of when you mislynch, or who you mislynch. We don't want *one* shot to get it right with lots of information. We want two or possibly three shots to get it right, and our 2nd shot will have even more information than we'd get if we no-lynched today. But we don't get multiple shots if we let Imopen skate through today. We only have one way to deal with him, the lynch, and it won't be ready in time.

Did you read my analysis that demonstrates that the only scum team which you believe in as a possibility that can feasibly win is a Red/Imopen team? If it's a single scum, no matter who it is, they've already lost, even if we mislynch AND mis-vig AND mislynch someone again. That's not what you have to worry about. The only thing that can stop us now, is if we fail to play safe against the two-scum gambit.

Are you telling me that scum doesn't have a nightkill, or are you trying to distort the options in order to pilot DK to do what you say?

Read my previous posts. Mislynch, misvig, mislynch is STILL a win for the town due to a RB on the remaining scum.

Sorry, I should keep the sarcasm to a minimum. Seriously though, last time you were all 100% certain when I didn't think you were right, we lynched a townie. I'm not doing that again. Sorry Az, but I lost my confidence in your plans.

Either you're lynched or no one is.

I didn't say I was 100% certain on Ham. I said I was 95% certain on GR,75% certain that Ham was scum, but that his case was NOT as solid as GR's, partly because I couldn't substantiate firm reads on anyone else due to epic amounts of lurking from most of the playerbase, and I was 100% certain that going after CK without giving him a chance to respond was a really bad idea.

People didn't think I was right about GR either, remember? Almost the entire town thought I was nuts, until he flipped.

I'm not 100% certain that Imopen and Red are the scum team, here. It's *possible* that someone tampered with his ability since *for some reason* he felt it necessary to claim it yesterday before it went off, which makes no sense to me at all for a townie to do. It's *possible* that it's a coincidence that RN built the exact same device, and used it on Imopen. But I'm feeling like a broken record here, in stating that that theory still doesn't account for CK's missing vig kill. To which you reply, CK could be the person who tampered with Imopen, and is lying about his kill.

But Mojo was already gunning for Mojo as of Day 2, and telegraphed that Imopen was going to be his kill target way back on D1, then followed up with questions about Imopen's ability use on Day 2. Why do you think a scum Mojo would have done that? There's no way he could have foreseen this exact scenario, and then prepared those lies in advance. Mojo was actualy getting ready to declare Imopen confirmed town, depending on how he answered. Mojo and CK are both telling the truth about the failed kill.

Can you explain to me what Mojo/CK could have possibly had to gain as scum from going through those motions yesterday and D1? How do you explain that, if there was no failed kill on Imopen?

We have a verified, failed kill on Imopen. CK isn't lying - look at the thread. And if CK isn't lying, Imopen is guilty as sin. No townie was responsible for that failed kill, and no scum would have used a protection ability on Imopen during the day, on Day Two. You don't have to take it on faith from me, think it through for yourself.

Also, no-lynch does NOT allow us to leverage CK's vig-shot as an extra lynch. It's not an extra lynch if you lose immediately if you're wrong about your target.

The no-lynch plan eliminates all our margin for error. Lynching me instead of Imopen eliminates all our margin for error. Lynching Imopen today, allowing me to activate CK, is our last chance to generate breathing room for the town to make a mistake, to allow us to have multiple shots at taking out the scum, and have multiple alignments flip up before we have to make a truly final decision.

From DK's perspective, anyways. I'm not sure it's quite so cut and dried as that, but I do know we're probably going down in flames if we mislynch on me, leave someone who's demonstrated inexplicable untargetability alive, and eliminate the only guy who took steps to give CK another vig-shot for tomorrow.

The other four townies get to finish building powers and Imopen can retry the cop thing so we can be more certain.

Please explain how Imopen coming up with another cop result tells us *anything*.

We still have only chance to lynch correctly. We can either trust Imopen's word today, or trust his word then, and a 2nd result that could be equally fake makes no difference.

The advantage of taking an actual lynch shot today is that it won't end the game. We'll have two shots to get it right, not just a single one. It's less useful to worry about mislynching, than it is to worry about the consequences of when you mislynch, or who you mislynch. We don't want *one* shot to get it right with lots of information. We want two or possibly three shots to get it right, and our 2nd shot will have even more information than we'd get if we no-lynched today. But we don't get multiple shots if we let Imopen skate through today. We only have one way to deal with him, the lynch, and it won't be ready in time.

Did you read my analysis that demonstrates that the only scum team which you believe in as a possibility that can feasibly win is a Red/Imopen team? If it's a single scum, no matter who it is, they've already lost, even if we mislynch AND mis-vig AND mislynch someone again. That's not what you have to worry about. The only thing that can stop us now, is if we fail to play safe against the two-scum gambit.

Maybe because you think we're going to hang Az first, then go after Imopen when he shows up town?

yeah well there's still you and LMD, assuming I wouldn't be able to NK anyone. Not worth it when I could have stood idle and watch Az get lynched, then NK someone else and seeing imopen2 get lynched the day after for a false cop claim. Your theory makes no sense.

Mmm.

In a scenario where CK was scum, and we lynched me first, then Imopen, we'd be going from 6p, 1s down to 4p, 1s, down to 3p 1s. The remaining two town players could plan to chrono/boost roleblock CK for the win.

Or, you could follow the plan I laid out in my previous post, where CK is ordered to vig me tomorrow. If CK is the only scum left, he can't win this game.

If I'm only the scum left, I can't win the game either.

If you correctly rule out me and CK being a team together, the only feasible scum team that can still win this game, is a joint scum team of Red and Imopen. Don't ignore that threat.

CK knows he's not lying about the failed vig kill on Imopen. That's one vote that *may* very well come down in favor of killing Imopen before killing me.

And YOU believe that me and CK can't be scum together. That being the case, if you believe that only a single scum is left and it's either me or CK or maybe LMD as a long-shot, you're looking at a chance to take out two targets of your choice tomorrow. There would be 1 scum amongst four players. I would promise to hyperboost CK, and CK would promise to use the vig-kill on me. If CK refuses to use the vig-kill on me, you lynch him as lying scum. If I fail to hyperboost CK, you lynch me as lying scum. And if we're both town, and CK does use the vig-kill on me, you'd still get the chance to take out CK or Red or LMD with the lynch.

If there's only one scum left, you're almost certainly going to win. You'll get three shots to take them out. But if you're wrong about there being only a single scum left, we have only a single lynch, plus *mystery night stuff*.

I'm sure whatever you're planning is good, but is it better than having three town-controlled kills that could be used to cover all three of the scenarios that you're worried about: scum Imopen, scum Azrael, or scum CK?

And again, I'm not saying you shouldn't kill me, Dechs. I'm not saying to take my word on faith. All I'm saying is that you should kill Imopen, first, b/c he's NK immune and you can then verify his investigation, and THEN have somebody vig me off.

If you think I'm the only scum left, OR that CK is the only scum left, you lose nothing by an Imopen lynch. The town doesn't lose. The town still has another day of life in it to make good on lynching or vigging either me, or CK.

Agreed about me and CK not being a viable scum team, that is.

The scum can't do anything about me because I've done the math, and no matter who the remaining scum is, there's a more important target than me.

If they target Imopen, *I'm* proven to be a liar, I die, town wins or searches for my buddy, probably CK, and probably wins.

You and CK cannot be a scum team. You guys would have already won were that the case. If they kill Imopen, it damns you to a mislynch. I actually highly suspect this is what's going to happen tonight. If we have a kind of doctor left, someone needs to protect Imopen (again, haha).

Agreed.

Also, Az, you're looking at it the wrong way. You're looking at the targets. You need to look at the scum. If Imopen is scum, he wants to kill X. If Red is scum, he wants to kill Y. I think that's the better way to approach it.

Under any configuration of the scum that's out there, they want to kill you, Dechs. You're the tipping point of this game. CK and Imopen are useless, I'm useless, LMD, nobody knows. If we no-lynch, you're the kill, and we gain nothing.

Az, you've got to realize that you're the only viable lynch today. There's a cop with backup telling us you're scum. If you really are town and you really do believe that the scum is a team, then you're only option to win at this point is to vote no-lynch. You're not going to convince us to hang Imopen.

Imopen isn't a cop though, Dechs.

The nature of this game is that there are no cops, no doctors, no nurses. There's just whatever we say that we are.

In ordinary games, you trust the cop because you KNOW they are the cop. There can be only one cop in a typical setup. If someone says he's the cop, he is. You can trust him.

Here, Imopen saying he's a cop here means nothing. Anyone could say that. If the game ends before anyone can do anything about a lie, why shouldn't the scum lie and say they took a cop investigation? No one can contradict them soon enough for it to matter.

You're looking at a simple he-said, she-said scenario. It's not a question of who's the cop. There isn't one. It comes down to my word that I'm town, and CK's word that his kill failed, against Red's word that Imopen is town, and Imopen's word that I'm scum.

Or you can try to second-guess scenarios where the scum have some device that makes everything complicated and awful. But at the end of the day, there's no special reason to take imopen's word over CK's word, or Red's word, over mine. There's no guarantee in this setup that any one of us isn't lying.

The scum can't do anything about me because I've done the math, and no matter who the remaining scum is, there's a more important target than me.

Alright. Let's proceed from this premise, then and see what scenarios we'd be looking at. From a neutral bystander perspective he scum have four feasible targets:

LMD
Dechs
Imopen
CK

They won't target LMD, because he's less of a direct role-based threat to them, as far as they know.

If they target CK, he's proven to not be a liar, town *should* lynch Imopen and Red, and win.

If they target Imopen, *I'm* proven to be a liar, I die, town wins or searches for my buddy, probably CK, and probably wins.

But I think there's a pretty decent chance they'll target you, Dechs. You seem to think that they won't do that, because of the threat of Imopen's subsequent investigation and CK's vig-kill. But neither of those are real threats.

CK's vig-kill is only of value if using it doesn't end the game. In a no-lynch scenario, it will. CK could theoretically use it on Imopen just to see if it's going to be blocked a 2nd time, but if you didn't believe him the first time he said the kill failed, I don't see the use in repeating the exercise twice.

Imopen's investigation is only valuable if it's believable/tells us something new. It won't. Tomorrow, he'll almost certainly investigate CK. And he'll say CK is either or town or scum. But we'll still have to decide whether we believe him, or not, despite the fact that his ability could have been tampered with a 2nd time, according to your theory at least. Imopen's investigations do us no good unless we know we can trust Imopen, and if you think his results can be tampered with, they're worthless to us.

I'm not probing you. If you say what it is you can do, if you even start HINTING at it, we almost certainly lose. I just have a hard time entirely trusting you that there's nothing that could possibly screw you up tonight. There is nothing you should try to comment say or do about that, or else we're screwed, but that's where I am - you asked what my analysis of the two scenarios are. My analysis involves a certain amount of distrust that there's *nothing* the scum can do to defeat whatever tricks you have up your sleeve, so yeah, that path isn't my first choice.

PPE: I think that's highly unlikely, but I can't say it's impossible. You could ask him what he built last night, I suppose.

If Az is town, it's because Imopen's power was tampered with. Imopen could easily reuse the ability tonight on Az, either clearing or damning Az for sure.

But if Imopen is an innocent townie cop, like he says and *someone* just tampered with his results, then why the hell did he survive CK's vig kill?

Why would the scum choose to protect someone from kills who isn't on their team?

That puts you into the realm of either CK being a liar, or Imopen being a liar.

And that means we're looking at a scenario where there MUST be two scum. There are too many conflicting claims amongst the four of us for two of us NOT to be liars.