man... i just don't get why E! would take this route. I can't come up with like a single helpful reason for Skum!E to claim results on LL or me....
What is the plan there? They have to know it looks skummy af so there would have to be an inherent upside to it down the road right?
He could of claimed results on any of the VTs... even if we lynch them, the next day he could still play the framing card. Not to mention his "assigned target" was Robz...
He just messed up? That is pretty much what I am left with.
To circle back to this, because I think you were having the slight sense of unease that I was having here - in that there hadn't really been presented a good reason "why" thusfar:
I think the play for scum last night was DEFINITELY to frame both of the town-cops. Given that town, at that point, knew that the Traitor was gone, that removed any possibility of getting a town result when investigating within the cops and having it turn out to be scum - that is, there could be no false-positive there. This meant that not only could scum not kill within the cops because they didn't want to PoE themselves into a corner, but an even worse situation would be for a cop to investigate within the claims and come back with a town result. This would IC the resulted cop, and give pretty hefty town points to the investigating cop.
Yes, framing both of the cops left the door open to a potential for a double-town result on two VT players, but I think scum were banking on one or more of the cops realizing that a town result within the cops could now be trusted with the traitor dead. If nothing else, I would've given the likelihood that a cop decided to investigate within the claims at LEAST equal probability that they both decided to cop VT's - and a town-result on a cop was far more dangerous to scum.
So, given that scum most likely double-framed the town cops, they now know for certain that any claimed result against a cop-claim would come back as scum. e! could not safely fake-claim a scum result in the VT's, because there was a chance that you, Datswan, targeted the same VT and would've come back with a town result. And e! definitely didn't want to create an additional IC by claiming a town result on a VT. So the safest play for scum!e here is to claim a result that he knows is "accurate" given that you were framed. This allows him to claim more or less truthfully, without the possibility of creating another IC.
So at this point we are beating a dead horse... I think.
There is one "flaw" in the logic here and it is the very last part - if all three of us were confirmed to come back as skum, why would he claim a result that I have no chance of "verifying".
To spell it out:
LL had claimed Town!MCMC
E! now gets to choose (within cops) between LL and Swan.
Swan (within cops) could of chosen either LL or E!
1) E! claims results on Swan
1a) Swan claims results on E! - ok yeah good defense in advance. He would not wanna be in the position where there is only one result, so he chooses the safe claim inside the cops.
1b) Swan claims results on LL - Now we have results on Swan and LL. Neat, that is a chaotic af situation. We would have to choose between lynching LL (they flip town, and I look skummy af) vs. lynching Swan (I flip town, and now the only result is on LL) vs lynching E! (which would be good in this scenario).
*In my opinion, from my "1-options" 1b is clearly a better play than 1a, and yet E! went with 1a.*
All of that is kind of me just working through it. THE POINT IS...He could of just as safely...
2) E! claims results on LL
2a) Swan claims results on E! - Complete honesty.. in a world where I check E! and get skum and then E! skum results LL... The hair on my neck stands. Just run that through... how skummy does that make me look if I search E!? Like legit I honestly would probably of "IC'd" my top TR by lying or just refused to give results or idk but that puts me in a SHITTY spot. If I were to out my results, obviously it is the same as "1b", except it is LL/E! instead of Swan!E
2b) Swan claims results on LL - There is the potential WIFOM about MCMC "not being an IC" (small chance that gets off, but still it is there). Also, LL claimed on MCMC so he could of used that as the "well that was a convenient target" reason.
TLDR; - Assuming double-frame + Skum!E + E! assumes a cop checked a cop (and LL claimed not a cop check already) + E! fakes the claim on a Cop... The lynch pool of the cops is pretty much the same size no matter what.
He could of faked a result on a VT. There is a risk, but in reality this all plays out to "find the skum!cop" within 2 days. He could of either CCd LL right out the gate which puts it at a 1v1 and keeps the IC card off the table for at least 1 more day. Or he could of picked another town player, where the worst case is again, a 1v1 where I have a different result and we cannot IC that player. Second part is the important part as my target from Awaclus was MCMC, and even without that it is a very high chance of having a unique skum result.
The counter point that would be made is that by picking me it creates 2 skum results within cops. However, if skum put this plan in play they had to of thought that at least 1/2 cops checked within the cops.... so why not create a result within the cops and outside the cops? fuck, he could of even faked a skum result on his skum partner and then if we lynch either of them...
That is a long TLDR but it is the summary of thoughts. I still like E! over LL but I really want both of them to weigh in before we lynch.