So, the three people that have argued against me and BA being Town are Faust, PPS, and Ash.
Faust immediately questions it (something like, "the two scummiest people claim Masons, I smell a scum plot"). I expect this to not be too unnatural of a reaction in a vacuum. It's obviously terrible in this game, and with BA and myself, but taken out of context being very suspicious is sensible. Notably, Faust had been tunneling me since the day before, so it would be somewhat of a coincidence that he's scum, pushing for a mislynch, and then his mislynch candidate all the sudden comes out and claims Masons. I don't know.. his play during early days wasn't really scummy.. he mostly seemed to be trying to figure things out.. He pushed for a mass claim early.. does this make sense with his role? Perhaps.. maybe he thought a massclaim would give scum a dilemma on who to kill, because he could inherit a powerful Town role. He could have been trying to judge whether to fake claim or claim something about his hypothetical role.. but kind of dangerous if we force him to go early in the claiming. I also still can't figure out .. why try to lynch us as scum? There has to be a level of WIFOM here to be able to argue "why would I do this as scum when I know you'll flip town"? That would be some fast thinking on Faust's part, though.. he responded against us pretty quickly.
A better scum strategy would be to paint us as scummy today, let *us* be more in charge of a lynch and try to insure it's a mislynch (BA and I are pretty much honed in on PPS/Ash, and one of them must be Town if Faust is scum), and then argue to get us lynched tomorrow. Unless we really are in MyLo today.
I guess the thing that makes me so nervous about Faust was that his claim was so convenient.. that only one player had dice taken away yesterday, and the player that was apparently attacked by scum was given dice by Faust.
Faust: why did you ask if anyone had gained 1,3, or 4 dice?
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PPS initially accepted that BA and myself were probably telling the truth, but started fighting us hard when we didn't want to no lynch. This makes sense from a Town perspective if he really thought No Lynch was the best idea, and couldn't see any reason that BA and I would oppose it as town. Scum narrative.. well, he might not want the attention of adamantly calling out players he knows are Town. Same argument as in Faust, though here he had some more time to think over how things would look and already had one player arguing against us.. He's since backed off, which makes me feel better about him, but of course there's no sound basis for that.
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Ash initially didn't have much of an opinion. He only started attacking us after Faust and PPS had already expressed a lot of concern. This strikes me as the scummiest.. sit back and judge the mood of things before taking a side. I also feel the worst about Ash's arguments, as (from my perspective at least), they've seemed very off and to be purposefully misinterpreting and twisting things to argue that BA and I are scum. Plus, it should be blatantly obvious to Ash that this isn't scum me. Well, it really should be to Faust, too, but I can more understand Faust to be at the point where he just isn't listening to me any more.
Could Ash's attack on us been an attempt at getting people around to joining the mislynch? He had already seen PPS/Faust willing (and eager) to do so, so he only needed to convince two players out of {Arch, Lio, Hydrad}. They didn't seem to eager, but maybe if he thought we'd look bad enough they could go against us. With Ash's experience at these things, I could see him getting away with something like that, and I could maybe see it working if he was only arguing against BA.
Especially weird was Ash's initially arguing that BA was a better lynch choice then me, when clearly our alignments are entangled. That was a weird sort of behavior.. maybe if he thought if he argued directly for lynching me when Faust and PPS were already voting for me (was PPS? I'm sure Faust was), it would look more like him joining on a wagon instead of looking like he legitimately thought we were scum.
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Well, I still find Ash the scummiest. Surprise. Still no good explanation for why scum really wants to fight me and BA, so that worries me. Scenarios:
(1) They did buy Loved, so a mislynch today is a win (6 town 2 scum -> 4 town 2 scum -> Loved scum needs 5 votes to lynch with 6 players... okay not a win, we can still lynch the unloved scum. Only if both scum have Loved. So, we'd still get tomorrow unless they both bought it.
(2) A similar issue dealing with GR things that I don't think we've divulged yet (Faust knows).
(3) They don't actually expect us to get lynched today.. just seed enough doubt so that we can get lynched tomorrow. Well, a no lynch is good for scum in this case, as we're guaranteed not to hit a scum today. If we successfully lynch today BA and myself are automatically verified and IC's. So scum would want No Lynch if we're at all close to making the right choice today. A mislynch is even better, because for everyone else that is believing BA and myself, we look worse as more Town players die.
Not sure the point.. just thinking out loud. There is also the chance that scum is in {Arch, Lio, Hydrad}. I'm not lynching Hydrad today, though.. if he's scum, great.. and if he is, I think his partner would be one of the ones against us. Lio and Arch I don't know.. I'm more nervous about Arch since he's been so quiet.
PPE: 6