Things which bother me at the moment, in no particular order:

- If it's a vig, why did they strike on day 1?
--> This is not a townie move, so I'm leaning towards Vitek's death being the work of an SK. Which makes life harder for town... Goodie.

- why was Stoic still bothered about Damuna when she blatently flipped town?
--> or more accurately, why was stoic still up in arms about not being able to push the lynch through on Damuna, when she flipped town? I could understand it if she was in fact scum, but why are you so bothered about it? If you HAD pushed the lynch through, she would STILL have flipped town, no matter how weird her play was...

Vote Robbeasy for not deigning to respond to my prodding and therefore denying himself the chance to create this elusive thing called activity. You're chasing your tail, my friend. Complaining about the dullness of the game while expecting everyone else to magically create activity? Come onnnnn.

FOS stoicsentry for obsessing over a cold case.

Agreed, it was depressing. We go right up until the deadline and still have no clue.

If it helps, here's a list of what I'm mad about right now, in no particular order:

1) At myself, for wasting time on Damuna.

2) At Damuna, for making me waste my time.

3) At the inactivity and lack of cooperation among all townies on day 1. Other than Damuna at a target, all we had was two townies pointing fingers at each other, and they both end up getting lynched. They said 1st day is supposed to be rough, but at least we can try to talk more.

@TB: Still think someone on the Damuna wagon is mafia? If so any idea who?

@GoJays: I think you're reading too much into xzyem's stuff. I was confused about it too. But your attack on #426 falls apart when you consider #6. Taking that with the huge gap between his early posts and his personality shift, and I think I believe him when he claims he went off and educated himself. Looking sideways at the people who jumped on that pressure-wagon. Oo look, it's Robb and Rod again.

I have no idea about the goats though...

Prepost edit:
@Stoic: you're at it again! :o Also, we shouldn't just write off D1. There will be stuff in there we can use; with the volume of posts it's likely a mafia did give themselves away in there somewhere, even if it's through lurking. We just need to find them.

I get fed up when nothing happens.
Adding pressure is a good way of getting things moving.
See how they react to pressure.
See also how others react to you applying pressure.
All useful data....

At what?

Damuna-obsessing. At this point it looks like you're just padding, imho. What better way to avoid constructive discussion than to fixate on yesterday's modkill?

@Rod: fair enough, but I'm taking into account the fact that you also jumped on yesterday's wagon when you thought she was at L-3, the leap to the defensive in #708 that Vitek pointed out, and the metagame disucssions you've been involved with. Like Robbeasy, for someone claiming to be bored, you're not really doing very much to generate constructive discussion...

Panicking didn't help, pointing fingers at each other didn't help...what to do? Best way to go for now is for everyone to talk and express his/her opinions about situation and to target lurkers, since they wont participate in discussion where there would be chance for them to expose themselves.

I think I express my unsolicited frustration once. Any other post(s) have been answering direct questions.

I'm inclined to focus more on the lurkers at this point.There have been too many of them.

Yep - yet thats what many apparently don't want to due to fear of exposing themselves which is odd, since the only ones that should truly fear exposing themselves are scum. Yes, there is powerroles and yes those should be hidden. But ones thoughts can still be a content show of ones alignment without revealing role.

In regards of lurkers the problem with those are uncertainty. If we knew for certain a guy was lurking in order to not reveal himself: lynch would be instant. But we don't. Already we have some with work, who posts a little, others with engagement plans (congratulation if succeeded by the way :D) and so forth, making it very hard to judge. You can also just take a quick look at Damuna to see that town also lurks. So maybe one could say that the mafia would be the more active ones? Given that that have a keener interest in leading others, but no, seeing as one of the more active ones (Vitek) have already been proven town. Thats part of what makes the game frustrating, but I do believe it to be unavoidable and I personally only like to go for lurkers when I am fairly certain they won't return (in the cases where they disappear for good without ever giving a reason although in those cases were there is one who only posts after getting prodded I would also be quite willing to place a vote).

NFY: I agree with you in regards of GoJays case, as I've already mentioned - except that his post in defense of himself was so very well made that I stopped a little, even after I myself wrote about his "study" it just seemed like he was too good too soon. I know from myself for instance that I read up a lot on other games, but still in my first game I tended to always write about third parties -> I don't really see xzyem making any errors. But judging a guy because he shows that he is a faster learned than I would expect is tough. So yea I am keeping an eye out, but otherwise I don't believe him scum.

Alright, then. Let me just get some general remarks out of the way first.

The first day was, ultimately, pointless. Without even a proper lynch wagon to analyse, we are pretty much exactly where we were when the whole thing started, just three townies short (and we're quite lucky just one of them was a power role). This cannot be allowed to continue, otherwise we could hand the victory over to the mafia straight away and go home. And pretty much everyone in the game played his or her part in it; seriously, people, I know GOG mafia games always tended to do that, but waiting for something to happen is not the same as playing the game. And I don't know about you, but I'd much rather lose a good game than win a boring one.

With which I want to say: stop being so cautious, and if you see a discussion, participate in it even though it does not directly concern you! Consequences be damned; anything at all anyone says can be, and often will be, (mis)interpreted in many ways and considered damning evidence against them by one group or another. That is the point of the game. Being silent for fear of becoming suspicious is a terrible strategy, as the first day has clearly shown.

With that out of the way, let's turn to the matter at hand.

I can't say I'm a fan of complex analyses of nightkill targets, but considering it's about the only piece of information we have, we might as well start there. Two corpses on day two could obviously mean several things, the two most probable ones being:
1. There are two scumteams, and both can kill at night. Now unless Damnation recycled his no-kills-on-odd-nights mechanic (which seems unlikely to me), this would essentially mean town was screwed from the very start unless it's an insanely power-heavy town -- which it doesn't seem to be so far.
2. One of the kills was the work of scum, the other of a serial killer or overzealous vig. This seems more likely, and unlike NFY, I'd actually be leaning towards the latter possibility. Why? Because of the targets.
Vitek and nmillar locked horns relatively early and kept at it throughout the day. It's not hard to superficially read this situation as a town-scum conflict (even though it wasn't, as it turns out), and it's something that could absolutely make a trigger-happy (and possibly inexperienced?) vig go for whichever he considers scummier of the two (cf. the night one vig kill in M5). Why did scum go for the other one -- hard to say, but both nmillar and Vitek are experienced and good players, and as such dangerous. Hardly good sportsmanship offing either of them early in the game, but it's clearly an attractive tactic.

Therefore, for now I'm going to presume there is just one scumteam in the game, at least until day three. But I'm pretty certain Damnation is going to mess with us, so I'm fully prepared to eat my words later.

At this point, I thought I'd share my reads, such as they are, to make this wall of text so much taller:

Detlik: there's the business with his lack of voting mentioned on day one (perhaps somehow related to the mysterious voter), but the discussion then just fizzled out for some reason or other. As Detlik's #668 was obviously hinting at something, I think it would be wise to learn more. Therefore: Detlik, what happens when you vote, if you actually can do so? And I'd appreciate if you could also demonstrate by voting someone -- me, if you want to. That is unless you believe that this would somehow unbalance the game (or if it would, say, insta-kill me; I don't think I'd like that). The cat's tail is sticking out of the bag already, might as well take a look at the whole animal.

Penut/GoJays: I don't really have anything there, what with the lurking, replacement and all.

jefequeso: There's something that makes me vaguely uneasy about jefe in this game, but I can't put my finger on it. His strength is in observation, and I wouldn't mind hearing what his reads are.

NotFrenchYet: Has pinged my scumdar quite a few times throughout day one, basically for the reasons listed by Vitek way back in #150&154. I find her helpful attitude a little too overzealous, though it's nothing I could possibly build a case on. Just a feeling. And I'm wary of the "Vitek was killed to put the blame on me" line of reasoning in #835; I don't think I've ever seen something like that actually happen, but I do think that people who try to float these ideas tend to be the actual culprits throwing out a false motive. I'd have to research that more, though.

QuadrAlien: His play feels consistent with what I remember of town-QA from other games, but he's once again in heavy lurker mode. You really need to post more, mate. And it doesn't always have to be comprehensive; just a few random thoughts will do.

Red_Baron: Here's an interesting one, and my top suspect of the hour. It has been already pointed out by someone (NFY and Vitek, I think) that his posts are some of the finest fence-sitting you're likely to see, and his voting pattern is opportunistic to say the least (not to mention that one unvote at #151 to escape what started looking like a dangerous stack of votes on Damuna -- this felt mighty odd at that time and still does). And there's a lot of "I agree with you guys" on whatever is the case of the hour (#571 is a good example there), too. Almost feels as if he didn't want to step on any toes -- which is quite unlike the Red_Baron I know.

Robbeasy: I feel moderately good about Robbeasy this game (which in itself is odd), doing his usual eager blender routine and not seeming particularly suspect to me. Which of course means he should be lynched immediately.

[Apologies to the newbies, that was a joke. Me and Rob have some old scores to settle :)]

Rodzaju: I agree with the Bard here. The issue of Lynch All Liars is a complex one, but advocating LAL in the early days of the game is either straight up scummy or simply misguided. The idea isn't to lynch everyone who doesn't participate much (if that were the case, everyone in this game should have been lynched already), but to go after people who deliberately shy away from discussion to hide in the shadows, assuming that such players are more likely to be scum. But a lack of participation in and of itself is not suspicious, and LAL on those grounds is nothing but a dice-roll. Quite honestly, I do not think Rodzaju is advocating this out of malice, but I cannot rule it out.

SirPrimalform: Is only truly active in off-topic discussions. There's very little else you could say about him.

Stoicsentry: A tricky one. I like his questions and rational approach to the whole thing very much, but there is something in his playstyle that doesn't quite fit. I'm keeping an eye on him.

TwilightBard: There's quite a lack of participation there as well. Likes discussing general play strategies, but doesn't very often comment on what's actually going on in the thread. As said previously, I agree with his stance on LAL in the recent discussion with Rodzaju, but then again, that gives us little to no indication on what his alignment might be.

Xzyem: I like this guy. The change in his playing style is quite jarring, but other than that, I see him asking good questions and trying to actively scumhunt, which isn't exactly common here.

So all in all, I don't see anyone I could describe as leaning town. Everyone's a suspect, just Red_Baron and NFY seem somewhat more so. Brilliant.

As usual, there was something else as well, but I forgot.

vote Red_Baron

You're saying what I've been thinking, only I hadn't been able to put it into words. If it's one team of mafia with two kills, it makes no sense for them to target the two of them. Due to their fighting, if you only kill one of them, it puts the town on alert for the other. Taking out both of them doesn't seem to make sense if the mafia are on one side.

So I think you're probably looking at 2 groups of mafia which are not in touch with each other. Maybe they don't know who belongs to the other group, either. This would fit in a theory developed with what may have been a slip up by xyzem earlier in which he reported that he thought we were "all supposed to be mafia."

So let's say there are 2 groups - probably of 2 each, and they don't know who belongs to the other mafia. Maybe they have to eliminate both the town and the other mafia as their goal. If so, I guess it's theoretically possible that they figured either one of the two belonged to the other mafia, and so they each took one out. Awfully coincidental, but it's the best we've got.


Well I'm going to have to rely on the more seasoned players to help me out here. I think we as town have a bit of a quandary here: if there really are 2 groups of mafia with 2 members each who don't know each other, we're not going to see much in the way of a wagon forming. That's the scary thing to me right now... what are the tells we can look for in the absence of a wagon?

Generally, my stance is borne out of frustration!
History will show that I am notoriously bad at scumhunting in the early game.
I can analyze voting history and comments pretty well, but so far there hasn't been enough of either.
I have done what I can to provoke discussion, but I'm not going to fabricate a case against someone just to have something to say.

I said something similar at some point during day one. I threw caution to the wind and tried to get some kind of lynch going. It failed and made me look suspicious to some but I don't regret it.

I'm fairly certain it wasn't no kills on odd nights, it was that they couldn't kill on the night immediately following their last kill. If the mafia or the serial killer had waited one night before starting then there would have been 1 kill per night instead of 2, 0, 2, 0.


Oh yes, and vote xzyem. GoJays brought up the "I thought we were all supposed to be mafias" comment and xzyem didn't address it at all in his reply.

Actually, baz was specifically saying he didn't think it was two mafia teams and that he thought it was much more likely to be one mafia team and a serial killer. :P

I thought I brought that up first! LOL. I don't know, it seems like grasping at straws to an extent. Still trying to balance the evidence with my gut which for whatever reason tells me xzyem is town. Reading comprehension fail. I think the 2X2 mafia theory makes more sense but I probably don't know as much as baz.