It was voluntary, Brasas got rid of Brasas.

With 3 wolves down I went for trying to get town cleared. In prep for the fake claim. Because obviously I never believed multiball, just a SK and me, and so I knew needed to prepare for more town flips from hopeful mislynches.

So I told Drealmer I wanted to Encounter Tammy and not try a NK. I got a prompt if I wished to confess and went for it. I mean, whatever would come after that I just needed to see... I was pretty sure Tammy ws some kind of witch like role by then.

I was happy to get cured, for RP reasons. I was sad to leave Nacho alone since I had pushed the NK on him so I could do my ability, and I think I was wolfing a bit deeper than him.

Still, that's it. I didn't ride into the sunset with Marie, but I rode into the moonset to start life anew.
I think from the actions Tammy had the choice to offer to cure me or not though. So thanks Tammy, nice of you ;)
PS Drealmer - that there was no explicit flavor about me taking my 4 horses was a lapse on your part :D

Now, I actually could choose to not get cured after having confessed. Dead Dan Walking, but could.
No idea what would have happened if I had not confessed, maybe just chit chat in the woods?

Also Drealmer, if I tried to NK Tammy N2 or even N1 what would have happened? Ever since she Vigged Dess I've been wondering, and now you mention she was almost NK immune... I mean N1 I was not sure I even had NK possibility in the Encounter ambiguity, but still would like to know.

PPS - double funny for me was that when I was trying to figure out if I could NK by talking with Drealmer D1, at some point he said I need not worry, because I would not out myself to town - he might have said or implied inadvertedly though. :D and then second time I actually Prowl and pop comes "Do you wish to out yourself?" Cracked me up...

lol - well, i was going for amusing over quality. The meter being shyte actually bothered me more.

Read through the observer and wolf chats. Won't take up most of that, and plan to put this 7 week run in the rear-view, mostly.

But I will say I didn't think I was making up the barn being wobbly bit. Perhaps it was ambiguous language I was just reading differently than drealmer:

"One false move and someone could fall and bump and hit something and bring down and crush years worth of good herbs. You almost never let anyone even step foot in the barn, and if you do, they literally are only allowed to be 1 step into the barn with 1 foot to peak in and see it and are not allowed to move beyond that spot, it's just too precarious a risk. "

/shrug - I guess on re-read it's just ambiguous, but the "bring down and crush" read to me as parts/all of the barn collapsing.

Anyway:
Tammy - played super awesome, but man that role was OP. She could've single-handedly swung the game to either side, and thankfully played town.
my own role was...odd

Lots of good ideas, but in this large a game, there was just a bit too much bastard-ness. Why did scum have a strongman they didn't know about? Why didn't said strongman go through the bodyguard?

From the town side, the snoop thing was way confusing. The lost votes were confusing. The non-flip on the modkill was confusing. The sheer number of NKs with ambiguous sourcing was confusing (especially when countered by Tammy's action, or my own PM noting if I used my vig it would be directly attributed to me).

Crazy that we kinda dodged a bullet by no-lynching over lynching dess (who would've killed...whom as retailation?), and tammy killed him anyway.

For what it's worth, part of why my D1 changed is I knew I was a dayvig - with IC if I targeted well, and saw Sushi get vigged and started to wonder just how many freaking vig shots were out there. [Edit - and note to RW and others who wondered, part of why I was hard-reading that shot as town-sourced was that it looked like my own (other than the no reveal) and b/c it was on someone who was on the verge of modkill. I guess going for the town clear is something, but honestly if I'm SK there - other than Stan maybe - I let Sushi, gone 3.5 days at that point, get mod-killed assuming he's not going to show up and save the shot for someone else.]

I went from being willing to push with impunity to suddenly worried I was going to tick off the wrong person (Ix already pretty OMGUS on me) and get myself shot :) But babark in particular I thought was only seeing the parts of my interaction with RW he wanted to see.

I was pretty late on that wagon only after babark was seeming to refuse to claim, had criticized the "slip" that launced the whole thing and had even picked a fight with RW, but then had to back off b/c I had made a mistake. Heck, I posted in my QT that I reaaaally wanted to vig him. ;)

And then at some point around that time, commenced the wondering how many vig shots were in play that I didn't want to eat.

Anyway, will check this thread again tomorrow, and then probably sign off.

@trent - sorry for suspecting you. ;)

Why in the heck would any Neutral Survivor ever swing scum? They won't and they never do. The only way they ever side with scum is by accident due to surviving to LyLo. Until that point, they always are pro-Town because they have to worry about being NK'd like anyone else.

Tammy was a Town role, a way overpowered Town role that got three kills to go with the other "Neutral Survivor" (read as Town) who gets 2+ kills on top of doctors, bodyguards, wards and trackers and PGOs in favor of Town and not to mention lynch and bulletproofs...

Add to the fact that based on flavor, the game started off with 4 confirmed town by PM breaking. Bler from mentioning how his power is confusing, Ix's claim, Babark's lack of a counterclaim (only suspect by not revealing more about his PM) and Tammy being declared as an Innocent Child...

Absolutely no way for wolves to ever win a game with this setup.

This was the most unbalanced game I have ever seen.

And what did scum get?

Three Vanillas who had no chance of fake claiming because there was no role to be ambiguous.

An Alpha wolf who really wasn't a strongman because he can't even get past a bodyguard. He wasn't semi-Ninja because as soon as the mod announces he "lost the Tracker", the Tracker knows he's scum and doesn't need to track him a 2nd time. And to make it worse, if he makes the NK, all the other wolves are Trackable as scum...

The only semi-balancing role was the Lone Wolf who gets a chance to make a second kill (vs. Town's 2 night kills PGO and extra Dayvigs...) but who dies (is cured) if he picks the wrong target.

There were far too many power roles in favor of town and the PM structure meant Day 1, town were just going to confirm themselves one-by-one making the game completely unbalanced and unwinnable for wolves. Absolutely no chance for wolves to ever get the 3+ mislynches necessary to win in a 12 vs. 5 Battle Royale.

Too many power roles, too much PM shenanigans, too many confirmed town and powers. The perfect example why the ideal big game has maybe 3 or 4 town power roles, lest the PRs destroy the balance and why just rewording win conditions doesn't prevent PM abuse.

The excuse that they were "Neutrals" and their PRs don't count toward town and can pick a side is shortsighted and naive. They cannot join wolf chat, they cannot really side with scum with the only exception of a close end game which was never going to happen in this mess of a game.

The best wolves can do is create confusion, which we did, but that still will never be enough to get past the Town block. I hope Town had fun with their rout...

You would have kept on running and not encountered her at all.

If you would have confessed but she did not offer to heal you, you would have simply gone your separate ways (and then anything that happened in game would be your word vs. hers, which, in this game, would have gotten you lynched most likely, but it could play out many ways depending who does what / who believes who.)

You can't try to NK anyone. You can only try to encounter them with Prowl. THEN the optional (whatever option I wrote for that specific character) interaction is presented to you. Dan targeting Sarah only ever will result in him being given the option to confess (she is the only character he has the option to confess to.)

To clarify, I said you would not do anything anti-team without your consent (killing someone without wanting to kill them or exposing yourself without knowing that's what you'd be doing), and that you would not out yourself as a wolf involuntarily. The idea being that it was not neg.-utility. I actually found your sacrifice + flip to be what allowed nacho any chance of deep wolfing to the win come D3.

If you want to know what would have happened if you selected any specific character, let me know.

I think from sheer numbers wolves have a chance. But N1 was a nightmare.

For one, seeing how D1 was going I was mostly leaning on Dess and RW for the long game.

I still don't see what specifically Tammy saw scummy in Dess, and in fact I think half the time that could have been town|Dess and an easy mislynch after flip. Couple that with Cristi getting RW, maybe because of his SK hunting? and we were crippled from D2. I certainly felt I had hardly any maneuver space and just kept muddying the waters as possible. That Lift almost managed to slide by D2 was great, but ultimately he didn't.

Anyway, I think scum day chat would have helped hugely. Not sure if that would have been unbalancing towards wolves because in several ways this was a perfect anti-wolf storm of a game. That it did not feel like that to most town was just that... a feeling.

Ah yes, that is another thing I largely considered and was afraid was going to be OP for the wolves, day-chat (along with night-chat of course.) I wish I would have given it, definitely, now in hindsight, especially since it fits with the flavor (they should be able to meet over the course of a month without being caught) and is how I wanted to do it but made excuses for why I couldn't let them (they were being extra careful not to be caught before the Full Moon came around, meh, lame, especially with the location of The Gulch.)

I also was going to give N0 chat and decided against that, again, afraid to OP the wolves.

It seems you were so worried not to OP the wolves, you left us no chance. 5 wolves is balanced in a normal 17 player game with only a handful of power roles (>1/4; < 1/3). The large number of days makes it hard for wolves to stay under cover as voting records get established. At 12-5, we'd need 4 mislynches to win in a game without all the extra killing and protective roles which gives at least 3 full days of a voting record.

Instead there are dozens of pro-town powers and a meta themed PM that was exploitable for town cred plus roles like Tammy which confirm her to be town with Innocent Child and not killed for being a SK (besides being lynchproof and mostly bulletproof). It seems the one thing you made sure would occur is a town win.

The only chance wolves had was sheer town ineptitude with all their various Vig shots missing somehow, but that wasn't going to happen because of the way PMs were exploitable, establishing too many players as town and limiting the field of targets to a wolf-heavy grouping. Wolves could not come out early with a false claim or we would have been dead in the water as the only players with a clear picture what our powers were and how they worked.

Definitely a high-variance game.

It was technically possible (even sans modkill) for scum to lose N1, or for town to lose D2. Which, for a game with 17 players and 5 scum, is...a bit mind boggling.

RW, FMPOV (as a townie) I don't think the game was particularly unbalanced. Swingy, yes, but any game with lots of kills is. I think perhaps you overestimate the sheer confusion the role shenanigans inflicted on town.

Not sure if that is true because of the way I have it set. I'd be curious to see how you worked that out though!

N1 Town win:
D1: I shoot RW, Tammy shoots Dess, we lynch Lift; N1 cristi kills nacho. tammy kills brasas. Alternately, one of them attacks or prowls me.

D2 Wolf win:
D1: I shoot quad, tammy shoots Sushi, lynch bler; N1 cristi kills stan, Dess kills babark, Brasas kills wyrm, tammy kills trent.
D2 start: 3/5/2

I'll one-up that!

bler shoots town, Tammy shoots town, Stanari is lynched, Stanari venges town, cristi and Tammy kill town, Brasas makes a kill, wolves make a kill, babark(?) gets splash killed.

That's 9. Throw in a PGO kill on town for lols...

But look at all the power roles and utility town had which scum did not.

It is not balanced for town to have over 5 Vig shots, unlynchable, bulletproof. Multiple trackers, doctor, bodyguards and roleblocks. The wolves were Vanilla except Brasas. Only he could know something was up with the roles and his role, while giving him an extra kill also killed himself, so it was a push. On top of that, the way the roles were written meant Bler and Ixam became confirmed just by talking about their mysterious roles (which wolves were Vanilla and had no idea of the role formattingm cept Brasas). Then Tammy is confirmed by the mod...

Only Babark's claim fell flat and that was because he didn't talk about it enough.

Tell me how scum are supposed to overcome so many confirmed town players on day 1? They can't. It's quite the tradition here that players break the mod set-ups and this game was no exception. PM abuse has broken many games before and this was no exception.

You should know that too many confirmed town is the doom of any scum team. Not like the Town roles were touching any of those players with all the Vig shots...and it would take a full 3 nights for scum to theoretically eliminate just those 3, not mentioning the doctor or tracker or Vig shot/roleblocker (assuming we could even kill Tammy).

I stand by my claim it was impossible for scum to win this game. Too many confirmed town; too many town powers. No chance.

No one was touching Bler or ixam after the day 1 claims and that was all PM shenanigans.

Enter Day 2, and no one was touching Tammy, Bler or Ixam. That's quite a lot of confirmed town based just on PMs and mod intervention with the flavor open kill.

Town may have been a little confused, but you were not confused about the town bloc and that made the choices for possible scum rather small and with all the crazy town power roles, there was a better than average chance wolves get blocked and killed by the many powers.

Wolves never got closer than 5 players from the win. They were slaughtered. It wasn't even close. it was just your paranoia that made you think things were closer than that. It was 10-5 Day 1 after Sir Crimson left and Tammy Vigged Sushi, never got closer than that. Open Day 2, 8-3. Open Day 3, 6-1.

I don't really want to debate setup since that's so meta-specific, but I will say I didn't find PM details particularly confirming, and that with so many outstanding kills, different 3P players might well have boosted wolves to a victory (intentionally or not).

I agree with this. This game could swing all over the place. N1 was brutal for wolves. But if Tammy and I hit town instead of wolves on N1, D2 starts with the following: Wolves = 5, Town = 4, Neutral = 2. That's a damn fine scenario for the wolves. It didn't work out that way, but it certainly could. If anything, the neutrals had too much power to swing, but there is no guarantee it will swing in town's favor.

Wolves were not killed N1 because the pool had been shrunk down too much by claims. They were killed because the the neutrals found them scummy. Even with 3 players seemingly off-the-table for the moment (I wasn't sure about either Ixam's or babark's claim), that left 11 others players for the neutrals to choose on N1. Pure random guessing would be a slightly less than 50% chance of hitting a wolf. Lift's lynch D2 was a casualty of his interaction with the dead wolves after their flip. That set a up-hill road for the remaining two. Was N1 a tough break for wolves, sure. Wolves lost not just 2 of there own but also Dessi's vengeful shot on town/neutrals. But it could have just as easily swung hard in wolves favor.


Anyway, thanks to everyone for the fun game. I'm probably only observing until closer to the holidays.