TWG CXVII: The Lantern Keeper Redux Postgame

[TheZeldaPianist275]

Congratulations Wolves!

Thanks for playing, everyone. I had a lot of fun.

Part 1: Role Reveal

Wolves
1. Master Wolf - threalmathguy
2. Wolf - SpecsFlyer17
3. Wolf - The Musical Poet

Humans
4. Seer - BlackDragonSlayer
5. Human - A# Minor
6. Human - Robbie89/Toby
7. Human - XiaoMigros
8. Human - davy
9. Human - ThatHiddenCharacter

??
10. The Strange Man - Oricorio


Part 2: Action Recap
Night 1
A# Minor is wolfed.
BDS seers XiaoMigros green.
Oricorio guesses BDS, A#, and Math as the lantern holders.
The real lantern holders (Robbie/Toby, Math, and Davy) seer Robbie/Toby green.

Day 1
Oricorio is lynched.

Night 2
BDS is wolfed.
BDS tries to seer Davy (but is wolfed).
The lantern holders (Robbie/Toby, BDS, and Xiao) seer BDS blue (but he is wolfed).

Day 2
THC is lynched, resulting in a wolf victory.

[TheZeldaPianist275]

Part 3: Phase-by-phase Breakdown

Night 1: Oricorio comes out swinging, making reads on everyone's posts, and everyone is taken off-guard by his interrogative approach. He and BDS argue about the merits of this as the players roll in. BDS requests a Xiao seering ten minutes into the phase. Meanwhile the lantern holders discuss their options, with Math filtering the discussion back to his wolf partners. The wolves waffle between THC and A# but eventually land on the latter.

Day 1: Davy reveals Robbie's color (green) and tries to disguise the fact that Robbie had not yet clocked in, but a peculiar amount of suspicion falls on him for the way in which he does this. Toby tags in for Robbie, and the lynch candidates become Oricorio and Specs. The wolves push the lynch away from Specs, and Oricorio takes the fall.

Night 2: The first really entertaining phase. The lanterns go to all humans, and BDS is the seering target, which could have proved to be the humans' saving grace. The wolves go back and forth between BDS and Davy but settle on BDS. Meanwhile, Davy cooks up a scheme to get the seer to claim safely by using Specs (a wolf) as bait. Specs confers with his partners and ultimately agrees to the scheme, anchoring the fakeclaim on Toby and alarming BDS.
Hilariously, Toby gets this PM from Specs

Toby, my claim was fake. This is actually a coordinated effort with davy, by davy, to protect the D2 lynch, (as I received a lot of the votes yesterday). If the wolves go after me N2, that frees up D2s lynch, as I won't be in the pool. To some degree, if I'm dead as you're reading this, that's a good thing. I'll be out of the picture and D2 can be a focus to find a wolf. Furthermore, if the wolves avoid me, this can pull out the real seer.

I'll PM more if I survive, but davy also knows about this plan.

And this PM from BDS exactly 20 seconds later.

You're probably going to get lantern seering results on me anyway (I deliberately voted for myself; I was planning on claiming during D2 anyway and figured it would be good to have a way to confirm myself—I already seered Xiao), but I'm sending this PM to you just in case I die and am not lantern seered.

Specs is lying through his teeth. I'm the seer. N1 I seered Xiao green. I was planning to seer Davy, but switched to Specs just in case Davy was the Master Wolf, but I've already switched my seering back to Davy. Specs is confirmed wolf IMO.

BDS goes out with a bang by saying "the true seer would have waited till the last minute to claim" and posting at 8:00:00. The seer is down at the expense of two humans knowing his identity.

Day 2: Davy, Specs, and Toby work the fake seer claim for all it's worth, but Toby is suspicious of Specs' reactions and starts turning up the heat on him on the side. However, THC, suspicious of Davy, goes rogue, claims seer with a red result on Davy, and is believed by no one, since he anchored his plan by telling the Master Wolf about it (Math), claimed a red reading on a green player (Davy) and the other two remaining human players (Toby and Xiao) had just found the true seer with the lanterns. The game is forced into a human v. human frame in LyLo, and the rookie wolves sit back and let the more senior players tear each other apart. Game.



Part 4: Player Analysis
Math: You were stone-cold in your responses to everything for the first half of the game, and while I agree with the consensus that you kinda disappeared for the back half of the game, I think that was probably ideal given the situation, and being suspicious for getting caught dead to rights in wolf play will always beat being suspicious for being inactive. So I really think you played very well this game, doing exactly what you needed to to nudge the game toward a wolf-friendly frame.

Specs: You played your part in Davy's seer-claim plan, and that worked in your favor to ingratiate you with a quasi-human alliance. However, I think that many of your posts were reiterative of things that had already been said (in one case, repeating a BDS joke verbatim). I'm aware that irl things distracted you, but I think suspicion was right to fall on you for some responses that were less than genuine, and I think that you would have been on the chopping block if not for the seer-claiming roller coaster.

Poet: I was actually pleased with your level of activity this game, it was just that the lion's share of that activity was in PMs with Math and Specs rather than in the thread. I think you would have been an easy lynch for this reason if the game had progressed. However, you deserve commendation for your overall presence of mind this game. Compared to Assassin's Gambit, where you frequently vocalized how much you felt in over your head, your posts and especially your behind-the-scenes communication showed clear thoughtfulness and an agenda. Most improved hands down!

BDS: I think you played your part about as well as you could have been expected to. I'm not sure Xiao would have been my N1 seering choice, but I don't know that there was a bad choice per se. You were a very popular man N2 and the events around you put the game into its final framework.

A#: Killed N1. New Manti. You heard it here first.

Toby: I was very pleased that you volunteered to play, and your addition gave the game a kind of analytical activity that it sorely needed. Your spidey-senses have proved the last few games to be extremely trustworthy, which is something everyone should make note of in future games. Your reads and strategies normally would have set the humans up for a victory against inexperienced wolves, and I can ask for no more from a player who came in 40% of the way through the game.

Xiao: You have improved quite a bit since Nothing Special 2, and I really think the only thing needed to sharpen your gameplay is to be aware of when a move is ludicrously suspicious. The fact that you were even a little friendly toward THC's verifiably false seer claim made you seem like a wolf beyond any reasonable doubt, and even if THC could have talked Davy and Toby into accepting what had actually happened, you likely would have been lynched in his stead. That's a shame, because I think the rest of the game you played very well; it did not escape my notice that you were really the only one vocally reminding people not to forget about Math. Basically you played great until you didn't!

Davy: I think the unfortunate reality for you is that you are a formidable enough player that people will suspect you for basically anything–any stick is good enough to hit Davy with. Nothing you said this game would have struck me as suspicious were I playing alongside you, the vast majority of your points were rigorously logical, and the seer claim plan with Specs was very thoughtful. The absolute worst thing I can say was that you probably trusted Specs a bit too readily after it, but that's understandable given the final day events.

THC: Look, I don't want to beat the dead horse of the seer claim here. However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention this: after your argument with Davy had come to a standstill, you voted for yourself, as a human, knowing that the game was very likely in LyLo. At first I thought you were trying to make amends by baiting a wolf rush and hoping that your trigger finger was fast enough to unvote before the insta, since I saw that you had stayed online. But apparently that wasn't the case. That's extremely disheartening to watch happen as a host, and I would imagine extremely frustrating for your teammates. The seer claim at least had the intention of winning the game, but voting for yourself in this context is very directly an attempt to throw the game for your entire team, and I would ask you to not do that again in a game that I host.

Oricorio: I am quite sad you were the D1 lynch–not just because the game's more interesting with the 3rd party in it, but because I knew you would have a lot to add the more happened. I think people interpreted your extreme volume of N1 posts as trying to divine roles from throwaway posts like papal encyclicals, rather than a sincere attempt to drum up early conversation. It's tough for me to say how much this worked in your favor as the Strange Man though, who naturally wants to stay under the radar. BDS nailed you as the Strange Man immediately, and Davy thought it was so obvious you were the Strange Man that you had to be a wolf. So perhaps an unfortunate lack of synchronicity between play style and role. Nevertheless, I appreciated what you had to say while it lasted.

Wolf MVP
threalmathguy

Human MVP
davy

Honorable Mentions
Oricorio
Toby

[A# Minor]

I KNEW SPECS WAS A WOLF!!


*cough*

anyways inb4 everyone else

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

I knew it. At the end I was starting to think Specs was a wolf.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

THC, my dude

why

You just hard threw the game for 0 reason

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

anyways inb4 everyone else

I literally typed mine before this grrrrr

[ThatHiddenCharacter]

THC, my dude

why

You just hard threw the game for 0 reason

I explained my reasoning. I felt it was our best shot. I had no idea the real seer was known.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Good to know my intuition about Oricorio vs. Specs was correct, at least. If we had lynched Specs day 1 we would've ended up a lot better off, but alas.

[A# Minor]

I literally typed mine before this grrrrr

you've met with a terrible fate, haven't you? XD

[SpecsFlyer17]

BDS saw through my BS very well. He was on to me.

[XiaoMigros]

i did keep asking why everyone kept clearing math

[BlackDragonSlayer]

I explained my reasoning. I felt it was our best shot. I had no idea the real seer was known.

That play had 0% benefit as a human. No matter whether or not Specs was the real seer, you just put a giant target on yourself and made yourself an easy lynch. The only situation where that play had some foreseeable benefit was if you assumed A# was the seer, but in that case you'd still end up in the crosshairs. Saying that Davy was red completely sealed your fate too.

If you hadn't done that, the lynch likely would've likely been between Davy and Specs (more likely Specs, considering how many people thought he was suspicious anyway) D2.

BDS saw through my BS very well. He was on to me.

After last game I feel like I caught on quickly to your wolf behaviors You did a very good job at casting doubt on who your partners were, I will say.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

i did keep asking why everyone kept clearing math

Math's early game was strong, but I feel like he faltered the longer the game went on. His reasoning for voting for Oricorio over Specs was flimsy (especially after he said he saw Oricorio's claim and deliberately didn't change his vote) and some of his D2 behaviors were especially strange.

[Toby]

Yeah I thought it was odd math was suddenly more active and engaged than his previous games. I also wanted to lynch specs day 1 so I wasn't far off track this game lol

My last suspicion list I just put Davy and specs as human because I wanted to see who would agree and see if a wolf might try take one out as a wolfing

THC you literally ruined the game lol, like low key ban-able offence?

How is fake claiming seer with a fake red result any benefit to town at all

[SpecsFlyer17]

THC claiming wasn't inherently bad, but I think the choice of davy created unnecessary chaos and suspicion. Any green seer claim probably could've been played off as "I counter claimed to protect the real seer".

Add that to BDS being uncovered as the real seer, and THCs fake red seering had sus all over it.