TWG CXXIII: A Dance of Fire and Ice

[BlackDragonSlayer]

In that case, I can also support an extension.

[XiaoMigros]

Extension works for me too

[XiaoMigros]

Is your vote for the sake of starting a vote count because none of us have voted?

When that I voted, yes. Who I voted for, no.

[SpecsFlyer17]

Extension is fine with me.

Not that it really matters, but I do
think it's possible that the wolves probably had the same idea- burn/chill someone relatively unexpected.

[SpecsFlyer17]

Xiao's TZP vote makes sense with his suspicion list posted early D1. He was the first to really throw any suspicion anywhere.

After that, Oricorio did say we should look at TZP and myself more closely because of past games involving TZPs alliances. That feels like a bit of a stretch, considering everyone had access to the postgame to know about it.

BDS also said due to PoE, there's a good chance there's a wolf between TZP and myself. Sure, but it's the same probability as anyone else.

It's not quite enough to accuse Oricorio and BDS of bandwagoning though.

[SpecsFlyer17]

because of past games involving TZPs alliances

should read "involving THCs alliances"

[TheZeldaPianist275]

Looks like we already have a majority of players good with an extension, but I'd also support it, esp if a player has a family emergency going on.

Gonna start going through some ISOs in an effort to gin up some discussion.

[mastersuperfan]

Day 1 will now end at 8:00:00 PM EDT tomorrow, June 28th, 31 hours from now.

The votecount remains unchanged.

Since the wording in the initial post may be confusing, I also thought I'd create a diagram to more clearly explain how the seering roles are distributed:



First the seven roles (Fire Wolf, Ice Wolf, and five Humans) are randomly assigned to the players, and then the process of distributing seer roles (as originally described in the OP) is mathematically equivalent to selecting a green square uniformly at random from this table.

[SpecsFlyer17]

Ngl, that chart made it more confusing to me.

Basically, the fire seer can be anyone but the fire wolf, and the ice seer can be anyone but the ice wolf. The caveat being the same player cannot be both seers. That's it, right?

[mastersuperfan]

Ngl, that chart made it more confusing to me.

Basically, the fire seer can be anyone but the fire wolf, and the ice seer can be anyone but the ice wolf. The caveat being the same player cannot be both seers. That's it, right?

Yes, and also it is not possible for both seering roles to go to wolves.

I just made this chart to clarify exact probabilities, since the probabilities of different worlds could be different if I rolled the setup in a different way (e.g. rolling wolf and seer roles at the same time, instead of rolling wolves first and then seers).

[TheZeldaPianist275]

Oricorio:

Spoiler

So basically, wolves can't die in the night, only humans can. How accurate we'll need to be in our lynches will depend on things like how coordinated the wolves are, but don't expect there to be more than one.

Seers can clear a player from one of the wolf slots, but the utility of it is questionable when there's no way to confirm if a wolf is dead. Seer information would be useful to the wolves as well as it could tell them who to target to advance their wincon more quickly, so be careful about divulging that information.

Pretty standard first game post game flow breakdown. The first paragraph asserts that wolves can't die outside of self-destructing, the second paragraph asserts that seers can clear wolves from the slot they're calibrated with. Honestly in general I think the seer roles are pretty weak this game—if you're the red seer, a red seering could mean red wolf, blue wolf, or human, and a green seering could mean blue wolf or human. I think this is a good observation that if the seers don't coordinate in some way, this gives practically no actionable intel.

As I can tell, there are two main strategies the wolves can use: a wolf-wolf alliance and a wolf-Seer "alliance". The first is obvious, the wolves find each other via PM and coordinate their actions, leaving town little recourse but to act completely as a unit with even one defection potentially making the game unwinnable. Of course, that strategy would require a lot of risk for the wolves to initiate, so it's more likely we'll see the second strategy. As the seers are only a threat to one wolf each, it's advantageous for a wolf to find the seer that isn't a threat to them and use their results to control the narrative. In order to counter such a strategy, the two Seers need to be 100% coordinated. Of course, a wolf can be the seer, which carries its own problems.

Worst-case scenario for town going into D1 is the wolves converge on one player, leaving us at 4-1-1. If town mislynches, there aren't many scenarios where town can still win unless the wolves crossfire. But I find that scenario somewhat unlikely, so let's assume that we will have three townies with a full vote, one or two with a half vote, and one of the wolves possibly having a half vote. In that case, as long as the wolves aren't coordinating behind the scenes a mislynch probably would be allowed. Still, again I would be a little careful about lynching someone based on seer results, it's a 50-50 at best and potentially even further stacked in wolves' favor as they can paint the person they think is most likely to be seer'd, something that I notably couldn't do in the Grinch game.

I'm a little unclear in this scenario what a wolf-seer alliance would look like, since it's not really an alliance at all. In what context would a seer privately be sharing color findings, and how would a wolf be able to control that narrative?

Also, lays the foundations of doubt about seer findings.

THC is a strange target for the wolves to arrive at independently. This likely suggests that wolves are cooperating (that, or THC did something like claim seer to both wolves). At least we know that all our votes are worth the same.

Oricorio is notably the only player to interpret the N1 as evidence of wolf coordination. Do you stand by this guess, as opposed to "it happened as a coincidence" or "it happened as an uncoordinated emergent strategy"?

So, it's 4-1-1. If we lynch a wolf today, D2 will be 3.5-1, mislynching D2 will make D3 2-1, which is basically LyLo. So, for the best case scenario, we have only one mislynch. Mislynching today would make it 3-1-1, which if wolves don't crossfire is 2-1-1, a very bad situation for town. So, we don't really have any room for error today. If one wolf crossfires it'll be 2.5-1-.5 (1 vote advantage for town) and if they both cross it's 3-.5-.5 (2 vote advantage), but we can't depend on those happening.

Yeah, I received nothing so far. Part of me discussing a w-w alliance earlier was to see if anyone was bold enough to approach me in PMs, but no one took the bait. We probably will need some behind the scenes cooperation to outmaneuver the wolves.

There has to be a reason why THC was double-targeted, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with their posts in the thread, as it's basically just mechanical stuff that had to be taken back after clarifications from the host. Based on past games, t!THC is mainly a threat to wolves from their alliances with other players (TZP in Grinch and MSF in True Love), so maybe that's part of the reason? Might want to look at TZP and Specs a little closer

More gamestate breakdown, and then an accusation of me and Specs (on the basis of us being wolves in True Love?). This feels extremely tenuous to me—the logic is THC is at his strongest when he's in an alliance with other players, so look for the wolves in the games where he did that, and that makes them likely to be wolves in this game as well?

This reads to me like Oricorio is surprised by the THC wolfing and coming up blank when trying to make sense of it. I think Oricorio is maybe the most aggressive player in this lobby, this doesn't read like a high conviction suspicion.

[close]

More to come throughout the day, but Oricorio feel free to respond to anything I've said here

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Right now, the only two players I feel comfortable voting for are Specs and Oricorio. I'm hoping to hear more from both Oricorio and N1P2 as well before I place my vote.

Xiao's behavior feels pretty standard so far, and I think TZP's posts give enough of a human lean (actually feel solve-y but not domineering of the conversation) to where I don't want to lynch him today.

[Nana1Popo2]

I'll be so so honest, i tend to take a passenger seat role in these games! I think i've even mentioned that before.
The amount of deep dive y'all do is way beyond my mental capacity, but i do love joining along for the ride.

That being said, i will speak up if i have the right reason to do so! Maybe my flaw is I wait too long, because i want what i have to say to have substance and not just word vomit.

I'll go down the list of peeps and give my read on them, based solely on "listening" to everyone talk. I also have neither sent nor received any PM's.

Oricorio: I'm in agreement of the phrasing used by TZP, "I think Oricorio is maybe the most aggressive player in this lobby[...]". Perhaps trying to just snuff out information because they have seering power?
BDS: What I personally define as typical responsive behavior from what I remember from other games.
Specs: No true read, but it seems to have a bigger impact on other players here.

It appears that, for either some people here or in this game in general, getting a "town" read typically is given when giving heavy analysis and explanation into the social aspect of the game. As mentioned before, I lack this typically and perhaps that has always been my greatest weakness.
That being said, I will continue with the only shred of "something doesnt feel right" in my analysis.

I disagree that it was likely to be an RNG kill, though. My guess for why it happened: each wolf thought that, because a wolfing couldn't be guaranteed to kill someone, the best course of action was to play mindgames with the voting power and burn/chill someone unexpected. THC, as a player who had barely shown up, would be an ideal candidate to bank a burn/chill and keep the more active players thinking their votes were less powerful than they were.

TZP: It's only one paragraph, but it still gives me a weird feeling of how off-brand the decision may be from the wolves' perspective. It's only a hunch and I dont have much else. I appreciate the dive on Ori as it has assisted in forming my own opinion on them.
Xiao: Human lean; appreciate the effort in contributing to the game in a timely manner with the only vote so far, and the respect to say that it was primarily timing that it happened not necessarily the target.

[Nana1Popo2]

I should specify, i dont believe that me posting analysis necessarily clears me as town, but rather it has been an observation that others expect it in some way to which it is earned through similar behavior.

[XiaoMigros]

I'll be so so honest, i tend to take a passenger seat role in these games! I think i've even mentioned that before.
The amount of deep dive y'all do is way beyond my mental capacity, but i do love joining along for the ride.

Relatable, there's often too many words...