Ayy what's up. Sorry, this turned out way longer than I wanted, but it's important.
Tell me if this makes sense: if multiple villagers are convinced that my coordi -> shortline flip makes me a likely wolf, I should be a wagon today.
I've already played badly enough, I don't want to cap it off with trying to solve the game at must-find-a-wolf just to have, like, atakdog come in and use his allotted 3 posts of the day to say "but felix flipped coordi -> shortline so you have to vote him" and a villa to say "wow you're right" and there's literally nothing I can do to convince them otherwise and we lose.
If "but felix flipped coordi -> shortline" would convince you to vote me over someone who has very few interactions to read and very little information to judge their role on, like (at present) sixfour, KruZe, Nich, atakdog etc, then we lose if I'm alive at must-vote-a-wolf and I should leave the game today. Wolves kill Kukraprout and dmk, then it's 6-5 with one clear villa, unless we're lucky and the RB blocks the wolf vig tonight; then it's 7-5, wolf vig dies, 6-4 the following day is still must-vote-a-wolf (with the same player pool minus the wolf vig).
I'll try one last time to explain clearly why I swapped. If this moves the needle, great. If not, I think wagoning me today is correct.
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When I enter the game that day, I read the thread and agree with JDalla's case on shortline. Since it's a mechanical case, the reasoning is similar to my situation now: if I'm guaranteed to vote shortline until he's gone, then I should vote shortline today. And if the village agrees with the mechanical case, then we should just leave shortline to spew (or, in this case, do work) and move on to other conversations. If the mechanical case is agreed upon by enough people to virtually guarantee we vote shortline off, then we gain very little from continuing to debate it, unless and until new information emerges. So I commit to vote shortline.
At this point the error has already been committed: I should have questioned JDalla's case on shortline more heavily and found that it was lacking; I should have read shortline's mad-posts as a villager's frustration with being voted off for an incorrect mechanical reason, instead of as a wolf trying to berate people into not voting him as a substitute for actually contributing. (Shortline began contributing later in the day, but by that point I think it would have been
very difficult to convince me to change my mind.)
Separately, from my reading, coordi popped up as someone who seemed wolfy. I approached it by asking him questions about some of the things that I thought were wolfy. The way I see it, most of the time this doesn't achieve much, sometimes the answers are good and save me from pushing a villager, sometimes the answers are bad and provide the evidence needed to get the village to vote him. coordi answered those questions
in this post. I filed those answers under "doesn't achieve much" - the post is neither clearing nor damning. I thought the first answer was on the bad side and it slightly reinforced my view of him as wolfy, but not so bad that it would be convincing to someone who thought coordi was villagery.
Shortly after that, I started pushing Luckbox, who I also thought was likely to be a wolf. That was based a lot on his posting that day, which was... not helpful, to say the least. But I wasn't necessarily inclined to vote him; unlike with shortline there was ample space for him to be villa, I still had some confidence that villa!Luckbox could turn it around, and I'm morally opposed to wagoning the two highest participation people in a game full of UTRs (yes, including me at that time, I know).
Then YouKnowWho, who was also on my wolf list for being disconnected from the game and basically only pushing non-wagon KruZe/Crossnerd instead of engaging with what was going on in thread, made a post asking for Luckbox not to be wagoned that at the time I interpreted as essentially howling,
so I snap voted Luckbox in response. Specifically, when I read the suggestion to leave Luckbox alive and only vote him off if he was still alive after a few days, it rang alarm bells for me that he could be the wolf vig and wolf!YKW was saying "please don't eliminate Luckbox until we're done using his shots, thanks". I left no more explanation at that time because I was hoping to provoke some sort of reaction from YKW or Luckbox that would let me either refute or further develop the theory. (Snap voting Luckbox was also an error; if I were to snap vote or conduct a wagon based on this, it should have been on YouKnowWho, not Luckbox.)
I explained the snap vote later on.
Shortly after that, Luckbox self-voted, which was alarming and I wanted to unvote him on policy; I
always unvote when someone who's not an actual outed wolf self-votes, because IMO it's such a questionable play in any role that I should pause, rewind, and review how we got to that point. It also, IMO, made him less likely to be the wolf vig after all. I had to leave shortly to go do other things and didn't know when I'd be back. At that time there were some technical issues with the vote counter: it wasn't picking up my votes, and it had interpreted gusmahler's "UNVOTE" as a vote for a player named UNVOTE. So instead of actually unvoting, I want to park my vote on someone other than Luckbox and shortline who I would be comfortable with voting in the unlikely event that I didn't make it back before nightfall. So I picked coordi as one of my top wolfy players.
I explain that and commit to voting from among Luckbox/shortline by EOD, because I intend to vote shortline as explained above.
After I returned, I noted that the gusmahler wagon was poopy; not only did it seem contrived, it consisted of shortline (top wolf), coordi (strong wolf lean), Nich who mostly just posted role-neutral stuff about mechanics and didn't seem to be trying to clear villagers or hunt wolves (which I understand is his style but I felt it was a bit extreme this game), and Crossnerd who had basically zero participation. Based on what was going on in the thread, I was wavering on shortline since he'd stopped berating everyone and started helping, and concerned that if there was a CFD, we'd CFD onto the weak gusmahler wagon led by shifty people. So I
brought up coordi's name as an alternative wagon to gusmahler, effectively turning my placeholder vote into an actual vote for him, but still thinking that I'd
probably swap to shortline before EOD. I also prompted Luckbox to vote for someone other than himself so we'd have accurate vote counts as EOD approached.
shortline hopped onto the coordi wagon which was whatever, I was mildly paranoid that he was a wolf trying to do the "hey you're a villager, look at how much I agree with you and support you, I must be a villager too", because I thought he was clearing me rather thinly.
The rest of this was covered in my long post earlier today. People started popping into the thread to drive-by vote for coordi (aaronk56, biggerboat, Nich, jonnyd, even mrs. jonnyd). This was alarming to me, because there was no compelling reason for those votes; there wasn't a persuasive case made against him in thread or anything like that. I don't think I ever even called him wolfy! And while I guess this is less true in a game with 24h wolf chat, I feel like people who pop out of nowhere prior just before EOD are >rand to be wolves arriving to wolfchat with their wolf-buddies, help with the seer hunt, and give their input on what the other PRs' night actions should be.
The combination of that, my earlier commitment to vote shortline, and my thinking that flipping to un-tie wagons in a situation where I think it could be w/w can be a good play led me to change my vote from coordi to shortline. But as it was already :58, I didn't exactly have time to explain all of that, so I regrettably wrote "for no rand" as the reason.
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And that is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about my d2 play. Clearly it was
very bad play. Optimal wolf play is to convince everyone you're a villager playing
very badly, so I understand why this lands me on wolf lists. But that being true doesn't rule out villagers playing
very badly, like I did this game.
If you're a villager and have finished reading this, I want you to really think carefully about how you weigh my bad play vs. others having virtually no play at all. If it's Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday and I've been suggested as the vote alongside sixfour or atakdog or whoever you think is the most UTR, would them arriving in thread a couple hours before night to really push the point that yes, I flipped my vote from shortline to coordi and yes, shortline was villa and coordi was wolf and yes, that was a very bad play convince you to vote me instead of them? If so, then if I'm still alive at must-vote-a-wolf,
we lose the game, and therefore I shouldn't be alive at must-vote-a-wolf.
I'm not happy about saying that, because having played so incredibly poorly that the best outcome is for me to be misvoted at MVAW-1 is the definition of playing the game badly as a villager, and very embarrassing. I'm not looking forward to the inevitable berating in rail chat (if that's still a thing) or after the game, but I'll deal with it then - for now, unless anyone has
real actual questions that will really actually help you judge my role, there's nothing left to say on the topic and so that's the last I'll write on it. I'm not saying don't discuss it, I encourage discussing it, there's nothing more that I can possibly add to the discussion and I'd rather spend the rest of my time on other topics.
