Okay, so what I've written up below is longer than I had intended and it mostly rehashes points I've made several times previously, so here's a TLDR - for various reasons, I considered it not particularly likely that checking TIAM would produce a guilty, and for various reasons I considered it pretty likely that checking one of the VT claims could produce a guilty. Skitter was cleared and I already checked implosion so the choice of check for me was between Seph and Flubber, and I chose Seph because throughout day 3 Flubber had some towny signs and Seph had some scummy signs.
Now, on to the meat:
In post 1408, skitter30 wrote:I mean .... I can point to posts that show you've considered the possibility that he was lying about his role.
I don't think this point is unuseful or perplexing. It's kinda important. If you're an odd-night vanilla cop, and there's a dude who quickhammered the day before that you're always sketchy of anyways who you think is a LYLO liability, and he claimed backup roleblocker in sketchy circumstances, I would think that the natural thought process is that you'd want to live through the night so you could check him. Instead you wanted to check Seph.
Like I'm having a *really* hard time seeing why a VC who acknowledged that Two may be lying about being a backup rb didn't consider checking him that night to, you know, check if he was lying about being a backup rb, but instead decided to lie through massclaim in order to check someone else altogether.
Regarding your Seph case, if I just remove all the stuff about the guilty, which is only fact from your POV, I'm left with:
I didn't even think he was scummy until day 3. I considered his rush to throw a vote onto TIAM and lack of awareness of our likely mylo situation to be scumtells, and I said as much then. Obviously I was off-base in thinking the target of his push was town. But it still struck me as off (and now that he's confscum to me I see that it was because he was bussing, so he didn't care how it would look). With Serg and TIAM in a 1v1, Chip obviously not mafia, and Skitter/Flubber as my main townreads, I considered it obvious that the remaining scumteam would be implosion/seph.
Your main reason for scumreading him is the fact that he didn't he didn't act with enough caution in probable MYLO, coupled with PoE (aside, I'm not sure where you developed such a strong townread on Flubber that you're using it to PoE the game). Your other main reason - making an endgame push on lynchbait - is not relevant given that TIAM actually flipped scum. I dunno. This was also the best I could come up with as a case for scum!seph too, and I just don't think it's that strong.
So, I feel like I keep coming back to the same points on this, but let's deconstruct and attack it from the ground up, since we seem to be having something of a disconnect.
You dislike that I didn't check TIAM last night, I get that. Well actually, TIAM was lynched, so, more to the point, you dislike that I didn't speak up yesterday and offer to check TIAM. Okay, so this sort of goes back to what I've said previously, which is that I really didn't feel like my power would actually solve the 1v1 in that scenario. And then there's also the issue of, we had a plan and it was low-risk. But I will explain these in more detail, from the beginning, just so you can fully understand my entire perspective. Okay, so the first issue: I didn't think my power would solve anything. The possibility of speaking up and checking TIAM did cross my mind. But then, consider the scenario where TIAM is a mafia power role. Then, he comes back Not Vanilla, and at best, we've solved nothing and we've wasted a day and lost a townie. Now, as I've said before, I understand that TIAM did, in fact, flip goon, so this would indeed have proved him guilty. However, I really had no way of knowing yesterday that this would happen. Yes, I considered the possibility he was fake claiming, but I had no guarantee he would, in fact, be a Mafia Goon. He could have been a Mafia Anything. One positive point I considered is that we'd also have an extra gunsmith clear. However, this also would not have been a certainty, as we'd have no way of knowing whether Serg would survive to the next day to report it. Also consider that I was not 100% certain, at that point, that Serg was actually town. In the scenario where Serg is scum, he simply kills me at night after I claim and, again, this plan achieves nothing.
Now, onto the second point, which is that we had a plan. The best plan, in my mind, was to solve the 1v1 with the vig shot. We lynch TIAM because his claim makes sense for a scum roleblocker, which could protect him from a vig shot. Then, if he flips town, chip shoots Serg. Otherwise, chip holsters. That, to me, was an optimal strategy. So, the fact that we had Chip and we had this strategy, was further reason that I did not consider it useful or necessary to out myself and offer to check TIAM. Again, I understand that in *hindsight*, coming out and checking TIAM would have solved the issue even better. But I honestly had no way to know that yesterday, so this is how I saw things. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is the main disconnect we're having here. What I'm trying to get you to understand is, I completely understand NOW that TIAM is a goon and that he would have investigated Vanilla if I'd checked him. However, there is truly no way for me to have known THEN that that would have been the case, *especially* after he said "I can confirm my role" (or something like that, I'll have to look back.) Even if he was scum there, that, to me, said that he had some sort of power that could somehow function as roleblocking. Possibly just roleblocker, possibly something else like jailkeeper or ascetic.
Okay, as for the Seph issue, I will address a few various points. First, and probably most important, why check him? Well, as I've said before, you have to understand that I considered my main usefulness as a secret vanilla cop to be that I could catch scum if they fakeclaimed vanilla townie. In addition, with TIAM flipping Goon, I was even more confident that whatever scum were left would be Not Vanilla, since the scumteam likely don't have two goons. At that point, the remaining scumteam was likely right within the ranks of the VT claims - implosion, skitter, flubber, seph. This to me, was a perfect opportunity because if I could just guess who the scum were within those four, they would almost certainly come back Not Vanilla and I'd have a guilty. So, out of the four. I had already checked implosion and he came back vanilla. Skitter I've been townreading since the early game, and also investigated not to have a gun. That right there narrowed it down to Flubber and Seph. So really, it was simply a question of who I scumread more, and the answer there was clearly Seph for me, for the reasons I gave before. Now second, you asked why a Flubber townread and an implosion/sephiroth scumread? Well, just to clarify a bit here, keep in mind that is was only *before* TIAM's flip that I considered the remaining scumteam to be implosion and sephiroth. However, as I've said before, *after* his flip, I didn't think the scumteam would have two goons, so I considered implosion to be likely town because he's Vanilla. (Though, Seph recently raised the possibility of multiball, which I suppose would change things.)
But still, just for the sake of completeness, let's address
before
the flip - why did I, at *that* point, consider the scumteam to be implosion/seph and not consider flubber? Well, the simple answer is that I did consider flubber, but I really thought the associatives were better in imp/seph, and that, as a number of people pointed out yesterday, flubber's posts early day showed towny emotion. It was not such a super-strong townread as to PoE the game, as you say - it simply made me want to check Seph's claim over Flubber's. Then there is the issue you raise of, why scumread Seph at all, even after TIAM flipped scum? Now, first I'd also like to clarify this point - my feelings about whether or not I had a super strong scumread of Seph or not did not particularly factor into my decision to check him. I checked him for the reasons above - it was simply between Seph and Flubber, and Flubber seemed more towny to me at the time. (Personally I think he seemed more towny to most people at the time, but maybe I'm wrong.) However, again, for the sake of completeness I will still explain. Me scumreading Seph at this point sort of goes back to the points I've made several times previously, but I'll put it out there again - scum!TIAM is very likely going to be bussed here, plain and simple.
Especially
by experienced teammates. If you go back and read my argument with seph day 3, I pointed out that he was willing to throw his vote down before any real discussion in the day could be had, like possibly massclaim to maybe assess whether TIAM's claim made sense. Yes, TIAM flipped scum, but I still didn't like Seph's early day 3 attitude, and even when it turned out it wasn't an endgame push from scum on town, it still struck me as something that could come from scum bussing. Again, it wasn't a super strong scumread after TIAM's flip, but it was enough to make me want to check him over flubber.
