Mid-Range Game 67: 'Twas the Night Before SA5

[Coffeecat she/her]

Spoiler

I'm serious about not forming an opinion this early, I can't be active enough to read every single wall of text, I will wait for more things to happen before I vote, while trying to keep up.

Oh dear you don't think Im a murderer do you? Why would I want to kill someone, all I want is to read

[Kasimir he/him]

......................

Frick's sake I was afk for a bit and working on an analysis post, fricking clicked the wrong fricking thing, reflexively c/ped to reply to Aman, and lost my fricking mega-analysis of the Archer thing.

Fricking hell.

I'm sorry. I'm done. I'm not doing this a second time what the fricking hell.

Aman bro, I see you, and I'd do a thread PM reply but I'm really not in the mood right now because what the fricking hell I am so mad with myself. It was hours of work. I should've done the usual thing and c/ped in my GM PM, but noooo I had to tell myself it was almost done, and get distracted and now I've fricking gone and borked it and almost used words not allowed on the fricking Shard reflexively and had to c/p that crap out.

God I hate this so fricking much right now ajghdfywjdksdhikl

[TheRavenHasLanded he/him]

3 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

......................

Frick's sake I was afk for a bit and working on an analysis post, fricking clicked the wrong fricking thing, reflexively c/ped to reply to Aman, and lost my fricking mega-analysis of the Archer thing.

Fricking hell.

I'm sorry. I'm done. I'm not doing this a second time what the fricking hell.

Aman bro, I see you, and I'd do a thread PM reply but I'm really not in the mood right now because what the fricking hell I am so mad with myself. It was hours of work. I should've done the usual thing and c/ped in my GM PM, but noooo I had to tell myself it was almost done, and get distracted and now I've fricking gone and borked it and almost used words not allowed on the fricking Shard reflexively and had to c/p that crap out.

God I hate this so fricking much right now ajghdfywjdksdhikl

no ctrl Z?

[Kasimir he/him]

9 minutes ago, Ookla of Ravens said:

no ctrl Z?

WAIT AUTOSAVE HAS IT SOMEHOW

NO ONE DO ANYTHING I'M C/PING INTO GM PM STAT I'M NOT LOSING IT AGAIN

LIKE A DECENT CHUNK OF IT IS MISSING BUT WHATEVER MAN MOST OF IT IS THERE

IT WAS LOST AND IS FOUND

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH RAVEN IT WASN'T EVEN CTRL Z BUT I'LL TAKE IT HOLY GOD THANK YOU SO MUC

Edited to add:

@Amanuensis - Staying away from the thread PMs for a bit as that accidentally got me to c/p over for a while and I want this post done even if it's not exactly that great. I'm curious what your current view of the thread etc is, i.e. where you're at. I've seen you mention who you're interested in voting, but I'm trying to understand I suppose.

...Aaaaand I nearly just reflexively c/ped again. Christ. I'm a menace.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Kasimir

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 hour ago, Amanuensis said:

Don’t remind me. I’m hungry. Still

I wonder who’s the other person that needs to say I’m hungry three times, then.

@Ookla the Destined does that count? XD

 

Kas Thread PM. Do not open unless you are Kas or the GM / IM. Violation of this will result in death.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I considered doing it tbh, but have since decided to claim Brandon

ED1T:

Whoops accidentally leaked my very fatal PM to Kas. For your sake, don’t look again.

I have done this before and Kas or Archer or Araris can tell you how that worked out for me.

[Amanuensis he/him]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

......................

Frick's sake I was afk for a bit and working on an analysis post, fricking clicked the wrong fricking thing, reflexively c/ped to reply to Aman, and lost my fricking mega-analysis of the Archer thing.

Fricking hell.

I'm sorry. I'm done. I'm not doing this a second time what the fricking hell.

Aman bro, I see you, and I'd do a thread PM reply but I'm really not in the mood right now because what the fricking hell I am so mad with myself. It was hours of work. I should've done the usual thing and c/ped in my GM PM, but noooo I had to tell myself it was almost done, and get distracted and now I've fricking gone and borked it and almost used words not allowed on the fricking Shard reflexively and had to c/p that crap out.

God I hate this so fricking much right now ajghdfywjdksdhikl

Oh no brother I feel your pain   

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

WAIT AUTOSAVE HAS IT SOMEHOW

NO ONE DO ANYTHING I'M C/PING INTO GM PM STAT I'M NOT LOSING IT AGAIN

LIKE A DECENT CHUNK OF IT IS MISSING BUT WHATEVER MAN MOST OF IT IS THERE

IT WAS LOST AND IS FOUND

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH RAVEN IT WASN'T EVEN CTRL Z BUT I'LL TAKE IT HOLY GOD THANK YOU SO MUC

Edited to add:

@Amanuensis - Staying away from the thread PMs for a bit as that accidentally got me to c/p over for a while and I want this post done even if it's not exactly that great. I'm curious what your current view of the thread etc is, i.e. where you're at. I've seen you mention who you're interested in voting, but I'm trying to understand I suppose.

...Aaaaand I nearly just reflexively c/ped again. Christ. I'm a menace.

Oh nvm then. Yay!

TBH I'm struggling to form any meaningful reads, although I have caught up. There's been a lot of talking about + from a particular group of players, so Coffee, Ash, Alpha, and Cash stood out to me as minimally involved, if not outright detached. I can see where Devo is coming from, since my convention game was also a "Say this thing 3 times," so I'm not hung up on her logic working from that information. Archer is just a /shrug right now. Don't really have an opinion on the Raven case. Tbh Ookla season feels like pseudo-anon to my brain, it's been harder to connect the dots, and it doesn't help those three are especially confusing

For my vote, Coffee seemed fine enough to only proclaim my attention, leaving me with Ash, who I expect should be able to catch up and provide some thoughts, given I've now managed to do so given my tight schedule.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Amanuensis

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 minute ago, Amanuensis said:

Oh no brother I feel your pain   

Oh nvm then. Yay!

TBH I'm struggling to form any meaningful reads, although I have caught up. There's been a lot of talking about + from a particular group of players, so Coffee, Ash, Alpha, and Cash stood out to me as minimally involved, if not outright detached. I can see where Devo is coming from, since my convention game was also a "Do this thing 3 times," so I'm not hung up on her logic working from that information. Archer is just a /shrug right now. Don't really have an opinion on the Raven case. Tbh Ookla season feels like pseudo-anon to my brain, it's been harder to connect the dots, and it doesn't help those three are especially confusing

For my vote, Coffee seemed fine enough to only suggest my attention, leaving me to vote Ash, who I expect should be able to catch up and provide some thoughts, given I've now managed to do so given my tight schedule.

What about your read on me?

[Amanuensis he/him]

9 minutes ago, Ookla the Resolute said:

What about your read on me?

Absolutely no clue last game we played, I thought you looked overtly villagey, but warned Kas that you could have strong elim WIM like I did in my early days, and that turned out to be true. This game, it seems you've leaned more into chaos play since I've been away, so I don't know what to make of you quite yet. 

If I had to make a reads bucket rn, it'd be something like

Village:

Spoiler

•  

Elim:

Spoiler

•  

¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

Spoiler

On 12/11/2023 at 6:06 PM, Ookla the Destined said:

• @Ookla of Ravens / TheRavenHasLanded
• @Ookla the Raveness / The Wandering Wizard - Wizzy
• @Ookla the Bald / The Known Novel - Shane Huge (jock/bully/audiobook listener)
• @Ookla the Paradigm / Archer
• @Winnie the Pookla / Araris Valerian
• @Ookla the Resolute / Aeoryi
• @Ookla thePresentParticiple / Ravenclawjedi42
•  @WildKarrde  / Kasim  (Shot Araris in the face a long long time ago)  -  (@Kasimir) 
• @JNV
• @Devotary of Spontaneity - Lena
• @TheOokla929 / Alpha/Labyrinth - that one guy with a 2 year old named Kaladin
• @Coffeecat / Silberfarben
• @neil the beguiled
• @Amanuensis
• @Ashbringer
• @Ookla the Rich / Cash67

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by Amanuensis

[TheRavenHasLanded he/him]

YAY

[Kasimir he/him]

11 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

Coffee, Ash, Alpha, and Cash stood out to me as minimally involved, if not outright detached.

 I can see this. I'm curious how fruitful you'd think the Coffee (if you missed it, Silberfarben) train would be though, given how long it's been since Coffee's played - Coffee likely knows if E that there's no appetite for exeing them.

For anyone who wants context, I just remember a clash with Coffee from QF6. The one game that put me on a SE blacklist for a while

12 minutes ago, Amanuensis said:

I can see where Devo is coming from, since my convention game was also a "Do this thing 3 times," so I'm not hung up on her logic working from that information.

I think the part that keeps catching me is, I don't understand why the inference is so clean. I felt a significant amount of doubt, and you yourself are /shrug on Archer. So why is it so clean?

Do you have a Neil read btw?

Dw I've saved the damned thing in my GM PM now >>

TOP SECRET THREAD PM: Kas-Aman

Spoiler

2 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

Spoiler

I considered doing it tbh, but have since decided to claim Brandon

Broooooooo why are you like this ;-;

 

[Amanuensis he/him]

10 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Do you have a Neil read btw?

My Neil read atm is they're a competent player. Surface level seems village due to proactivity, but I found their initial v!read of me odd and wonder if there was something more there. Watching carefully, but not interested in voting until I learn more about and see more from him.

ED1T: Missed this

10 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I think the part that keeps catching me is, I don't understand why the inference is so clean. I felt a significant amount of doubt, and you yourself are /shrug on Archer. So why is it so clean?

Yeah that's fair. I've never really had a solid perspective of Devo's perspective, which is often why it's hard for me to develop reads on her, so for me it's kind of a: could go either way, will defer to someone who knows how to read Devo better. @Kasimir

---

TOP SECRET THREAD PM: Kas-Aman

Spoiler

10 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

2 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I considered doing it tbh, but have since decided to claim Brandon

Broooooooo why are you like this ;-;

Because no sane elim would expect the real Brandon to claim in thread D1. Duh.

ED2T:

Also because Archer stole my claim SK strat and botched it smh. I would have doubled down hard, no matter the consequences  @Kasimir

Edited December 13, 2023 by Amanuensis

[Archer he/him]

Wake up, babe, a new SK suspect just dropped! 

If Aman isn't the SK, their play so far has been 

Ignoring Neil's questions for now because that requires a keyboard and some time to respond to. I spent last night trying to decide why Araris was pinging my gut and I think it's just because his playstyle feels disingenuous when you're on the receiving end of it. Araris stabs then doubles down. I can't remember the last time he reconsidered mid cycle and actually changed his mind. So I think I'm reading too much into something inconsequential. 

I've also decided I like the mindset that led to Aeoryi's Archer!Brandon theory. The problem is their inflated sense of personal danger means they might have done the math and realized if the wagon on me fails because of a Brandon claim, they're suddenly on the chopping block with too little time to react. But I don't think e!Aeoryi articulates the Brandon theory in thread, so I'm reading them as village. 

Bald Raveness

[Amanuensis he/him]

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Paradigm said:

That's literally my face IRL. Are you stalking me?  

[Aeoryi she/her]

Hello people as I am typing this half of my fingers have blood on them due to a biking accident so yeah uh that's cool

top secret PM to Aman

Spoiler

Why why why did you claim lurcher c1 it doesn't work and you're going to get killed like what bro

...

Anyways, you could've claimed Elim

 

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

13 minutes ago, Ookla the Paradigm said:

Wake up, babe, a new SK suspect just dropped! 

If Aman isn't the SK, their play so far has been 

Ignoring Neil's questions for now because that requires a keyboard and some time to respond to. I spent last night trying to decide why Araris was pinging my gut and I think it's just because his playstyle feels disingenuous when you're on the receiving end of it. Araris stabs then doubles down. I can't remember the last time he reconsidered mid cycle and actually changed his mind. So I think I'm reading too much into something inconsequential. 

I've also decided I like the mindset that led to Aeoryi's Archer!Brandon theory. The problem is their inflated sense of personal danger means they might have done the math and realized if the wagon on me fails because of a Brandon claim, they're suddenly on the chopping block with too little time to react. But I don't think e!Aeoryi articulates the Brandon theory in thread, so I'm reading them as village. 

Bald Raveness

Why the switch to me?

[Amanuensis he/him]

2 minutes ago, Ookla the Resolute said:

Hello people as I am typing this half of my fingers have blood on them due to a biking accident so yeah uh that's cool

top secret PM to Aman

  Reveal hidden contents

Why why why did you claim lurcher c1 it doesn't work and you're going to get killed like what bro

...

Anyways, you could've claimed Elim

You should clean that up

top secret PM to Aeoryi

Spoiler

If I die as a result, than so be it. Not too concerned about it.

Besides, maybe Archer is right and I'm the SK baiting them

 

 

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 minute ago, Amanuensis said:

You should clean that up

top secret PM to Aeoryi

  Reveal hidden contents

If I die as a result, than so be it. Not too concerned about it.

Besides, maybe Archer is right and I'm the SK baiting them

Spoiler

Last time I did it was Here, and it did not work at all because we had the "Rem claimed lurcher sono claimed lurcher one of them must be e" mentality

I have since then avoided D1 claiming

 

[Kasimir he/him]

 H'okay. Archer's Clusterchull on Stilts.

1. Preliminaries

Spoiler

I call it a clusterchull on stilts because you'd think it's a single reaction test. But it isn't. And here's why:

Archer makes at least three separate claims, with increasing insistence as he realises he isn't being taken seriously. 

A. 

This is the first one, marking his entrance into the thread. It's easily passed off as RP, and I'll note straight off that my personal reaction when catching up with the thread for the first time was "oh that's cool I didn't know he was RPing as a character with SK claim history. Very Archer though."

B.

Slightly under an hour later, Archer repeats the claim. I would say it's still missable as being an RP thing - I certainly thought it was that.

C.

By the third repetition, it seems clear Archer wants a reaction. Or some kind of reaction.

D.

IMO this comment from Archer makes it pretty clear it was a reaction test but YMMV.

If you think, in theory, that Villager and Elim (and SK) responses should be differentiated because of differing strategic priorities and TMI, even if weakly so, then you can argue that it's worth aggregating all the responses into a single bucket, as Archer's analysis clearly does. IMO, I think it's worth not doing so, because you want to track how responses evolve or shift across time when searching for outliers. Also, again, if you think TMI and differing strategic priorities inform responses, then the pattern should be just as visible early on as it is later.

To put the point another way: how you react to anything when Evil is how E!you reacts to anything. I recognise this is a controversial claim among many who will insist (perhaps correctly) their Village self would do the same thing, but the fact of the matter is that TMI is what causes you to reflexively hesitate and project what your V!self would do. To be sure, some players aren't very good at hiding in responses - Aman, for instance, absolutely hid very well during one reaction test run by a different player ages ago. And some players aren't very good at doing reaction test analyses - my results for instance have often varied in terms of how useful they are. Necessary caveats I suppose.

FYI: if you think Archer is E aiming for cheap V!credit (which I think is a possibility worth considering) then I think it's worth looking for where his teammates would be. Because then there is absolutely no way in hell his teammates didn't know this was coming.

2. Categorising Responses [RAW]

(You'll want to skip this if you're short on time. I'll repeat this in a section below that summarises/organises the results more intuitively. This is me showing my working/actually working this out for myself.)

Spoiler

Responses to A:

Something Screwy: Neil questions if Archer is planning a bucket strat early. This is pretty much not a bucket strat environment, so I'm going to say Neil isn't serious (feels like pregame banter to me), but I think it reflects a sense that something is up with Archer, or a willingness to engage with it. It's a response that comes a minute after Archer, indicating high immediacy. I'd note in an E!Archer world, they're unlikely to be teamed. Archer is not going to get his teammate to respond immediately to this.

Note: I have no idea how in the nine hells Archer can see this:

On 12/12/2023 at 7:20 AM, neil the beguiled said:

  planning a bucket strat early hmmyes

and go "yes, you know what, this guy is clearly new enough that a new player baseline is the correct baseline here."

23 hours ago, Ookla the Paradigm said:

The innocent new guy play is to believe the SK claim, not disbelieve it and ascribe a village read for it. Caveated by them being known by fellow players. 

Noisy: Aeo self votes and asks Mat about PMs.

You can argue this is a variant of an Ignore response, and question why I'm disambiguating it from Aman's. In truth, I just feel that there's a different valence involved - they both Ignore but in different ways. Aeo does something arguably as attention-grabbing as Archer's own entry into the thread, and Aman mourns Elan.

Ignore: Aman mourns Elan. Pretty much ignores Archer's opening here. 

There's an ongoing back-and-forth between Neil and Aeo, and some mild exchange with Aman. I think it's worth saying that in an E!Archer world, none of their thread debuts feel quite right for an Archer partner. The point is to give Archer room for his play, not smother it with indifference.

Responses to B:

So Archer escalates, and repeats his claim.

Engage: Aeo highlights the fact that Archer is making a Serial Killer pun. (Note that I don't actually think, contra later Neil, that this is really obvious as I think it's missable as RP early on (at least cf. A), and lean a bit to Devo's interpretation. I think it's Archer's trenchant insistence that makes it clear the possibility of a reaction test is more salient.)

Vote: Araris votes Archer because Araris is too old and grouchy for this kind of nonsense

Responses to C :

Archer escalates a third time.

Scepticism: Aeo definitely does not buy it. (As Araris intimated, frankly no living being with a brain should.) 

Scepticism & Vote: Ravenclaw also votes Archer. They don't think Archer is the SK, they just don't see why a Villager would claim SK. Sidenote I'm curious why Ravenclaw says this:

On 12/12/2023 at 8:20 AM, Ookla thePresentParticiple said:

“True, it is better to keep Serial Killers alive than elims, but I personally am wary of any group that can kill me.

What's going through your head at this point? Why would it even be an intuitive thing that people would want to keep the SK alive here?

No one @ me here about the murderpuppy I mean it  

Ignore: Ash ignores and replies about SE's SK history. Wiz replies to an early vote, also completely ignoring this. Worth noting that Wiz seems to be in a good mood and spends a decent amount of time bantering with Aeo.

Ignore: I actually nearly forgot this guy and had to come back to him which raises a bunch of alarms in my head. Raven interacts with Wiz and Aeo. Zero reaction to Archer's claim despite Aeo flagging it explicitly as a claim. I think this is really interesting because of all the players, you'd expect Raven to have a fairly pure response, given he was dead by the time Drake tried a reaction test in LG98b.

V Lean: Neil V!leans Archer for it on thread comfort basis. ( @neil the beguiled question for you here: how do you feel about Aeo's and Wiz's thread comfort respectively wrt their claiming of distancing and E/V in thread?) 

Ignore: It's interesting Archer flags TKN out as a believer because TKN's very first reaction is absolutely a hard ignore. TKN interacts with Aeo's self-voting, and Wiz's meta comments, but nothing in terms of Archer, meaning this is a solid commitment to ignore.

Not Again: I don't have a good categorisation for my response. I'd argue it's different from Something Screwy or Scepticism because I'm trying to ignore Archer here (since I theorise it's a reaction test), but also engage cautiously with people who are making Archer reads, which is really just Neil I suppose. 

Indifference: JNV basically just shrugs and says even if Archer is a SK, he isn't really relevant to the Village's wincon. This combines scepticism with a directional view IMO - 'don't think so, and doesn't matter if true.'

V Lean: Devo as well, but on a convention game basis. ( @Devotary of Spontaneity - Are there other players completing convention games of which you think this logic applies to?)

Sarcasm/Scepticism: TKN, after Archer explicitly, outright, directly claims SK in a performance worthy of the Ignobel...is there an Ignobel version of the BAFTAs? No?

3. Categorising Responses [COLLATED]

Spoiler

Something Screwy: Neil
Ignore: Aman, Ash, Wiz, Raven, TKN, Cash
Not Again: Kas
Indifference: JNV
V Lean: Neil, Devo
Noisy: Aeo
Scepticism: Aeo, Ravenclaw
Vote: Araris, Ravenclaw
Did Not See: Coffeecat (Silber), Alpha, Cash

Just to rehash, the point of outlier analysis isn't to ID all the Elims. I can't really think of a reaction test run on this forum that caught all the Elims in one fell swoop and I don't think anyone who runs a reaction test expects to be that wildly successful either.

As a point of comparison:

AG9:

Quote

Acknowledgement: <Kjell>
Ignore: <Mouse, Flamingo, Swan, Alb, Rhino> (Worth highlighting Flamingo was Araris.)
No Response: <Lion>
Solve/ID: <Falcon, Weasel, Croc, Ele>

There are Elims that weren't captured in this reaction test, and you can see Elims in two of the highly-populated strata. The key here is that one Elim, Lion, was the outlier - the others were findable through other means.

LG98b:

Quote

Response Typology:

<Counteraccuse>: Sirta
<No Hesitance>: Rem
<Ignore>: Onon
<Calculating...>: Sono, Rilla, Dasenk

Rilla's (Tani's) response was qualitatively an outlier within the strata, but let's ignore that level of detail for the moment. It's worth noting that Rem's (Archer's) was what you'd probably think was the Village response (this was a fake Seeker ploy) and yet it was still the outlier. (This is personally why I think outlier analysis is worth doing.)

So, having qualified our expectations, let's revisit the pools:

Quote

Something Screwy: Neil
Ignore: Aman, Ash, Wiz, Raven, TKN, Cash
Not Again: Kas
Indifference: JNV
V Lean: Neil, Devo
Noisy: Aeo
Scepticism: Aeo, Ravenclaw
Vote: Araris, Ravenclaw
Did Not See: Coffeecat (Silber), Alpha, Cash

These are our isolated responses, giving us a pool of <Neil, JNV, Aeo, me.> We can probably weakly consider Ravenclaw or Araris to be within outliers but IMO, this is already an abuse of the spirit of outlier analysis.

Two responses there stand out to me: Neil's and JNV's. (I'm personally a non-starter for myself.)

1. Neil was very quick to suggest, jokingly I think, that it was a bucket strat, which indicates he recognised it both as a claim and a likely play. His later comments substantiate that this was his attitude going into the cycle. This is interesting to me because I think pretty much everyone else took Archer to be joking, which accounts for so much of the early thread banter. I think in Neil's case, it's muddied by cross-forum differences. I think MU is a lot into early cycle banter, not sure about mafia.gg.

2. JNV was pretty quick to file this as a non-issue and move on. They also later clarified they felt a gambit was in V!Archer's meta but:

21 hours ago, JNV said:

Hey I did comment on it I said it doesnt matter either way cause SK doesnt count against our wincon and honestly I kinda wrote it off cause its you but I also didnt want to say that cause of that last time we misvoted you cause you were trying to be less gambity

I kind of want to cross-reference this because I guess, again, cleanness of the inference, for want of a better word. JNV did come off a game where we misvoted Archer trying to be less gambity, but also came off a massive gambit E!Archer game. 

They later elaborate:

21 hours ago, JNV said:

Im trying not to write Aeoryi off as village for making me automatically suspect them cause thats going to be a really bad habit if I just start doing that but thats honestly the state of things um Im also trying not to write off Archer for being gambity cause that bad habit already bit me listen its finals week for like two more days and then Im scot free so my brain is not working right now though like when is it ever you know what I mean

I know this is weird coming from me as I spend most games defending JNV from people and this is the one game where it's the opposite because people are cool with them and I'm not sure I am. (But also don't wanna ML Quokka Buddy if I'm wrong )

I don't know how to describe what's nagging at me, and I know I'm sounding like a broken record. Maybe I doubt too much or I'm overcompensating for my personal confusion, but this just feels cleaner than normal JNV and I don't know why. This is absolutely a meta thing, but it's bugging me.

In summation:

JNV.

@JNV Quokka Buddy / @Amanuensis ThreadPMBro  please talk some sense into me.

 

[Mat he/him]

Official and likely correct GM VC!

• Archer/Paradigm (2) Araris Valerian/Pookla, Ravenclawjedi42/Participle
• Ravenclawjedi42/Participle (1) Aeoryi/Resolute
• Coffecat (1) The Wandering Wizard/Raveness
• Ashbringer (1) Amanuensis
• The Wandering Wizard/Raveness (1) Archer/Paradigm
• JNV (1) Kasimir

Edited December 13, 2023 by Ookla the Destined

[TheRavenHasLanded he/him]

14 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

 H'okay. Archer's Clusterchull on Stilts.

1. Preliminaries

  Hide contents

I call it a clusterchull on stilts because you'd think it's a single reaction test. But it isn't. And here's why:

Archer makes at least three separate claims, with increasing insistence as he realises he isn't being taken seriously. 

A. 

This is the first one, marking his entrance into the thread. It's easily passed off as RP, and I'll note straight off that my personal reaction when catching up with the thread for the first time was "oh that's cool I didn't know he was RPing as a character with SK claim history. Very Archer though."

B.

Slightly under an hour later, Archer repeats the claim. I would say it's still missable as being an RP thing - I certainly thought it was that.

C.

By the third repetition, it seems clear Archer wants a reaction. Or some kind of reaction.

D.

IMO this comment from Archer makes it pretty clear it was a reaction test but YMMV.

If you think, in theory, that Villager and Elim (and SK) responses should be differentiated because of differing strategic priorities and TMI, even if weakly so, then you can argue that it's worth aggregating all the responses into a single bucket, as Archer's analysis clearly does. IMO, I think it's worth not doing so, because you want to track how responses evolve or shift across time when searching for outliers. Also, again, if you think TMI and differing strategic priorities inform responses, then the pattern should be just as visible early on as it is later.

To put the point another way: how you react to anything when Evil is how E!you reacts to anything. I recognise this is a controversial claim among many who will insist (perhaps correctly) their Village self would do the same thing, but the fact of the matter is that TMI is what causes you to reflexively hesitate and project what your V!self would do. To be sure, some players aren't very good at hiding in responses - Aman, for instance, absolutely hid very well during one reaction test run by a different player ages ago. And some players aren't very good at doing reaction test analyses - my results for instance have often varied in terms of how useful they are. Necessary caveats I suppose.

FYI: if you think Archer is E aiming for cheap V!credit (which I think is a possibility worth considering) then I think it's worth looking for where his teammates would be. Because then there is absolutely no way in hell his teammates didn't know this was coming.

2. Categorising Responses [RAW]

(You'll want to skip this if you're short on time. I'll repeat this in a section below that summarises/organises the results more intuitively. This is me showing my working/actually working this out for myself.)

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Responses to A:

Something Screwy: Neil questions if Archer is planning a bucket strat early. This is pretty much not a bucket strat environment, so I'm going to say Neil isn't serious (feels like pregame banter to me), but I think it reflects a sense that something is up with Archer, or a willingness to engage with it. It's a response that comes a minute after Archer, indicating high immediacy. I'd note in an E!Archer world, they're unlikely to be teamed. Archer is not going to get his teammate to respond immediately to this.

Note: I have no idea how in the nine hells Archer can see this:

and go "yes, you know what, this guy is clearly new enough that a new player baseline is the correct baseline here."

Noisy: Aeo self votes and asks Mat about PMs.

You can argue this is a variant of an Ignore response, and question why I'm disambiguating it from Aman's. In truth, I just feel that there's a different valence involved - they both Ignore but in different ways. Aeo does something arguably as attention-grabbing as Archer's own entry into the thread, and Aman mourns Elan.

Ignore: Aman mourns Elan. Pretty much ignores Archer's opening here. 

There's an ongoing back-and-forth between Neil and Aeo, and some mild exchange with Aman. I think it's worth saying that in an E!Archer world, none of their thread debuts feel quite right for an Archer partner. The point is to give Archer room for his play, not smother it with indifference.

Responses to B:

So Archer escalates, and repeats his claim.

Engage: Aeo highlights the fact that Archer is making a Serial Killer pun. (Note that I don't actually think, contra later Neil, that this is really obvious as I think it's missable as RP early on (at least cf. A), and lean a bit to Devo's interpretation. I think it's Archer's trenchant insistence that makes it clear the possibility of a reaction test is more salient.)

Vote: Araris votes Archer because Araris is too old and grouchy for this kind of nonsense

Responses to C :

Archer escalates a third time.

Scepticism: Aeo definitely does not buy it. (As Araris intimated, frankly no living being with a brain should.) 

Scepticism & Vote: Ravenclaw also votes Archer. They don't think Archer is the SK, they just don't see why a Villager would claim SK. Sidenote I'm curious why Ravenclaw says this:

What's going through your head at this point? Why would it even be an intuitive thing that people would want to keep the SK alive here?

No one @ me here about the murderpuppy I mean it  

Ignore: Ash ignores and replies about SE's SK history. Wiz replies to an early vote, also completely ignoring this. Worth noting that Wiz seems to be in a good mood and spends a decent amount of time bantering with Aeo.

Ignore: I actually nearly forgot this guy and had to come back to him which raises a bunch of alarms in my head. Raven interacts with Wiz and Aeo. Zero reaction to Archer's claim despite Aeo flagging it explicitly as a claim. I think this is really interesting because of all the players, you'd expect Raven to have a fairly pure response, given he was dead by the time Drake tried a reaction test in LG98b.

V Lean: Neil V!leans Archer for it on thread comfort basis. ( @neil the beguiled question for you here: how do you feel about Aeo's and Wiz's thread comfort respectively wrt their claiming of distancing and E/V in thread?) 

Ignore: It's interesting Archer flags TKN out as a believer because TKN's very first reaction is absolutely a hard ignore. TKN interacts with Aeo's self-voting, and Wiz's meta comments, but nothing in terms of Archer, meaning this is a solid commitment to ignore.

Not Again: I don't have a good categorisation for my response. I'd argue it's different from Something Screwy or Scepticism because I'm trying to ignore Archer here (since I theorise it's a reaction test), but also engage cautiously with people who are making Archer reads, which is really just Neil I suppose. 

Indifference: JNV basically just shrugs and says even if Archer is a SK, he isn't really relevant to the Village's wincon. This combines scepticism with a directional view IMO - 'don't think so, and doesn't matter if true.'

V Lean: Devo as well, but on a convention game basis. ( @Devotary of Spontaneity - Are there other players completing convention games of which you think this logic applies to?)

Sarcasm/Scepticism: TKN, after Archer explicitly, outright, directly claims SK in a performance worthy of the Ignobel...is there an Ignobel version of the BAFTAs? No?

3. Categorising Responses [COLLATED]

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Something Screwy: Neil
Ignore: Aman, Ash, Wiz, Raven, TKN, Cash
Not Again: Kas
Indifference: JNV
V Lean: Neil, Devo
Noisy: Aeo
Scepticism: Aeo, Ravenclaw
Vote: Araris, Ravenclaw
Did Not See: Coffeecat (Silber), Alpha, Cash

Just to rehash, the point of outlier analysis isn't to ID all the Elims. I can't really think of a reaction test run on this forum that caught all the Elims in one fell swoop and I don't think anyone who runs a reaction test expects to be that wildly successful either.

As a point of comparison:

AG9:

There are Elims that weren't captured in this reaction test, and you can see Elims in two of the highly-populated strata. The key here is that one Elim, Lion, was the outlier - the others were findable through other means.

LG98b:

Rilla's (Tani's) response was qualitatively an outlier within the strata, but let's ignore that level of detail for the moment. It's worth noting that Rem's (Archer's) was what you'd probably think was the Village response (this was a fake Seeker ploy) and yet it was still the outlier. (This is personally why I think outlier analysis is worth doing.)

So, having qualified our expectations, let's revisit the pools:

These are our isolated responses, giving us a pool of <Neil, JNV, Aeo, me.> We can probably weakly consider Ravenclaw or Araris to be within outliers but IMO, this is already an abuse of the spirit of outlier analysis.

Two responses there stand out to me: Neil's and JNV's. (I'm personally a non-starter for myself.)

1. Neil was very quick to suggest, jokingly I think, that it was a bucket strat, which indicates he recognised it both as a claim and a likely play. His later comments substantiate that this was his attitude going into the cycle. This is interesting to me because I think pretty much everyone else took Archer to be joking, which accounts for so much of the early thread banter. I think in Neil's case, it's muddied by cross-forum differences. I think MU is a lot into early cycle banter, not sure about mafia.gg.

2. JNV was pretty quick to file this as a non-issue and move on. They also later clarified they felt a gambit was in V!Archer's meta but:

I kind of want to cross-reference this because I guess, again, cleanness of the inference, for want of a better word. JNV did come off a game where we misvoted Archer trying to be less gambity, but also came off a massive gambit E!Archer game. 

They later elaborate:

I know this is weird coming from me as I spend most games defending JNV from people and this is the one game where it's the opposite because people are cool with them and I'm not sure I am. (But also don't wanna ML Quokka Buddy if I'm wrong )

I don't know how to describe what's nagging at me, and I know I'm sounding like a broken record. Maybe I doubt too much or I'm overcompensating for my personal confusion, but this just feels cleaner than normal JNV and I don't know why. This is absolutely a meta thing, but it's bugging me.

In summation:

JNV.

@JNV Quokka Buddy / @Amanuensis ThreadPMBro  please talk some sense into me.

 

tbf, my dad says i tend to beat around the bush when i dont wanna answer something about myself, but thats partly because beating around the bush helps me find whats in the bush in the first place.

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 minute ago, Ookla the Destined said:

Official and likely correct GM VC!

• Archer/Paradigm (2 Araris Valerian/Pookla, Ravenclawjedi42/Participle
• Ravenclawjedi42/Participle (1 Aeoryi/Resolute
• Coffecat (1 The Wandering Wizard/Raveness
• Ashbringer (1) Amanuensis
• The Wandering Wizard/Raveness (1 Archer/Paradigm
• JNV (1 Kasimir

Edit:

OH geez what happened xD

 ?

 

[Mat he/him]

Just now, Ookla the Resolute said:

 ?

The Shard autoreplaced

):

at the back end of the parenthesis with a  for some reason. It didn't do that the first VC I posted (...I think...) so I dunno. Fixed now, by taking out the colons entirely :P.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

3 minutes ago, Ookla the Resolute said:

 ?

 

) : = ,.

[Archer he/him]

jokes on you I don't know what bucket strat means

I think my v!Neil read comes more from the thought that if you've just migrated and gotten elim, do you not sit back a little at least? Even if your team gave you the green light, I feel like you'd be more anxious about being visible. Also Neil has felt like a helpful contributor so I trust him

[Aeoryi she/her]

JNV