Okay, I’ve been giving this some thought, and I’ve decided that a claim is the only option today, as I’ve tended to be a night 2 target a lot of late and there’s no HCing to protect my data. My role says cop, I’ll provide the proper decryption for that in a follow up. Incidentally the main motivator for the earlier role comparison plan was that being the cop, and with the poems being identical and our roles not being revealed, and my first night yielding a scummer… which always brings the possibility of psycho-cop to mind… I wondered about the off possibility of us having multiple cops or lots of twinned roles, ?’s presumably truthful claim of yesterday meant we couldn’t all be, on reflection, but I still expect there’s a real chance off role weirdness.

The person, of course, was Beetnemesis. I’d decided when I got the hit back I’d need to claim today, so if I got murdered tonight that wouldn’t be lost. I wanted to get as much data as possible though about who he did or did not favor or vote for, as there’s a real chance it would be our last hard data. If there’s only two scum, and he is one, then the survivor might have a RB/NK choice each night and we’d have a good shot at bulling through. If there are three, and he’s not a RBer but they have one, they’ll lock me down after this, or try for a NK, or both. We don’t know if we have a doc amongst the living, but neither do the scum, and odds favor it right now so the RB if they’ve got one tonight would seem probable, and the NK would be the usual guessing game between them and the doc.

So, assuming my copping is valid, which we’ll know when beet dies… he’ll either die scum or town and if the latter I’ll know he was a miller or I’m psycho, of course he’ll claim and if he claims town and says he’s a miller we’ll all know I’m sane but barring that… anyone he’ll have a RC to decode for us or just fess up to being scum. If he claims town, non-miller, and dies as town I’ll know I’m probably psycho and you’ll know I’m psycho or scum and can act accordingly tomorrow. We all know the various options and improbabilities that can be involved but unless Beet’s decode is miller I think we can assume we’ll lynch him today, if he does decode as miller then we’ll have to consider the options but probably the same.

So, there’s the pre-amble, but what do we know? As I said, I’d have liked to suck more data out of this Day where beet’s concerned but I doubt we’d get too much, and for the rest of this message I will assume Beet is scum. Thus far he pressed strongly for a claim from ?, and I doubt he’d have done that from another scummer, so I’m going to assume for now that ? is town, which his readiness to claim indicates… as I said to Rana, I’d find that an improbable behavior from a scummer fresh into a new role and I doubt if scum he had a chance to talk to his allies, having been their night victim, but it is always possible beet was given permission to send ? a NB or two come dawn, that wouldn’t be too improbable with a sub going on, and sent him some slam dunk RC knowing ? would have a chance to make a knew RC on Kronin’s. In my experience, when scum I usually try to develop good RC for myself an allies on night 1 and I often want them in play publicly ASAP, so this may have happened. I don’t consider this too improbable, but also not too likely. So for now, I think the odds are very strong Beet is scum and ? is town.

Now, Rana was ?’s accuser, but that doesn’t mean much to me yet. We have only two others who really weighed in on ?, and that’s Yuna and Hieshyn. My feeling from their responses is that neither is too likely to be scum, especially Yuna, who seemed particularly miffed about the accusation on ?, which seems like more disapproval than a scummer would apply to a townie who was being accused. My current impression, as the most probable scenario, is:

Beet – Scum
? – Town
Yuna – Prob-Town
Hieshyn – Prob-ish-town
… and Fox, Stephen, and Ranagrande basically neutral.

Our next step would be for me to decode, for beet to decode, and for us to wait a bit for everyone to confirm they aren’t a cop… if someone claims cop and decodes as such we probably axe beet anyway, and his alignment will tell the doc what to do tonight and everyone else what to do tomorrow. Nobody else should RC, pretty much for the foreseeable future, as that will protect us a bit, the scum will have no idea if we have a doc and if they got them, we’ll take RC’s from future lynch choices of course. During the interregnum while beet and I decode and we wait for possible cop claims I suggest everyone look through Beet’s message and try to find everything, day 1 or two, indicating who he may have favored or not, annotate messages for review, etc. I will reply shortly with my own decode, and I know there’s a case for me waiting longer to have RC’d but I think we now have enough data to have a good shot at a straight attrition victory if beet dies scum and I get no more investigations by dint of being RB’s or dead.

If all goes according to plan, we start tomorrow with 6 players, 7 if we’re lucky, but I’m a pessimist, down a townie and a scummer either 5-1 or 4-2 if there were 3 scum. If Yuna, Hieshyn, and ? and myself are town, presumably one of us will be the NK tonight and the surviving three will need to guess right amongst Fox, Stpehne, and Rana, with a 2 in 3 random chance at LyLo if there are 2 scummers, or with multiple non-LyLo 1 in 3 chances if there’s just 1 scum left after Beet. Better than 50/50 odds for either option and that doesn’t include any evidence we might be able to cobble together or any extra investigations or docings we might get. My loose advice if I get axed tonight and beet dies scum is to probable have everyone decode their RC’s, odds are good the scum claimed vanilla or less common roles, and that will likely make the difference. The tone and flavor of a lot of those random and self-selected RC’s might make a difference, we’ll also want Beet to decode his self-selected accusation if he hasn’t already, as well as everyone else, I’d didn’t see anyway to do that for him specifically without raising an eyebrow or would have done it already.

And Yes, there are a lot of different ways I could play this, many possibly getting us even more info, but I don't want a long day and I also expect to be fairly busy and distracted for the next couple of weeks, active in the game but not with my head entirely into it, so this seemed the best option, particularly since we're small enough in number that a bad lynch could go down while I wasn't looking.

Anyway, that’s where we stand at the moment, thoughts?