Cid's speaking sense. Kefit killed scum. Whether he's scum or not, that means that he's not bagged a head. In fact, from a numbers standpoint, Kilga's head was claimed by Ciato, so whether or not Alex is scum, he hasn't claimed a head either. The only living player who might have claimed a head right now is Bardiche. That means that scum either has one or two heads bagged right now.
I actually think that it might be best to conserve K4u's power. The next HiME Star condition might be something worse than this, and since the only way to recharge her power is to hand her a head, which is dangerous if she's scum, I'd rather keep her alive and at equilibrium unless some evidence of her scumminess pops up and prompts us to off her.
It occurs to me that as long as the total number of theoretical possible heads claimed by scum is kept below scum's victory condition, having more than one loose end out there isn't dangerous, and actually might prove useful as fodder for voting analysis. Three loose ends should be our upper limit - even if three living scum have claimed heads, then as long as we match them up against each other (or kill them off sequentially, as it's unlikely that they'd challenge each other willingly), we should be able to get their flips and confirm the number of heads claimed without giving scum a chance to achieve their victory condition. The only way they could win is by achieving a majority in LyLo, and even then only if they compose a number of the loose ends at the time of achieving majority.
So, my proposed immediate course of action is this: Next two kills should be between untested combatants. If both kills are town, then the fight afterwards should be between two of the three loose ends. Then alternate between a fight of two untested combatants and a fight between tested combatants until a scumflip gives you more information.
I want to emphasize this: None of this strategy is dependent upon my personal alignment, and it only very loosely restricts the town's pool of actions. If this plan is followed, using K4u's ability to neutralize the HiME Star if need be, then it is mathematically impossible for scum to win except by remaining uncaught into LyLo, while it still provides ample opportunity to catch scum before then.
Cut:
Still, my point stands in that he wanted us to choose the people we suspected to be scum to be executioners ahead of people we believed to be Town. Which, by definition, means we're more likely to give a head to scum in the event of a mislynch. Can you argue with that slightly less hysterical version?
Scum need at most four more heads to win. Suppose that two people we consider to be town are actually scum. If they both claim heads, and they both survive through LyLo, then scum wins. Is it ever a smart move in vanilla mafia to say "I'm so certain that these two people are town that I'm willing to wager the game on it"? We do it in LyLo because we have to. Your proposal is essentially to put the game into LyLo a few days early.
Now, enough of the Day 4 setup speculation, onto the scumhunting:
Welp, I'd request that someone challenges Serp. I'm sorry, I really don't like the way he tried to validate Alex vs. Scum!Ciato. His claim that 'people we think are Town are likely scum' reeks of stupid WIFOM.
See:
"But the players who you think are town may be scum" has absolutely nothing to do with WIFOM and that you say otherwise means you're grasping for buzzwords.
I shouldn't need to defend the premise that trusting the fate of the game to the alignment of a few other players is something that should be avoided when possible.
This is what we call 'regurgitating a case'. You're basically saying 'the dead guy said it, he can't be wrong because he's Town, and therefore I can't be wrong!'
See:
I wasn't pointing to Kilga's endorsement as a sign that we should take that strategy. I was directly responding to UK's accusation that holding to that strategy looked scummy. If Kilga thought that it was a good idea, and he was town, I don't see how my holding to that idea could possibly look scummy, even if you don't agree with it.
This is further decent but...I don't like the reasoning. You are giving Kiro a Burden of Proficiency here. He's a good player, but he's human. People make mistakes.
If it were just a burden of proficiency, that'd be a meta tell in itself, but what I'm pointing out here is the inconsistency. He looks at my plan, which is objectively pretty damn solid, and completely waves it off. Then Kefit shows up, says "Hey guys, I have a foolproof plan for you to follow, it guarantees a town win (except that it actually doesn't) and also requires you to to let me get a kill and then coast 'till endgame (which, despite your revision today, Kefit, it looked pretty clear that that was what you were asking for)." And Kiro looks at that plan and says "Yup, that sounds fine to me!" I don't see how a townie could object so vehemently to my plan and then accept Kefit's so readily. It has to be scum seeing one plan that sinks scum's chances of winning, and then seeing another plan that doesn't hinder scum at all. That's the only way it makes sense to me.
Some speculation on scum motive and actions:
Tom's challenge against Alex and Ciato was either a move made in panic, or a move calculated to look like panic. If it was the former, then he probably picked one town and one scum to fight him in order to make sure that scum would at least claim one head. If it was the latter, then he may well have picked two scum to go against him knowing that once two of the three of them had died, the third would look very good. Players are more likely to panic when things are going bad for their faction. If Bardiche is scum, then he had claimed a head for scum D1, and Tom would be less likely to panic.
So, I'm going to say that if Bardiche is town, then we can probably take Tom's action at face value and say that Alex is town as well. If Bardiche is scum, then Tom was probably faking it, and Alex might well be the beneficiary of two scumbuddies' gambit to ensure his survival into LyLo. This also reflects somewhat on the state of the game, as Tom's action being a calculated one would imply that scum have things well in-hand and we should be looking at those who are commanding discussion and setting the lead for the townies to follow (most especially Kefit), while Tom's action being a panicky one implies that scum have lost control and we should be looking at the players who have been contributing less to the town's actions. It's not a sure thing, but Bardiche's flip could give us a lot of insight into how scum have likely been playing. We should probably get it before too long.
As for who should fight today, I've been getting townie feel from Cid and scummy feel from Kiro, so I'm going to nominate that matchup.
FakeVote: Kiro versus CidI'm going to lean towards lynching the noisier players rather than the quiet ones right now, since I'm a pessimist and want to prepare for the possibility that scum are trying to lead us around by the nose. I find Cid versus Chaore to be an alright second option, though.
