What I'm thinking happened toward the end there is FEP realized the walls were closing in on the scum team and panicked and tried to get town to switch off of AB so they could get a few more mis-kills. Followed by Stan walking into the thread later going "Oh no" before back peddling a bit. Honestly, if FEP actually voted and AB had a partner they might of been able to get the kill there.
Y'all are trying too hard.
The scum team this game really threw me off by how bold they were. There's bold and then there's brazen. I somewhat can't see Dr.Stu cosigning those string of plans, so my first scum lean has to be Fep. He was just really frenetic yesterday in a way that isn't a good look today.
I do have to wonder about the CS/LP team. Apollo and Monkey brought up some good points related to them, but I wouldn't exactly want to go there before fep/stan. I'm more likely to believe the observable DV than the vanilla.
You're right about that. Ain't my style. I'll bus as scum but I'm not a big fan of gambits. It's too easy for them to collapse and it usually requires some kind of wacky lie if not a whole chain of lies and while that can work for some people, being scum makes me anxious enough as it is without adding a whole level of masterplan deception. Bussing is the opposite; it actually doesn't require lies. Truth is your padding and you can sail that boat all the way to the end.
But I don't think the gambits here were done out of desperation, as a few posts above. Baelus wasn't out of desperation; it was planned. It started early, and the slow unspooling and coyness was on purpose. Town moved the votes d1 and scum sat comfortably. Sorian (and to a lesser degree, feps) were calling out the AB train because it looked like town action. A third of the active posters, in fact, were uneasy (and all got called concern trolls for it). But when people started moving, most of it was town. Town reacts like that. Town does that. Who didn't move? Baelus didn't move. AbBro and Ty didn't move; they waited. I think this actually points to the possibility of a three-team set of scum in this game, which seems low mathematically, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. Town panicked because town. Scum chilled and then killed Fran n1 because Fran was never going to let up on Baelus.
I think it's possible d1 that a big chunk of the scum team just wasn't around. I brought this up to Stu in our boat a few phases ago and knowing what we know now it seems more likely. This, you'll note, does NOT include feps. He was there at end of d1. Why then wouldn't he have put his vote back on Katsune? He had previously. He had no reason not to vote there again if he's scum, nothing to hold him back. He would have only been the fourth scum on that vote; not a major stack, and probably the least suspicious because he had more reason to do it.
Scum wasn't desperate. They were either absent or fine with it, because a bunch of people started hollering about the Ty vote.
In fact, I'll put that desperation post in here:
The gambits from scum team this game were principally made from a place of desperation, it would appear. At the end of Day 1, 2 out of the 3 major wagons had scum on them, and they only lucked by not losing one of those two to a lynch at the last minute. I imagine that the scum teams rather bold decision to fake green check absolutebro/Ty4on was born from that subsequent need to flip things around and redirect town's attention.
I don't see how scum!Coolest throwing a doublevote on Ty4on makes any sense in that context. That doublevote was made on Day 2, right when the scum had successfully redirected town into a big Monkey vs. Sorian slapfight. At that stage, why redirect town's attention back onto either TyBro or a theoretical scum!Coolest? I don't see the payoff for scum.
You don't greencheck your teammate who just survived d1 because everyone was saying they are confirmed town due to votes out of desperation. In fact it's a terrible move and the only reason AbBro never got pressure for still being alive is because that team was largely absent. While Fat4All was here, he was doing the bulk of the work because AB had shit going on, but y'all take a second and imagine a green-checked team running around d4 with midrange activity. We would have all been super suspicious. But there's no reason to question why a team that is verified and not super active isn't around. TeamAbsFat should have been the nk the night Geno and Sparks died, or when rac and VA died. Both those kills were weirdly out of order. Yeah, Geno helped sink Baelus, but he had an unpredictable partner. Yeah, rac and VA also helped sink Baelus, and they had an unpredictable power, but there were still plenty of people questioning them. This is why you don't greencheck your teammates. It gets suspicious. Only circumstances saved them from that here.
But there was no desperation to it. AbBro was going to come into d2 under some doubt, but plenty of people would have put it up as town v town, and once the vigilantes flipped, the biggest possible threat (a vig shooting the second wagon) was gone. And if you look back at the start of d2, Natiko voted AbBro but got questioned and then no one else did until Coolest had his flipout. Which accomplished several things:
-ensured that if Coolest flipped scum, AbBro would stay safe)
-established Coolest and partner as a double-voter, which is such a town power that they wouldn't be questioned
But it also happened after two things. Coolest and Z-Beat didn't pick up a lot of votes d2, but there were two, and they were being looked at with some scrutiny. Natiko in particular had a pretty sizable case. Then Z-Beat dropped. Ty dropped. Baelus were a hot topic, though most people believed them. They had the doctors, likely, but Baelus was never going to last. So Coolest throws out the double and shades AbBro. There's a whole-ass situation now:
Coolest >> suspects AbBro!
j'accuse! blows double vote!
Baelus >> greenchecked AbBro
On paper, this looks like at least two teams get out alive. Baelus will fall eventually but the others will be okay.
That's not desperation. That's a plan.
There's more, especially with regard to votes yesterday, but I'm gonna break it up.