Originally Posted by Merestil Haye
Crys, belated happy birthday.
Thanksgiving is next week - I think.
I started to write a post and got caught by following the US Grand Prix. Now, back to work.
There are five of us left. it's somewhat disturbing to me to realise that I don't have much of a handle on any of you. I can't even remember if any of my early-game notes said anything about any of you (Chucara excepted - I'm almost certain he subbed in after my PC blew up.) So I'm going to have to reread between now and Monday evening.
Bill's disappearance does pose a problem. I could, in theory, be OK with stringing him up, but only if I felt that, on balance, Chucara, Crys and Scuba Ben were all Town, and thus Bill had to be the last Mafiate. The last time I found myself in this position, I was right - we lynched the very last Demon. (Town still lost the game though.)
There is a significant difference between this game and that though. The difference is that the player we lynched in that game was posting very infrequently, but was still active, whereas Bill appears to have gone altogether. That suggests to me that there is at least one active Mafiate.
The question of whether there are one or two active Mafia also needs to be considered when deciding when to lynch Bill.
If there are two active Mafiates (ie Bill is Town), then I don't think we can win unless Bill returns and starts voting. If we lynch Bill and he is Town, we've lost, but all we've done is to formalise the inevitable result. If, on the other hand, Bill is one of the Mafia, he needs to be lynched sooner or later, and killing him now will bring us to three-handed Mafia.
I've disregarded the possibility of third parties because I don't believe that there would be five Mafiates and two third party players to start. Third party players in this game are all (in our usual lexicon) PFKs – that is, if they win everyone else loses. I think asking a 13-player Town to deal with seven lynches is a bit much.
If there is only one Mafiate and no third party players, then unless Bill is that Mafiate, lynching him will mean we go to three-handed Mafia. In this case, lynching Bill now is very much settling for second best.
If there is one Mafiate and one third-party player, we pretty much have to assume that the third party is in a position to meet their wincon, so we have to lynch them to win. That means we can treat it as if there were two Mafiates, except that since they cannot be colluding offboard, they can't collude to switch their votes to the chosen candidate at the last minute. However, leaving an active third party alive risks them winning before Dawn Tomorrow. To guard against that, we'd need to lynch the third party Today.
In sumamry; lynching Bill now is the safe move. If Bill is anti-Town we cover ourselves against the sudden awakening of an enemy we've left at our backs, while we only lose situations we can't win and the sudden emergence of a third party meeting their wincon. I could support a Bill lynch, given that.
I will vote sometime tomorrow evening, after rereading.
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