"Ey, nice, I was thinkin' the same thing. I don't think it's an act, I think she's clean."
She leaned back in her seat. "Anywho, like Jack-o over here said, I don't think it's all that unlikely that there woulda been two kills, but one got stopped, leaving us with one. Don't have any guesses as the whether red-hat kid visited a gun owner, or if there's someone else in the game with a kill power or what, but I think someone else was probs the thugs' actual target."
"Sooooo I guess where I'm at is that I'm feeling pretty good about Jack--get the feeling he's good enough at this that he'd be hard to peg as a thug, but he seems clean for now. Anubis seems ok. Already said why I think Vicky's clean. Got nothin' on Derek and Rui. Sooooo that leaves Isaac, Spencer, Pheebs, and Sauce Sriracha--I'd be cool with voting any of them."
"I like that Stracion initially agreed on ruling out Victoria. Generally the mafia's going to be pretty reluctant to rule out suspicion on somebody they
could get eliminated pretty easily. Granted, though, she ended up going back on it later and voting Victoria anyway (to be fair I did too after realizing it wasn't as definitive a slip as I'd initially taken it), so I'm not going to give
too much cred for it... but still a little, because doing an about-face like that is pretty awkward for scum and they'd generally want to avoid getting into that situation in the first place.
"Victoria
was definitely the sort of train scum would push, so I'll give her a little minus for that one, though most of us also ended up voting for her. I thought her progression on Victoria basically made sense - she was analyzing Victoria's doc claim and how she hadn't reacted to the Anubis and Sriracha debacle like she was also a doctor, and even then voted for her mostly on the logic that it still might be wrong but it'd tell us something about the setup and losing one doctor out of several at this point wasn't a huge loss. But yeah, pushing Victoria was what scum probably would've wanted to do at that point, sure."
“There have to be hella PGOs the whole thing is minesweeper, that’s the only way this setup makes sense unless the scumteam was given fake role PMs as a contingency.”
"These were in response to the doctors being allowed to copy-paste their rolecards. Noticing it was actually Stracion who first suggested fake rolecards for scum, rather than Sriracha, which could be suspect, as a way of planting the idea the rolecard doctors could be fake. Buuut later she explained why she was thinking that:"
"Yeah, I was big time in the camp of thinking fake role cards were a thing because it was weird when 'Racha suggested showing 'em, and then it turned out to be allowed?? But then he flipped homie, so there went the idea of him using it as some kinda ploy." The whole sentence was said through a mouthful of bbq chips.
"That makes sense to me, I think. It didn't occur to me until she and Sriracha had brought it up because I don't
think I've ever played a game that actually had fakeclaim rolecards, but once they did, the fact showing rolecards was even allowed also made me paranoid about that. And since then Stracion
hasn't actually been continuing to push the rolecard doctors being fake, and instead has pretty adamantly considered them confirmed, which again feels like it'd be a weird move for scum - if she'd gone to the trouble of planting the seeds for considering the rolecard claims fake as mafia, why not stick with it instead of letting town have their free confirmed townies?"
“Both nights Jack. Yeah, I know, real original, add another to the fish-boy fan club. He was making sense day 1, and on day 2, I figured you guys had your little heal triangle thing going on, but if there was a second killer around, might as well protect the guy making the most sense who we already knew wasn’t a redneck.”
"Claiming to have healed me was definitely a super safe claim. Other people had already claimed to have healed me, so she would've known there was no contradiction in that. Buuut on the other hand, her reasoning for doing that both nights makes sense? She was clearly townreading me from day one. So honestly she probably would've done this no matter what alignment she was. Going to call it a null."
"Mandatory-shot vig is a convenient story I guess, but I dunno if it's something Phoebe would be likely to pull outta thin air," Stracion said with a shrug. "But it does seem like what Guzma would could up with, and it also feels like something that kinda needs to exist for this setup to make any sense. And shooting Cygnus was def pro-homie move there cause it saved us a day of arguing about him and there were no other leads."
"But then, there's that stuff Jack brought up about her, which yeah, it's weird."
"Not really buying the thing people are saying about a hater doc being useless without heal clash, especially if it'd heal their buddies from rednecks."
"Also, like, the bad guys could just have more than one strong shot. It's been a thing. Maybe us docs are just glorified Visitors at this point, lmao." (Yeah, yeah, I know at least one of us saved someone Night 1).
She leaned back in her chair. "Aaanyway, the setup just doesn't work if everyone's a doc, there's gotta be stuff like a Vig or a PGO or whatever, so I thiiink I'm leaning toward voting out a claimed doc rather than one of those. Derek being all super duper sure about Anubis and Spencer and really miffed that anyone could still sus them... is actually making me feel a bit better about him? Huh."
"Her whole
reasoning has felt consistently towny all game. She's consistently had specific original thoughts that aren't just blending in with whatever everyone else is saying - here she's the first person to choose to provisionally believe Phoebe's vig claim, and also actually townreads Derek when he's getting a lot of suspicion and it'd be so easy to nod along or at least try to keep that door open. But, granted, she argues against eliminating Isaac here, and he turned out to be scum, so I guess that's a mild point against her."
"Wait, waaaaait I might've just found a solve, hear me out--"
"Anubis and Spencer trust each other so they heal each other. Jack and I trust each other, same deal. Haters might have a roleblocker or another strong shot, but it's our best bet. Now, if Phoebe's still here after the vote, then her shot's gotta go somewhere, right? Obviously at someone sus. Isaac's PGO claim makes him a bad call because if we're wrong our numbers go down by two, which is a big yikes. So it should obvs go to either Derek or Rui. Speaking of, Derek heals either Anubis or Spencer, Rui aims at me or Jack. Don't say who."
"So like. Some of the above are lying. Duh. But if Phoebe's a hater she would get locked into killing someone sus anyway, or else she'd look pretty bad. We know none of the homie docs are gonna heal those two. I guess a mafia doc could heal one of 'em. But like, they can't heal themselves, and would they seriously pass up a free kill?"
"Aaaaaand this is all forgetting that one of those four needs to get voted out. Frick." Stracion gnawed on the edge of her plastic cup. Apparently her foolproof plan wasn't so foolproof. Also the clock was ticking.
"Man, I dunno, I was sus of Phoebe but I keep thinking of reasons she might be legit? I get why people would wanna do a policy vote just to keep the nightkills down, but eh. Too easy. I guess I'm voting Rui?? Nothing obviously off, just a bunch of mashed potato, and that's all I got (yeah, I know she'd have to have a buddy so I'm stuck revisiting derek/isaac/phoebe eventually shut up)."
Vote: Rui
"I don't want it to be unanimous with only two votes and no evidence. At least if I vote for someone else, we can see how people react and who they pick and try to read it."
"Here's the plan, which did turn out badly. Stracion votes Rui rather than Isaac, and creates a plan where Phoebe shoots Derek or Rui. I think the only way this makes any sense for mafia!Stracion is if Stracion knows both Derek and Rui are town.
"This seems like a super risky mafia move in this situation, though. Stracion didn't really try to push Rui over Isaac; she just sort of voted, shrugged saying she didn't even think anything was obviously off about her, and then poked other people about placing their votes. Isaac was getting a lot more suspicion than Rui; he was already pretty likely to get voted out. So in that situation, you... go out of your way to place a single bold vote on somebody else, who you know to be innocent, but then sit back and let everyone vote out your partner anyway? That'd be like the worst possible way to handle this situation as mafia. Either they do vote out your partner, in which case now you look bad for starting an alternate train, or they do take your bait and go with your innocent train instead of your partner, in which case everyone will still be just as suspicious of your partner tomorrow but now they're also extra suspicious of
you for starting the alternative train. I don't think someone of her skill would have done this as mafia, not
like this."
Jack took a deep breath. "I guess I
can see a world where Stracion's mafia. There's some circumstantial stuff here and there that
could be scum moves. But my gut says this really isn't how she'd be playing if she were mafia. I'm still pretty convinced the doctor who's lying is Rui, and if there's a second anti-town player left it's Phoebe. I'm going with Stracion's plan where we start by
voting Phoebe, and then nothing can stop us getting Rui tomorrow."
