TWG XXXV - Knick It In The Bud

[MilfeulleSakuraba]

Please send all PMs to MilfeulleSakuraba. Kilgamayan's Inbox is full and I'm too lazy to delete enough of it to make room for the 15+ PMs I'm going to get every night.

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The big day was finally here!

16 humans from across the world gathered together in a small room in the back of the presentation hall, having nothing else in common except for their love of the game. This is the day they had been waiting for their whole lives, the day their destinies and fates would be determined by front-office chatter and the conviction-filled voice of one David Stern, Commissioner of the NBA.

Despite all of this, however, there was a silent, terrible fear in the hearts of everyone gathered in that room. They all knew there was one thing that could ruin their moment - their destiny - forever.

Patrick O'Bryant had the courage to voice this fear, someone no one else in the room could do.

"So, heh, who do you guys think will end up going to New York?"

Oh, yes, New York. The New York Knicks. The thought sent a collective chill up 16 spines. Nothing could ruin their days, their careers, their very lives as much as finding out they were being sent to play with overpaid hacks like Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis - not to mention invariably getting booed by the hordes of fans in attendance, who showed up for no other reason than to loudly disapprove of whatever decisions Isiah Thomas made.

The ruined moment, the salary cap hell, the inevitable decade of doom and gloom...no, it was too much to bear even considering thinking about.

But they all knew. They all knew New York was extremely active in trade talks. They all knew that any of them could go at any time.

In fact, three of them knew so well that they had decided beforehand that it would not happen to them before it happened to all of the thirteen other people in that room.

David Stern's voice signaled the start of Round 1. The Toronto Raptors were on the clock, and sixteen pairs of eyes watched that clock tick down, tick away the seconds before the moment of truth revealed a glorious destiny - or a horrible, hell-on-earth fate.

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It is now Night 1.

Tasselfoot (Randy Foye)
talisman (Patrick O'Bryant)
FishFishRevolution (J.J. Redick)
GuidoHunter (Saer Sene)
FoJaR (Shelden Williams)
flypie743 (Rudy Gay)
Shashakiro (Cedric Simmons)
Tps222 (Tyrus Thomas)
CypherToorima (LaMarcus Aldridge)
iggymatrixcounter (Rodney Carney)
Kefit (Brandon Roy)
blahblah18 (Hilton Armstrong)
Omeganitros (Andrea Bargnani)
aperson (Adam Morrison)
Afrobean (Ronnie Brewer)
Wilkin (Thabo Sefolosha)

Some clarifications:

- The wolfsbane role cannot transfer the protection to anyone else, either temporarily or permanently. Also, even if they are attacked, the wolfsbane's protection will not go away.
- If there is an unsuccessful attack, you will not be told why, only who the target was. It is up to that target to tell the rest of you what's going on, if they so choose.
- Night posting is allowed, so go nuts. This means the vigilante can kill anyone at any time (though they still only get one shot) instead of only during the day.
- Wolfsbane does not protect from a vigilante kill.
- PMs will be sent out shortly (no personalizaiton this time, sorry). I will post again when they are all sent out, signalling the start of the 24-hour waiting period for lottery picks.
- If I have forgotten anything, please let me know.

[MilfeulleSakuraba]

Oh wow, hail vBulletin for allowing you to PM RUSH KEKEKEKE instead of making you wait 30 seconds between each one.

My watch says 12:40, so at that time 24 hours later I will no longer accept lottery picks.

Wolves, kill someone.
Everyone, send me your lottery picks.

Let the eternal struggle begin!

[CypherToorima]

Oh sup night

[MilfeulleSakuraba]

One last thing I forgot to mention; you can pick yourself for the lottery if you so desire.

[flypie743]

FYI: My new screenname is "i am flypie".

[Shashakiro]

No seer, no guardian...sounds hard.

[Tasselfoot]

OK... my thoughts...

wolfsbane should come out ASAP. no sense not to, as proven by the game with myself and mead. yes, it tells the wolves 1 person not to attack... but it also allows for the vigi to have someone to work with. 2 people working together > 1. Also eliminates 1 suspect from consideration... picking out of 13 is better than 14 (15 people alive day 1, minus yourself). Also eliminates one person from consideration on who to pick to guard. Will be extremely powerful in an end game situation.

vigi... DO NOT USE YOUR POWERS. Period. If you use your powers and kill a human, we lose an entire day. ONLY if we have a night without a kill will it be appropriate to kill someone... 1 non-kill will not extend things an extra day, so by getting 1 non-kill by the wolves and 1 extra kill by vigi... at worst things are evened out. At best, we get a free wolf. Regardless, DO NOT USE IT UNTIL LATE IN THE GAME, if at all. Better to never use your power than to use it incorrectly.

And since you guys apparently can't do jack **** without me, I'd like to nominate myself for a guard pick... not to mention I'd like to live past night 1 for a change.


Any questions?

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by CypherToorima

Oh sup night

This should be the equivalent of everyone's night post haha.

Night posting later on is useful, but why bother before anything even happens?

To get ideas out, I suppose, but really, I have no special ideas regarding anything new in this game.

Quick note: wasn't even aware there was a vigilante. Shouldn't the vigi come out under the pretenses that if any fakes vigi, the real vigi can just use the vigi powers to kill him?

So yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how it works. It's been a while though. Anyone, feel free to point out how I'm wrong because I really feel like I'm missing something and I don't see why the vigi role is used when it's so broken.

[Afrobean]

wtf tass posted before me

doesn't it make more sense for the vigi to come out than the wolfsbane if only because there would be no way of knowing for sure if wolfsbane is faking?

[Tasselfoot]

no Afro! vigi only works that way with a set guardian to hide and protect them. that isn't the case this game.

this game, let the wolfsbane come out and act as a leader. let the vigi stay in the shadows.

[Afrobean]

ok nvm about what I said about vigi coming out, even though vigi could come out and bane could come to them but yeah whatever

Tass is right. If two people come to wolf's bane as vigi, then we have a wolf, so whatever it all works out but in the way tass said, the blues are both aware of who each other are. But if vigi comes out and bane goes to vigi and a wolf fakes bane to vigi, then we'd have to pick out a wolf from two people with nothing to go on but their posting (and lord knows we can't do that worth a ****).

I still stand by the vigi is broken arguement though, and apparently the bane is just as broken.

and tass posted while I was typing this, so in response to him: yeah I forgot that wolves get guardian picks too, so even with every human protecting the vigi, it wouldn't be 100%.

[Tasselfoot]

my point was more that the wolfsbane is SAFE to come out publically. no harm against them. AND with a "guardian" in addition... there is literally ZERO risk in the wolfsbane coming out. NONE.

if the vigi comes out, all the humans have to waste their guard picks on the vigi to keep them alive. with the bane, we don't. with the bane, we can still have our secret guard picks to work to fool the wolves and get saves.

the bane is the better choice, hands down, to come out publically. and if 2 vigi's go to the bane, the bane should just post that in the thread, and we can deal with it from there. logic always prevails in those situations.

[Afrobean]

Yeah I already said you were right about that. No need to argue it further.

[CypherToorima]

Well...I am the wolfsbane, so if you planned on voting me for guarding, no need to worry about that.

[Tasselfoot]

also... vigi... DO NOT go to Cypher just yet. Give it about 18 hours or so, just to make sure nobody else comes out claiming to be the wolfsbane.

As I said just now to Shash, I don't believe for a second that Cypher is faking (based on a convo that Cypher and I just had), but better safe than sorry, and waiting 18 hours won't change anything. So play it safe.

[blahblah18]

but my initial signup plan was to wolf cypher.. now its impossible? boooooo this game sucks

[Omeganitros]

Woooohoohoohoooo!

Sup night.

[Tps222]

Sup.

Tass's plan seems fine.

[aperson]

To run some quick numbers:

Assuming that the wolves are brilliant enough to not submit the same person for a lottery guard as they did for a wolf, here are some odds:

Interesting situation #1) If the vigilante comes out and all humans guard the vigilante (this model assumes worst-case scenario where no wolves are lynched in the daytime):

Night 1: 13/16 = 0.8125
Night 2: 11/14 = 0.7857
Night 3: 9/12 = 0.75
Night 4: 7/10 = 0.7
Night 5: 5/8 = 0.625
Night 6: 3/6 = 0.5

Now, this is pretty interesting to look at. With full cooperation from the humans, even with the vigilante public the wolves have a very low chance of successfully wolfing them. In fact, I think this chance is so low that it would even be in the wolves best interest to not attempt to wolf the vigilante because it would likely result in 2 to 3 failures (and wasted kills) before their plan is successful. In fact, if the wolves tried to wolf the vigi for the first three days in a row, their chance of succeeding by the third day is 0.5212... Just barely over half!

In a sense, I think this makes the lottery guarding have the same impact as standard guarding, because the success rate of the wolves is so low that it will prevent them from trying it at all... And even here, my model implies the worst-case scenario where no wolves are found out. In actuality, the chances of a successful guarding jump up to around 80% with a single wolf removed.

Does anyone see any flaws to this logic?


Interesting situation #2: Pure randomosity.
Assuming no cooperation between the humans and wolves smart enough not to guard their selection, the odds of a successful guarding are as follows (this follows worst-case scenario model as well):
Night 1: 0.0507
Night 2: 0.0561 (0.1068 cumulative)
Night 3: 0.0625 (0.1693 cumulative)
Night 4: 0.07 (0.2393 cumulative)
Night 5: 0.078 (0.3173 cumulative)
Night 6: 0.083 (0.4003 cumulative)

So basically, with random chance we have a 40% chance to have a successful guarding by the time the day is over. (This model uses the equation: n = number of players, w = number of wolves: ((n-w)/n)*(1/n). The first part calculates the mean chance of them being selected for a guard that night, the second part calculates the chance of the first part actually being selected.)

[iggymatrixcounter]

Originally Posted by CypherToorima

Well...I am the wolfsbane, so if you planned on voting me for guarding, no need to worry about that.

Come on... consecutive special roles? XD

Anyways since you can vote for yourself in the lottery, I was thinking that maybe we should post who we voted.

It may give us nothing but it would be like day voting patterns. Might give us something to work with in case someone is wolf or whatever.

Course the only bad thing I see from this is the bane (cypher) may know the vigi and maybe the wolves would try to kill whoever cypher chose.

So maybe everyone but the bane posts their pick or something to remedy that. Just an idea to get us more infromation.