Warwick Mafia XIX - Pick Your Power...In SPAAAACE!

By the way, I'm not gonna be nearly as strict about bidding rules in the day. The main reason I'm strict on it at the night is that I don't want anyone getting sneaky ideas about trying to communicate with people at night through their bids. I'm also gonna be lenient if your bid becomes illegal shortly before you make it, for example someone bids the same or more than what you bid just a few seconds or minutes before you send your message.

Will bidding groups always stay the same or change throughout the game?

They're chosen each night.

There's an angle to this I hadn't considered where on subsequent days it might make sense to agree on certain consensus town players to get certain items at a minimal price, not sure if that's against the spirit of the setup or whatever. But realistically it doesn't make a difference who has an item as long as its a member of your team right?

mkkrabby, is there a particular reason that you’re choosing to get things moving by escalating the bidding rather than prodding players? I’m just curious, especially as that’s an increase of more than 1 on 2 of the items.

Tom

• Given that there is a mechanic to enable items to be donated, I assume that colluding on bids isn’t too far outside of the spirit of the game.
• Regardless of my point above, I don’t think we’ll see it coming into play as much as some people may like. I struggle to see how we’re going to get a strong consensus on certain players being Town in a rather opaque setup like this. And unless you have a way to prove that certain players are on Town, it’s always safer to have the item yourself. Then you know your team has it, as well as finding out exactly what it does and, if it’s an active item, getting to make use of it in the best way for you.(And frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an item and/or ability that messes with investigative items.)
• Is there a particular reason that you already trust Archie?

That being said. Ashe. Talk to me.

I haven't linked to any posts here, sorry - just trust me that I'm referencing things people have actually said.

Daisy's assumption of a 'bidding pair' looks like either a townslip or a fake townslip - that is, she either assumed 4 bidding groups of 2 because she didn't know any better, or she pretended to because she knew it wasn't the case. The only other possibility is if Daisy is scum with Archie and they only knew about their own group - which is possible and I'm not gonna be influenced by what I think the mods would do in this case. But the overall takeaway for me is Daisy's probably town.

Intrinsically it seems unlikely to me that both scum (if it is 2) would be put in the same group, but I won't use that as a hard and fast rule. What I will say is that Leo and Tom don't look partnered based on Tom 'sniping' an item and Leo complaining about it (and voting him).

Archie's post about a 'moderate attitude' to revealing items strikes me as flawed, but in quite a town!Archie way. My own approach will just be to try and vote scum as usual, and ignore nightplay/mechanics unless someone says they did something important. Going based off social reads doesn't defeat the point of the game, but rather actually is the point of the game. But there's not much point debating that anyway.

Nick's encouragement of a vote on me for being quiet seems uncharacteristic - I don't recall him caring too much about post counts in previous games. As for why I was afk, I spent nearly all weekend with friends, and when I did take a look I didn't have enough time to post in the detail I wanted to. I'd like to see something a bit more substantial reads-wise from Nick, and he'll probably sit in a shadow of suspicion for me until then. Leo's vote on me by contrast looks fairly innocuous with the accompanying joke.

I'm interested to hear more on Ashe's read on Daisy - I know they've said that'll be explained later.

Tom towning Archie is probably minimally +town for him, it's slightly more likely a real thought than scum!Tom telling us Archie's town for free in my mind.

Last word on items is that they shouldn't be the focus of the game. People can use them as a starting off point to read for alignment, but the focus should always be on today's elimination. I am in favour of letting UTRs bid low amounts to get items - but either way I doubt they'll be powerful enough in this game to completely swing things in scum's favour if they get into the wrong hands.

So, to sum up my reads so far:
Daisy, Archie
Tom
Ashe, Leo
William
Nick

If I had to guess the scumteam on D1 I'd probably bet that scum aren't in the same bidding group (it just seems intuitive based on setup design) so [William, Nick] would work in that case as a duo. My scumreads are far from strong at this point though. I'm only confident on the top tier of [Daisy, Archie] at the moment.

*appears from ceiling*

hey bbgirl.

So haven’t been talking here much, still trying to get my bearings + waiting for Daisy’s response + bad at forum mafia. Lmao

All I know is my effect, which I won’t share now, and that’s gonna effect what items I bid on. I already get the vibe there’s some here that are useless to me

luke, nice to see some explained reads. Just to respond to a few of your comments:

On the potential “bidding pair” Townslip by Daisy:

• I don’t trust Townslips in a forum game. In an in-person / Discord game, maybe I’ll believe a slip, as the game is in “real time”. In a forum game, we have time to prepare and check every post, meaning it’s both easy to sneak a fake Townslip into a post, and also much less likely (in my opinion) for genuine slips to actually occur.
  

• In this particular case, I don’t see it as suspicious, but it’s not going to give Daisy any Towncredit for me as revealing you know about 3-person bidding groups without being in one would be a pretty major scumslip unless you have an additional neighbour/Mason ability.

• It has been moderator-confirmed that the bidding groups (and which items are available for each auction). Unless you think that the Moderators are lying about setup details or have made tweaks to the randomness (admittedly neither would completely surprise me), then what groupings they would or wouldn’t choose to put Mafia in on Night 1 is irrelevant.
  

Bidding +1 on each is pretty much a waste of time as far as I'm concerned and just post filler, as bigger increments will come later in the day phase invalidating all the early bids. I'm just ignoring it all and treating it as NAI.

I think we can all guess what Ashe's running joke with posts is here. Both from the lines at the start of posts, and the comment about one of the items being largely useless (I think this would be the teleworkers? Maybe anti-gravity boots).
I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to speculate on the names of the roles - since Ashe can't confirm them - but I can see a role with a title like I suspect being any alignment. However, I'd be more inclined to suspect scum or 3rd party.
That being said, watch out anyone if your item gets mysteriously stolen. I think it would track with Ashe's character.

My strongest suspicions were Ashe and Daisy as scum. This was slightly waylaid by the fact Ashe voted Daisy with a failed vibe check as the reason, but since there was no other votes on Daisy, that's easily a temp vote to distance themselves, and very in character for those two as a scum team. Especially as Daisy didn't push back, and just let it happen.
Alternatively, it also makes sense if Ashe is 3rd parry and Daisy is scum.
Either way, I am suspicious of them. And enough to throw out my first vote of the game.

Vote:Daisy

Nick, seen and acknowledged. I had a feeling you might declare everything null and void, just doing my best to try and get the game out of neutral.

Archie, is your thinking that 1) Ashe is a scum role deliberately outing themself with cheeky flavour crumbs 2) Ashe voted Daisy and 3) this means they're both scum? I must admit I'm not entirely on board yet.

Sell it to me like a teleworker.

I think Ashe's role is like a thief or ninja or teleporting crook or something. And it seems in character for the mods to make a quiet broken role and counter-balance it with an insistence on flavour text.
This is why I'm saying be careful if any items get nicked. Maybe Ashe cam see a full list of everyone's items and chose one to steal? Quite broken, balance it with flavour text.
I'm spitballing here, and of course there are other possibilities, maybe they bid on a cursed item that made them do that.
But I'm still naturally going to be suspicious.

As for social reads, ironically enough I agree with Ashe, Daisy is failing the vibe check. But, unfortunately, I kind of think Ashe is too.
I'm not going to say my full reasoning, because I'm investigating something, and want to let it play out for a while longer.

So, to tide you over, here's everyone's ranking so far.
If you want me to expand on it, I will after a reread of everything that I'll do later. But for now I'll just say that I don't know how William plays on forums, and I'm getting very slightly scum vibes, but that is easily changeable.

Town: Nick
Maybe town: Luke, Tom, Leo
Maybe scum: William
Scum: Daisy, Ashe