[Formendacil]

Okay... what a weekend this is turning out to be. Now that we're through Day 1, I'll spare you the Tolkien canonicity--as much fun as I have it with notwithstanding--and focus on the task at hand; namely the hunting of our hackers.

First of all, however, I feel a need to clarify my precise feeling regarding Day 1s, since there seems to be an unfortunate misunderstanding about this. It seems that my position is being interpreted along the lines of "Day 1s are absolutely useless and therefore I refuse to see any good in them and will insult them utterly."

Now, while this is not an entirely inaccurate reading... it IS rather lacking in nuance, and a correction here is in order. My opinion regarding Day 1s is not that they are utterly useless, but rather that it is impossible to use them, during Day 1 itself, as a source of any sort of a reasonable analysis.

The thing is, the only "hard facts" in Werewolf are kills or attempted kills. Attempts to figure out who wolves and gifted are has to be reasoned from the basis of who gets killed, what the role of the people killed were, and who attempts to kill whom, and, indeed, when people join in the killing.

None of this is of any assistance of Day 1, because there is no pattern at all to analyse. In a numerical sequence, such as 1,2,4,8,16... or 1,2,3,4,5,6.... or 2,2,4,6,10,16... if one only has the first figure, it is virtually impossible to guess what pattern will emerge. With two or three numbers, this is narrowed down immensely. So too in Werewolf: on Day 1, there is no pattern of killings or attempted killings to analyse. At best, towards the end of the day, one has a single vote from a portion of the community. Hence why I feel it is the height of folly to attempt to seriously and earnestly attempt to find a real wolf on Day 1. You might luck out... but that's really only lucking out.

You may agree or disagree with the above as regards how accurate an assessment it is of the chances of finding a wolf on Day 1, but please do not do me the disservice of saying that it utter foolishness. It is, at the least, a cogent argument.

Furthermore, now that we are in Day 2, we have a different situation. Normally, on Day 2, there should be two kills to analyse: the village lynch from Day 1, and the wolvish killing of Night 2. Handicapping the village efforts today, however, we are only able to analyse the village lynch, since the wolves were effectively neutralised. Unfortunately, this leaves us in a very sticky situation, since not only do we have a single kill to work off, but we have a classic bandwaggon situation. It is not, I think, without hope: I, at least, am inclined to think that at least one, if not two, of the wolves hid in the votes against Sixth, and this does narrow the field considerably. It would certainly have been a safe way to vote, since there was plenty of cover in a well joined bandwaggon, and Sixth spoke so little that it cannot easily be construed as a malicious, wolf-started bandwaggon. In particular, I think votes 2 and 3 for Sixth bear further attention, namely Boromir88 and Elfwarrior. In particular, I think Elfwarrior's timing, as third voter (usually the crucial vote to make something into a bandwaggon), together with her very nonchalant lack of reason for posting, and practically village-defying way of doing it, make her a prime candidate for investigation.

More thought on that, when I return.