Kilga: That's not the point, though. The point is that your defense consists of "I Would Not Do This" and then cites what are technically out-of-game reasons as backup, along with the whole thing appearing to be from the viewpoint of someone who is scum.
Aditionally, I feel obliged to point out that there are different kinds of metagaming with various degrees of (dis?)merit, but the worst possible kind really is referencing *future* games over *past* games; at least if we look to prior games we can identify particular traits that people hold and that can be somewhat valid, but claiming that you wouldn't compromise your play in fear of future games really feels like a struggle for a coherent defence.
As far as my arguments with Alex being calmer than those with Meeple... sure, that's *kind* of true. But in general Meeple's posts have been pretty noisy, for lack of a better word, and I feel that my own posts were generally of a similar temper regardless of who I was speaking to.
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Kilga...
Well. His first post in day 2, it's not very long and consists of a vote for Alex (second of the day) with a brief, but applicable explanation. His followup posts seem quite solid; I remember nodding along with them at the time, although Meeple still seemed somewhat worse (it was hard to decide; is Meeple bad for making mistakes and playing badly in general, or is Alex bad for seeming to be willing to overlook that?)
He DID kind of miss that I was taking a somewhat similar stance for similar reasons against Alex and that reflected badly on him when he argued the point with Meeple. I'm not sure how much weight this deserves; rereading my own post, I can grant that it may not have been obvious. However, I think that if he'd checked out my posts after Meeple's claims, he would've been able to see what he was talking about.
Apart from that though, his rebuttals seem clear in general. Most of his posts are indeed quite short, but they're all relevant to the topic at hand and they get the point across.
I cannot really see any problems with him in day 1. Jokevote for me (who cares), actual vote for Alex for being a hypocrite and acting as if my vote for Soppy was bad, only thing that could even be a concern is that he doesn't mention Soppy... until Alex asks him about it, and that's pretty minor (the theory goes, of course, that if he thought my vote for Soppy was legit, why didn't he vote, except it was day 1 and responses to votes are generally more interesting than the initial reasons.)
Basically he still looks pretty good to me in days 1 and 2; pretty much fine in day 1, and a few issues in 2. His presence has not been that high but I think that's a function as much of the length of his posts as anything. It's his day 3 (and today, really) conduct that really sticks out for me and has me second-guessing him.
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Cid...
First thing first, Cid was barely there on day one. He did make one large post, and that was pretty much his whole content for the day.
The main argument that interested him was Corwin vs. Excal, over Excal's numbers; relatively minor really, but hey, day 1, right? Well... no. He didn't talk about Sopko, myself, or Alex at all, and this looks bad when both people involved there flipped town. It feels like he was distancing himself from the other main discussion. So, yeah. Cid doesn't look great in day 1 to me.
In day 2 it's different, he opens up with criticism of Alex's play in day 1. Yet why did he not comment on this earlier, when it was more topical? Most of the points he raised there, as has been said, began from the arguments of others. This is followed up with a vote for Meeple, for reasons that seemed solid enough to me, although I'll admit his prior post does seem to indicate he's more sold on Alex being scum than Meeple. I... can't judge this accurately.
The flip...in retrospect shouldn't surprise me. The day one lynch almost always winds up being one of two townies yelling at each other. I should've learned by now to focus on the idlers sniping from the sidelines, but at least that's what I feel my current target has been doing.
I dunno what to make of this quote- it comes after his two main posts by itself. It feels almost apologetic.
His next salvo came in three posts, one of which was a swing at Alex, two of which were about Meeple, and one of which was about Soppy. The one on Alex contains this-
There's less to take you to task for in the second half of the day because that was mostly Excal/Cor stuff and I generally agreed with that.
The thing is, Cid wasn't even around for the second half of that day, and he didn't comment on the first half *during* that day. I know I said this before, but he basically seems late to the party, and it wasn't as if he didn't have the opportunity.
His posts against Meeple, well. I'm now in agreement that Cid's arguments against Meeple were less forceful than those against Alex; I said before that it's a matter of presentation that sets the two apart more than anything. I do feel that Meeple looked worse than Alex at this point, but Cid's tone didn't seem to reflect his thoughts. I don't really think that alone makes him hypocritical.
This trend continues in his next post, where he has the ol' List of Dudes. Let's compare his ideas...
Alex: Fairly suspicious of him. I've gone on about this already and my feelings haven't changed. Will switch my vote from Meeple to him if it looks like we're nearing the deadline without a majority.
Meeple: I've voiced my misgivings about him. I'm not convinced he's scum, but I think he's a better lynch than most other people right now. Granted, QR's most recent post sums up his case pretty well and gives me pause somewhat. I'll reread his posts later tonight (oh, the agony--I'm sorry, but the Giant Meeple Rants give me migraines. I'm not holding this against you in terms of my vote, it's just something that needed to be said!) but for now my vote stays where it is.
It's again a tone thing, here. "I'm suspicious of Alex." vs. "I have misgivings about Meeple, but I'm not convinced he's scum." Yes, he said he'd change his vote if that was called for, but it seemed like he had no misgivings at all about that vote and yet still held some on Meeple.
His final post is really a footnote; "I'll vote if nobody else posts." This I don't actually make much out of, plugging for a bit more discussion near the endgame seems fair enough, although I felt that there was no real point to continuing, myself.
In summary, I'm forced to now agree with the point made earlier in day 3- that Cid seemed to have a stronger case against Alex to a degree, yet voted Meeple anyway and was generally reluctant. This is despite me thinking that Meeple did seem a stronger case at the time, I'm aware.
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At the moment, Cid seems more likely scum than Kilga. This is going to be a case of deciding which errors are less telling, and for what it's worth, Kilga HAS pointed out that he has some precedent for the kinda of meta rebuttal he's got, even if the argument itself is horrible (and the irony of that in and of itself being another meta argument is not lost on me.) More telling- he just seems to have handled himself better than Cid in the earlier days, whereas Cid, despite what appear to be strong arguments against Alex, was nonetheless tentative towards voting him.