Allow me to present an alternate theory: @Naoki_Saten or @Arete was the spy this round and the reason the first mission failed is either 1. because there were two+ spies on the team and neither of them wanted to risk two+ FAILURE cards being played as that would’ve been greatly incriminating or 2. because the spy on the team wanted to gain trust and figured a single success would be worth that (which it totally is). If anything I find it highly suspicious that that team was so widely accepted considering the previous one got heavily rejected!
I actually don’t think @cjlim2007 was the spy on this team because he was also on the last proposed team and yet it got rejected. The spies could’ve pushed it through, but they didn’t. I think the most likely reason is that there was no spy on that team; the only other reason I can imagine is that there were two or more spies on that team, but I find that less likely to be the reason.
I also feel the need to point out the difference to cj’s proposed team. The only difference is that instead of you, Glenn, the final member was @Necem. And compared to this one, that team got nuked to hell with REJECTs. Why? The simplest explanation is of course that you were the spy that was added, giving the spies a reason to APPROVE. However I actually do think you’re innocent, in fact I think on the contrary, Necem is a spy and there would have been two spies on the previous team, and the team was rejected because of the danger of having two spies on the team.
Now that I’ve said this much I guess there’s no point in being quiet about all of this anymore at this point. I believe the spies in this game are, in order from most to least certain in my head, @Natsume, @Necem, @EisenKoubu and @Naoki_Saten.
Natsume has been on my radar for a while, and one of the reasons I trust @Glenn_Irish is because the two of them got into an argument further up which was too convincing for me to consider staged by spies. Natsume has only voted APPROVE to the three missions that were ever approved and rejected all the others. I don’t know if anyone besides me decided to track voting patterns at some point, but @Necem’s voting pattern is almost identical to @Natsume’s, differing only in Necem’s approval of the very first suggestion, which was enough to make me consider they’re probably both on the same team, and in fact, probably both spies. With relatively devided Busters, the only missions that can actually go through are the ones that have approval of the spies, i.e. missions that will likely fail, and Natsume and Necem fit this pattern to a T.
@EisenKoubu I’d love to think of as innocent, but I really can’t. Nothing personal against you man, but I’ve seen you play Secret Oyashiro and you have a tendency to go quiet when you can’t argue back against allegations because they’re actually true. In the game you actually were innocent you were rather fervent in insisting on your innocence. So that’s why I think you’re one of the spies. Eisen’s voting pattern so far is 100% APPROVE with the exception of the one mission where he wasn’t around in time btw, in case anyone’s curious.
And finally @Naoki_Saten. Really, he’s been in my blind spot for a long time since his involvement in ‘figuring out’ the spies has been incredibly convincing and still makes me want to throw him out of this circle of for and put @Arete in it in his stead. Both of them are believable candidates for the final spy, and if/when I suggest a team I won’t put either of them in it, but if I had to pick between the two of them I’m more inclined to pick Nick. For one, his voting pattern is closer to that of my higher suspicions than Arete’s, secondly he didn’t pick himself for his team (which is like why would you do that, you can’t possibly be THAT confident that you have the right people, can you? And you KNOW that you yourself are a Buster…) and thirdly… I’ll get to that in a second.
With these four Busters, let’s re-examine all the votings up to this point, shall we? First up we had a team of Glenn, Eisen and Nick which was rejected, just barely. The spies must have been divided on this vote for it to have been so close, and why would spies be divided? My best guess is that there were already two spies on the team, which some people thought was fine, others thought it wasn’t and they’d rather wait and see. The only problem and one major weak point in my interpretation as far as I can tell is the second voting which was approved by everyone but Nick and cj. Why would the spies - Natsume to be precise - suddenly decide a team with two spies in it was okay? Can’t say I know the reason, but perhaps they thought it was a good opportunity for the spies to get some trust put in them.
After that we had two teams that had both Necem and EisenKoubu in them. Eisen was already being targeted by Nick at that point (which is quite a daring move, to have a spy-vs-spy conflict, but also one that ‘implies’ that the two of them are on different teams, more or less ensuring that one of them will eventually be trusted) and Necem had already obtained some trust, so there is no benefit in having these missions go through. A lack of communication probably hurt the spies here. Either way, Necem, Natsume and Nick all rejected these two teams.
Then there was the first failure. Of my spy candidates, only Natsume was on this team so it makes sense for all spies to vote APPROVE. By the way, Nick was the one who proposed the team. Let’s not forget that. He would have easily been in a position to ensure exactly one spy was on the team. I considered it bad luck on his part at the time, and it still might have been, but I’m not convinced anymore.
The following team was cj’s which was rejected. cj was in a good position to put only one spy on the team, and yet they rejected their own team and Natsume and Necem did as well. Because there were both Nick and Necem on the team, which could’ve made things troublesome again. Perhaps Nick thought it’d be okay to have two spies on the team and they’d manage regardless… it’s very hard to tell since the spies cannot covertly communicate so there may have been conflicting interests.
Then there was @Mogaoscar’s team which was rejected by Natsume, Necem and Nick (and also Arete and me). I considered the possibility of two spies being on the team, but that would mean major conflicting interests since everyone besides me on the team voted APPROVE and yet my primary spy candidates (Natsume and Necem at that point) voted REJECT. So I thought it more likely for there to be no spy on this team and that’s why the spies rejected it, which was a major reason as to why I ended up with this particular combination of spies, since it clears Mogaoscar, cj AND RyuuTamotsu in one fell swoop. And especially the latter was still quite a big question mark for me.
Finally, that brings us to the team that just failed. Arete, Nick, cj and Glenn. One of the spy candidates on the team, check and mate, a surefire failure. The fact that Arete suggested the team made me suspicious of him, but if he is the last spy I have more trouble justifying the rejecting of the very first team. It’s not the best argument I know, but, well, who do you trust more, Arete or Nick?
So that’s my theory. As a result I can already guarantee that I will reject Natsume’s team and pick myself, @Glenn_Irish, @RyuuTamotsu, @cjlim2007 and @Mogaoscar on my turn.
To fellow Busters I’d like to just mention one thing; before you point out what you think are holes in my argument, how about letting the people I’m accusing let in a word? It would be a good bit of extra information, especially if you think I might be on to something (even if you think I’m partially incorrect).
