Mafia was great last game. Not sure if you read through the chat, but I went 2 for 2 with PRs. bb and krellin basically ran the show when I died and sucessfully got the other big talkers lynched.

If everyone voted their top read without anyone else knowing, the mafia would have to pile all their votes together and then it would be easier to find the mafia by looking at who is on the largest lynch. This requires everyone to be on at EOD though, and complete cooperation of town.

My #1 tip is to come up with stategies that separate scum from town. everyone has this thing where they're like "X is acting scummy because Y" when Y could very well be done by a town person so it's a really shitty reason and they get lynched. I suggest carefully looking at each game and figuring out behaviors that only scum exhibit (that's how I pegged so many scum in my priory 2 games as town) but if you can't figure that out, figure out a behavior where 60% or more of the people who exhibit the behavior are scum. ND in previous games used statistics to find scum and it was absolutely brilliant. Meta is your friend.

Also use occums razor. There's no need to go into WIFOM 8 levels deep in order to find scum.

Never let anyone be friendly to you. Nobody should townread anyone at all. Vote for every single player at some point in the game. Talk relentlessly. Bury the bread, and burn the crumbs. Suggest absurd paranoid theories that the mafia know all the PR's and then proceed to mislead the mafia right and left. Bite at every conversation. Get involved in conversations that dont concern you at all and break them up in case its just bussing or wifom.
Ask everyone for reads, question peoples reads, especially their null reads and slight scum reads.

Try to get lynched and claim scum roles for reactions. pretend you were roleblocked or jailed. Pretend to be the cop on day 1 and just act like you are stupid and townslip

If you have a brilliant scheme never tried before but one that you are 100.1% sure will find scum, don't do it.

Just don't.

I like the "challenge" authority one. Remembering M15 where I was the only one questioning the legitimacy of HR being cop lol

Logic, gut, meta, vca, nka, motive, interactions, roles, gambits.
Don't lurk.
If you're VT, be useful and active.
Be convincing in your arguments since personally catching scum is only half of it.

Build up town motivation. Make the game fun so other players get more involved.


Or if you don't have time just pick a random guy and tunnel until something happens.

#fuckthepolice

#FearOfABlackLivesMatterPlanet

I'm not sure I should really be talking after that disaster of a game, but I think being very straightforward is a big deal. People try to send weird signals to each other and do all all sorts of crap with PRs and I get why you think it's useful, and sometimes tricking the scum into thinking you're a PR is nice, and the occasional reaction test is OK, but in the end the useless obfuscation is going to benefit the people trying to limit information more than the people trying to figure shit out. That brainbomb just turned in a brilliant scum performance exemplifies this.

Also, if you offer to claim PR at night, I will do whatever is in my power to get you lynched.

@ghug, but what if your trying to draw a night kill?

Well we had an informant (meme)
So N1 we checked ND he wasnt a PR that gets messages hence no need to waste a kill.
N2 we checked you reedeer1 you made me nervous that you maybe were a PR.
N3 we checked ghug
N4 we checked Goldfinger

We technically never scanned any PR but that also gave us a better range of targets to Kill instead.
Informant is great at plucking out fake breadcrumbs

Vecna and Chaqa made me think they were PR. Keep in mind if it had been me making all our Night Kills town would have won. Meme, and yoyo were amazing at reading the real PR from the fake stuff.

my job was just to fill space and confuse town and talk the most. Thank you for the compliment but some of the fake claims actually confused me alot. The only nightkill I ever took charge on was goldy.

@flum - some good advice there. How useful do you think meta actually is and whilst I agree 'gut' can be useful, I hate seeing a list of reads with 'gut feeling'. Your gut is useful to you, but won't convince anybody else and makes you look lazy/scummy.

@BB - it might be good idea to open a Mafia strategy thread, let's keep this town

PRs should have no trouble hiding, reedeer. The mafia's guess should be as good as anyone else's. Tricking the mafia also tricks the town, and making yourself outwardly appear to be a PR should be seen as scummy, as acceptance of the tactic allows the mafia a powerful tool.

Maniac, please don't open a second strategy thread. There are already two mafia threads on the front page.

I was just saying that if your going to crumb something; like goldfinger for example. He said he was clock, or kept mentioning time. Its Oracle.
Okay strategically why is that good? Well A. it tells PRs to scan him and tells maf to avoid him.
conclusion: Since it tries to scare off a mafia kill but its done as a breadcrumb all mafia would need to do to confirm it is to use stalker or informant or worse use a framer on him and get him mislynched.
We didnt really think he was cop. I thought he "maybe" was doc. But when Maniac died I was pretty sure all of goldfingers breadcrumbs were just a pointless hoax.
Same with reedeer1, ND and Chaqa. Sure I believed them for a while... but they never seemed very comitted to their own fake crumbs.
Maniac was an obvious PR and I thought he was Oracle. I actually begged meme not to kill him and meme overuled me. I was prepared to resign.

I wanted to kill Vecna instead thinking he was cop. So for people like brainbomb sure codes and crumbs pique my interest. but thats the beauty of it being a team game. brainbomb doesnt call all the shots. Which is why krellin is our MVP. towns codes absolutely kept me guessing. you just didnt outsmart meme and yoyo. :)

Always listen to your dead PRs final words.

Vash, OB both told you lynch krellin or bb

It's only worthwhile to listen to a dead PR's final words if they had some additional information. A dead Vig is as useless as a dead VT.

Brain if you want to tell us again how great you all were as Mafia do it in the game thread please. I'd prefer this to be generic thread about town play.

Good point about listening to dead town, they might not have useful insights but giving them a re-read when alignment is know is useful.

I think it's not so much 'listen to your dead PRs final words.' as it is always try to figure out why someone was killed. So many times people go down and nobody gives a second thought as to why specifically that person went down.

I've brought this up quite a few times before and every time the response has been 'it's all WIFOM, they might've killed him so you thought he was on the right track.' No, it's not, because nobody ever bothers to analyse deaths so taking out someone for this purpose wastes a mafia nightkill for no reason whatsoever, and likely harms them because they've taken out someone who was on the wrong track.

Mafia almost always kill people for one of three reasons:

1) They thought they were a PR.
2) They're a strong player and can rally votes, generally someone you don't want around in the endgame.
3) They were on the right track with their reads.

When someone dies, look back and try to figure out which of these is most likely.

I am going to say: keep it simple. The more townies complicate things, the better for mafia. Players like brainbomb and krellin are awful as town but great as mafia for this reason. They are natural obfuscators and that always helps mafia.

Optimal VT play means we have to keep it simple. Whoever does something blatantly scummy needs to die early on as that flip will yield a lot of information. Obviously, townies also need to try to avoid doing blatantly scummy things like forcing a tie or lynching a claimed PR. I think that when you are forcing mafia to get creative they may slip more often. If you make things really easy on them they can just cruise until the end,

@Maniac
Meta is incredibly useful. It is also the most misused one there is probably. I'm guilty of being terribly wrong with it when I rely on it too much too.

In my experience, it's very bad at mixing up scum with power roles as well, since a townie with a power role usually plays somewhat similarly as if he was mafia. Second hand meta is especially useless, and some players are good enough that meta is basically useless on them. (I'd consider meta useless on you Maniac. FYI, motive is generally how I try to read you.)
But meta still has its place. It's purest form is basically understanding how the other player works and having experience playing with them. The more you know them, the easier it becomes to figure them out.

Gut is pretty useless when making a case. Generally you keep a gut read to yourself until you get some actual evidence. But honestly, it's probably the most accurate one.

IE Flum has never been scum; he will be in M 18

I've been scum. Just not here.

@flum - I take your point about meta and agree with you on gut. I just think that players need to factor in that players do develop as the games go by (I'm certainly not same player as I was early days). Also real life does affect playstyle on game by game basis and that looks like a meta change but isn't.

The most important thing is defend the shit out of yourself when youre on the chopping block and are a potential lynch as a townie. Ive been scumread heavily every game (mostly by ghug) and I usually get attacked left and right on day 1. Never been lynched though.

Run with it and defend yourself. If townies at least put up a proper defence such that the lynch goes to the next person, chances of lynching scum go up considerably. I see it way too often that people are just apathetically taking it in the ass so to speak.

Now if only I would have a way to get proper scumreads earlier in the game, since im pretty much allways wrong around midgame.