[JANUARY CHALLENGE]

[Jingle]

Not an official submission:

3 Recruiting traitors

8 VT

Recruiting traitors target a player each night. If two cross target they become goons with a shared nk. ‘Nightless’ until then.

[BBmolla]

Docblock the Clock

11 players:

3 Mafia Compulsive Docblocker Doctors

1 Town Compulsive Macho Vigilante

7 Town Compulsive Docblocker Doctors

• Docblocker is a roleblocking ability that only blocks a Doctor's protection. If a Docblocker Doctor is Docblocked, their Doctor protection fails but their Docblock block succeeds.
  
• A mafia member can kill and Docblock Doc in the same night.

okay fixed vigilante claiming d1 and having all docs protec him

[Not Known 15]

Swift Decisions

1

Town Patrol(Watcher+Bodyguard)

1

Town Disloyal Ninja Roleblocker

1

Town Night 1-4 Commuter

5

Vanilla Townies

1

Mafia (Day 3 Suicidal) Traitor

Dies at the start of Day 3.
1

Mafia Strongman

1

Mafia Ninja Psychologist(Removes Suicidal)

Compulsive Mafia Nightkill.

[BBmolla]

The Suicidal/Psychologist interaction is genius

[Jingle]

Does the vig claim outcome need to be fixed?

Assuming vig claim D1, Vig is BP IC but the maf kill can be assumed to always work, and 2/3 of the scumteam is protected from kills every night. I could work out the math, but that doesn't seem overly townsided to me.

[Not Known 15]

Key to the Bunker

• 7 Town Bunker Guards
  
• 1 Town Conspirator
  
• 3 Mafia Goons
  
• Day Start; daytalk is not available for either faction
  
• Modified victory condition: town win by eliminating 2 of the 3 Mafia and then going through a Night phase with no town deaths (either by killing the third scum, so that there can be no kill, or by blocking the nightkill)
  
• Each night, a town Bunker Guard may (it isn't compulsive) let a player of their choice into the bunker for that night. (They cannot self-target due to bunker security measures.) If a player outside the bunker submits a nightkill on a player inside the bunker, it will fail. (Membership of the bunker never becomes public until postgame, i.e. scum just have to submit a kill and it will work if no townie targeted the victim or some townie targeted the killer.)
  
• The Conspirator is a modified Neighbouriser; they choose a target during the day phase, and their target is permanently added to their neighbourhood at the start of that Night (thus, it's useful faster than a Neighbouriser normally would be in a non-daytalk setup). Additionally, once during the game, they can attempt to kill someone at night, but it must be a member of their neighbourhood (and if someone lets their target into the bunker, the kill will fail unless someone lets them into the bunker too). Flavour is of someone constructing a team of townies (a conspiracy) to take on the Mafia, but who isn't entirely trustful of all of them.

Bunker Guard is a combination of Doctor and Strengthener. (It started out as just the combination, then I added the flavour, to make it more intuitive how the setup works.) Conspirator is sort-of a combination of Neighbouriser and Vigilante, although it's not a pure combination. So the setup clearly obeys both requirements (a clear combination role and 0 VTs), and also obeys both requirements a second/alternative time in a more twisted way (a modified combination role and a modified Neighbouriser).

The basic idea here is that townies can control the game by only targeting other townies (and lots of them). I suspect there are no breaking strategies simply because scum who know that they've been strengthened can kill anyone they like without giving away information, so town can't coordinate them except via the neighbourhood (and thus probably want to keep scum outside the neighbourhood, especially because it would let scum know who the confirmable townie is). The Conspirator was originally just added in an attempt to shift the balance, but I really like where the role ended up (e.g. they can recruit someone, and kill them the same night if they decide after overNight questioning that their target was scum). The modified win condition helps prevent the game dragging out if a townbloc is correctly identified, and also adds a "semi-White-Flag" effect that helps to balance the setup.

There is a clear strategy... the Conspirator claims Day 1.
Either:
the Mafia do not counter-claim. Town then proceeds to let the Conspirator and only the Conspirator into the Bunker. The Conspirator neighborizes someone with high mafia chance. And kills them(if the lynch was mislynch). Game is then 5:3(MYLO). The Conspirator now selects a team of 3 who should be led into the bunker in emergency and assigns a circle, then forces another lynch. At that point the game is set. No kill at night means that Mafia is dead at 4:3. Kill is Mafia win. A mafia lynch delays all plans by one cycle.
Or:The Mafia counter-claim. This is idiotic. The real Conspirator names a townie and that one gets neighbourized, and bunkers the Conspirator(if the conspirator dies then TWO Mafia are outed). The counter-claim is then speedlynched Day 2 and everything goes forth like above.
This strategy makes that game unfun; because the Bunker Guards are forced to not protect anyone unless commanded by the IC...

[Bicephalous Bob]

Treacherous Jester

1 Mafia Treacherous Jester
2 Mafia Goons
10 VTs

- The game continues if the treacherous jester is lynched
- The goons know the identity of the jester, but not the other way around
- The goons win if half of the living players are Mafia
- The treacherous jester wins if they are lynched and the Mafia goons win after that
- The town wins when the goons are dead
- The treacherous jester counts towards the Mafia majority, so when 3 VTs, 2 goons and the jester are alive, the goons win, but the jester does not

The goons want to keep the jester alive, the jester wants to die without screwing over the goons, and the VTs want to kill the goons.

[BBmolla]

Does the vig claim outcome need to be fixed?

Assuming vig claim D1, Vig is BP IC but the maf kill can be assumed to always work, and 2/3 of the scumteam is protected from kills every night. I could work out the math, but that doesn't seem overly townsided to me.

Hmm

yeah that's fair, I'll resubmit it as it was

Docblock the Clock

11 players:

3 Mafia Compulsive Docblocker Doctors

1 Town Compulsive Vigilante

7 Town Compulsive Docblocker Doctors

• Docblocker is a roleblocking ability that only blocks a Doctor's protection. If a Docblocker Doctor is Docblocked, their Doctor protection fails but their Docblock block succeeds.
  
• A mafia member can kill and Docblock Doc in the same night.

[callforjudgement]

There is a clear strategy... the Conspirator claims Day 1.

A missed kill is only an auto-loss for scum when there's only one scum left (scum can miss a kill at 4:3 without anything happening). As such, I don't see how this plan has a high enough town win chance to be worth trying.

You end up with a random townie dying N1, and a player of town's choice also dying N1; if town miss with both their D1 lynch and N1 vig, which is entirely possible, that takes the game down to 5:3 with one townie confirmed. If they hit with one, the game is 6:2 with one townie confirmed. Town's odds of winning from the first setup are near zero; from the second the best strategy is to forming a three-player townbloc, as you suggest (which is hard in a 6:2, there are 56 possible 3-player blocs and only 20 of them consist of three townies).

In order to win this, town pretty much have to try to block the scum kill early. Claiming would defeat the purpose of that.

[Jingle]

Fair warning, I've submitted a bunch of your setups to the marathon open group (https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.p ... #p10681845). If any of you are offended by this, I think that's really weird that you wouldn't want people playing your game, but I'm sure we'll respect your wishes. Also, feel free to go over there and suggest more setups/get in on some marathon open mafia action.

/shameless promotion based on the idea that the two groups will have a lot of cross interest.

[Jingle]

There is a clear strategy... the Conspirator claims Day 1.

A missed kill is only an auto-loss for scum when there's only one scum left (scum can miss a kill at 4:3 without anything happening). As such, I don't see how this plan has a high enough town win chance to be worth trying.

You end up with a random townie dying N1, and a player of town's choice also dying N1; if town miss with both their D1 lynch and N1 vig, which is entirely possible, that takes the game down to 5:3 with one townie confirmed. If they hit with one, the game is 6:2 with one townie confirmed. Town's odds of winning from the first setup are near zero; from the second the best strategy is to forming a three-player townbloc, as you suggest (which is hard in a 6:2, there are 56 possible 3-player blocs and only 20 of them consist of three townies).

In order to win this, town pretty much have to try to block the scum kill early. Claiming would defeat the purpose of that.

Agreed. I think you'll get better results choosing a pool of ~4 probtown players that are valid bunker targets on D1 and then having the town players choose from that pool. That way there's no guarantee that any individual player is or isn't in the bunker, but the players who are most likely to be town are also the players who are least likely to get shot. Then when the Conspirator targets a player they bunker them the next night and get vig killed at the same time. That way, if the conspirator flips you know there's scum in the probtown pool and the PoE is relatively small.

[Not Known 15]

There is a clear strategy... the Conspirator claims Day 1.

A missed kill is only an auto-loss for scum when there's only one scum left (scum can miss a kill at 4:3 without anything happening). As such, I don't see how this plan has a high enough town win chance to be worth trying.

You end up with a random townie dying N1, and a player of town's choice also dying N1; if town miss with both their D1 lynch and N1 vig, which is entirely possible, that takes the game down to 5:3 with one townie confirmed. If they hit with one, the game is 6:2 with one townie confirmed. Town's odds of winning from the first setup are near zero; from the second the best strategy is to forming a three-player townbloc, as you suggest (which is hard in a 6:2, there are 56 possible 3-player blocs and only 20 of them consist of three townies).

In order to win this, town pretty much have to try to block the scum kill early. Claiming would defeat the purpose of that.

No, you are missing something. Two things: 1. Let's assume mislynch and miskill - you are at 5:3 correct... then mislynch would send the game to night 4:3. If the three selected people are townies(who circle-invite themselves to the bunker ONLY if it is a mislynch) then town will survive the night and the three Mafia get voted out(and they have to be Mafia because Mafia would have otherwise killed someone, and won)
If it is a Mafia lynch Day 2 after mislynch and miskill then the bloc does not activate. You form a bloc of 2. Then you lynch. A Town lynch activates the bloc of 2 who protect each other, if they aren't both townies Mafia wins, otherwise mafia is outed.
A Mafia lynch sends the game to 4:1. A death sends the game to 3:1. Now the Town wins when there is no kill, so the Conspirator now forms a bloc of 2 cross-protecting each other and then No Lynch happens.
If the bloc contains mafia, it's 1v1 at LYLO next day. If not, town wins.
Note-this is the optimal strategy, but that doesn't mean that it has a very good win rate. It's just not very interesting to play that way.

Agreed. I think you'll get better results choosing a pool of ~4 probtown players that are valid bunker targets on D1 and then having the town players choose from that pool. That way there's no guarantee that any individual player is or isn't in the bunker, but the players who are most likely to be town are also the players who are least likely to get shot. Then when the Conspirator targets a player they bunker them the next night and get vig killed at the same time

or they get killed by the mafia they chose

. That way, if the conspirator flips you know there's scum in the probtown pool and the PoE is relatively small.

I added that red thing - the mafia player won't bunker, obviously.
No, not at all. The POE is very BIG for two scum positions. You only know the position of one scum - you don't know if there are one, two or three scum in that POE. Sorry.
And at that point

when you mislynch and miskill, you are already at MYLO.

Assume:
Initially: 8v3 - 4 townbloc - 4v4v3
mislynch miskill mafia kill from townbloc, 5v3 - MYLO. With mafia in bunker it's game over on mislynch.
Now... Mislynch Mafia Kill Neighbourizer Kill - 6v2.... but no info whatsoever mechanically - mislynch sends to 4v2... same problem as before.

Initially:8v3 - 4 real townbloc plus Neighbourizer - mislynch miskill Nightkill.....
5v3 MYLO... if those 5 are town then town wins, yes...
Problem?
You can have that easier with my strategy.
Finding 3 on Day 2 after one nightkill is picking 4 on Day 1 only with less info...

[Jingle]

I added that red thing - the mafia player won't bunker, obviously.

But, if mafia is neighborized they're going to shoot the Conspirator anyway, and this way the Conspirator is guaranteed to take a mafia with them if they target one. This gives town a chance to have the conspirator in the bunker without outing AND without the mafia knowing whether their target is potentially in the neighborhood. The other bit was all about limiting access to the Bunker so that you don't end up with a D3 or so with everyone alive in the bunker, and it's also worth noting that none of the potential bunker targets are guaranteed to be in the bunker N1 given a presumable 6 bunker targets and each of those being chosen randomly out of ~4 people.

I don't think it's a breaking strategy, just potentially the best use of resources. And the 4 might be better served being a smaller number, that was just my initial guess.



If we're going to discuss the setup's balance more, though, you should probably make a separate setup thread. Either way, I'd definitely play in your proposed game.

[Irrelephant11]

You can discuss balance and things in this thread! It is welcome, and even encouraged, as you each interpret the guidelines differently

[Jingle]

In that case...

Hi guys! the worst kinda suggested that I do this.

Here you go...

Balance is... Lol.

%%%

Spoiler: Setup

1x Town Weak Friend-Seeker (Alternating Neighbouriser/Masonizer) - When Masonizes, if hits Scum Traitor, converts to town and masonizes instead of dying. When Neighbourising, dies either way if targets Scum. Same chat either way.
1x Town Escort (Bodyguard + Hooker)
1x Town Empath (Follower + Voyeur)
1x Town Obvious Victim (Lightning Rod + Virgin)
1x Town Prejudiced Color Sheriff - Gets Red, Yellow, or Green for alignment, but doesn't know what each one means. Meaning randomizes at the beginning of each Day, then the Sheriff chooses a color. They must kill the player if the player is of that color.
1x Town Angel of Death (Non-Consecutive Night Doctor + Delayed Rodder) - Docs, then the following night that player becomes a lightning rod.
1x Town Obsessive-Compulsifier - Makes a player so they must take an action each night for the rest of the game, and must target the same target until that target is dead.
1x Town Idolator - Removes a player from any chats they are in until the end of the next day phase. That player cannot be protected or roleblocked.

1x Scum Traitor Escort (Bodyguard + Hooker)

1x Scum Moriarty - Godfather + Framer
1x Scum Love-Seeker (Alternating Neighbouriser/Nymphomaniac)

While this is super interesting as a closed, it's unfortunately broken by massclaim as an open. Too many named roles.

[callforjudgement]

No, you are missing something. Two things: 1. Let's assume mislynch and miskill - you are at 5:3 correct... then mislynch would send the game to night 4:3. If the three selected people are townies(who circle-invite themselves to the bunker ONLY if it is a mislynch) then town will survive the night and the three Mafia get voted out(and they have to be Mafia because Mafia would have otherwise killed someone, and won)

a) Finding a three-player townbloc in a 4:3 setup is very hard.
b) It doesn't even help. Scum will just kill the uninvited townie, leading to a 3:3 setup which is a ascum win.

If it is a Mafia lynch Day 2 after mislynch and miskill then the bloc does not activate. You form a bloc of 2. Then you lynch. A Town lynch activates the bloc of 2 who protect each other, if they aren't both townies Mafia wins, otherwise mafia is outed.

So at this point, we have three dead townies and one dead scum going into Night 2: that's 5:2. If scum kills someone (which they will do if you persist with your strategy of "everyone protect the Conspirator"), we're at 4:2 going into Day 3. Assuming a town lynch (as you are above), we'll be at 4:2 or 3:2 going into Night 3. In either of these setups, forming a bloc of 2 (which presumably cross-protect, with nobody else protecting for fear of strengthening scum) is not enough to out scum, they'll just kill outside the bloc (reaching a lylo 3:2 or a winning 2:2 as appropriate).

Actually, I think I see the flaw in your reasoning: in the 3:2 ending, you seem to be assuming that the Conspirator nominates two townies to cross-protect, and

also

that the Conspirator themself is protected. But town only have two protections, and three players to use them on (the Conspirator isn't a Bunker Guard).

A Mafia lynch sends the game to 4:1. A death sends the game to 3:1. Now the Town wins when there is no kill, so the Conspirator now forms a bloc of 2 cross-protecting each other and then No Lynch happens.
If the bloc contains mafia, it's 1v1 at LYLO next day. If not, town wins.

This is an example of the flaw in your reasoning. At 3:1, you have Conspirator, 2 Bunker Guards, 1 Goon. If the plan is for two players to cross-protect, scum will simply kill the Conspirator (who can't cross-protect due to not being able to protect). That takes the setup to a 2:1 where you've gained no information about whether or not scum was in the townbloc.

Note-this is the optimal strategy, but that doesn't mean that it has a very good win rate. It's just not very interesting to play that way.

I'm pretty sure that the optimal strategy is to try to block the scum from killing, thus giving you more time to lynch them (as opposed to your strategy, which gives the scum a kill basically every night). Even if you don't stop the kill, you can probably at least guide it away from the best scumhunters and most townish-looking players, forcing scum to make a suboptimal kill.

[RadiantCowbells]

Friends Forever

Each player that signs up for the game signs up with a partner.

6* Town Mason Lovers (paired with their partner)
2* Mafia Lovers (paired with their partner)

So essentially 8p lovers but you can choose someone to be on your team no matter what!

[Jingle]

Treacherous Jester

1 Mafia Treacherous Jester
2 Mafia Goons
10 VTs

- The game continues if the treacherous jester is lynched
- The goons know the identity of the jester, but not the other way around
- The goons win if half of the living players are Mafia
- The treacherous jester wins if they are lynched and the Mafia goons win after that
- The town wins when the goons are dead
- The treacherous jester counts towards the Mafia majority, so when 3 VTs, 2 goons and the jester are alive, the goons win, but the jester does not

The goons want to keep the jester alive, the jester wants to die without screwing over the goons, and the VTs want to kill the goons.

Is there any reason the jester doesn't claim in XLO? Like, there's no reason not to lynch them if they claim, right?

[callforjudgement]

Speaking of setups, raw as hell but:

2 Mafia Goon
1 Mafia Neighborizer/Poisoner

1 Weak Neighborizer
7 VT

Poisoner poisons everyone he neighborizes, they die at the beginning of the next night.

Probably needs EV tweaks, but I like the complexity strategy wise.

Isn't it better for the Poisoner simply not to act (except in an emergency)? Doing so would pretty much out them as scum, as it can't be hard to tell which Neighbourizer is which. (Strange though it looks for scum to have an extra kill and not use it.)

I don't think a Weak Neighbourizer is enough by itself to balance an 8:3 (although in an Open, there's always the risk of some sort of absurd claiming strategy). Note that scum will, if run up, claim to have been Neighbourized; any attempt by town to counterclaim this will lead to scum learning the identity of one of the confirmed townies (and if it happens D2, town

can't

counterclaim because they don't know whether the scum Neighbourizer acted, and thus no townie has enough information to know that the claim is false). If the scum Neighbourizer is forced to claim and survives the lynch for that night, they can poison someone overnight in the knowledge that they're doomed the next day anyway, so they may as well take someone with them.

[callforjudgement]

Panic Room

11 players:

1 Mafia "Bomb" (Compulsive Multi-Vengeful)

2 Mafia Goons

1 Town "Recruiter" (Compulsive Day Neighborizer)

7 Vanilla Townies

• Upon the death of the Mafia Bomb, everyone not in the Neighborhood is killed. After this point, the game becomes nightless.
  
• The ability to recruit to the neighborhood is always passed on to the most recent recruit.
  
• If everyone in the neighborhood has died, the game continues on as Vanilla.

I feel like there's the start of a good idea in here, but it might need some tweaking on the exact numbers. I also feel like the EV could probably actually be calculated for this? No clue how to do it, though.

Unfortunately for EV calculations, the setup contains WIFOM (specifically, if scum are recruited to the neighbourhood while the original recruiter is still alve, do they kill the original recruiter (who's confirmable as town) or not?). The existence of WIFOM in a setup makes EV calculations incredibly difficult because they require knowing the optimal breaking strategy, which requires knowing the optimal way to handle the WIFOM (which nearly always involves randomizing your action, but calculating the probabilities can be hard).

[callforjudgement]

Friends Forever

Each player that signs up for the game signs up with a partner.

6* Town Mason Lovers (paired with their partner)
2* Mafia Lovers (paired with their partner)

So essentially 8p lovers but you can choose someone to be on your team no matter what!

That's not an 11p.

Additionally, I think it's equivalent to a 3:1 lylo setup using four hydras, which would be "not mafia" as you don't have any associative tells (everyone knows that players in a pair will be defending each other, and no player has any incentive to defend anyone from a different pair other than reads).

[RadiantCowbells]

I didn't read the OP I'll just delete it and try again I guess

[RadiantCowbells]

(also it's not lylo, the lovers were meant to be separate)

[Bicephalous Bob]

Is there any reason the jester doesn't claim in XLO? Like, there's no reason not to lynch them if they claim, right?

oh man, you're right. They can even claim day 1. Anyway, I too missed the fact that the setup has to have 11 players.

[callforjudgement]

(also it's not lylo, the lovers were meant to be separate)

If town mislynch D1, that's two dead townies. Scum shoot N1 and that's another two dead townies, so it's 2:2 going into D2 = scum win. Thus town have no mislynches, making it a lylo setup by definition.