How to Vig 101
Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 12:04 pmHow to Vig 101, aka how not to consecutively shoot villas
I would like to go over the mechanical aspects of playing vigilante. Specifically in the context of a vanilla setup.
Who not to shoot.
I get it, you want to be a hero and vig that widely townread player. But seriously, could you not? If you shoot any random person, and they end up flipping town, you are helping the wolves. So the first priority of vig play needs to be avoiding being harmful. Playing vigilante poorly is sort of like random lynching, except you don't get the benefit of doing VCA afterwards, and sometimes you can make it harder to do NKA, if it becomes obscured who the maf kill was. Additionally, if all you do is vig your top scumread, you are claiming vig. Expect to be nightkilled.
What is the role of the vigilante?
Ideally, the vigilante acts as an extra lynch for town. This means that you need to take a more utilitarian approach to vig shots. Instead of thinking "Who am I scumreading?", you should be thinking "Who does town benefit from being killed?" Since vig shots don't show wagons, you are essentially a worse lynch. The plus side of this is that it means town doesn't need to waste a lynch on an outed wolf, as it is your job to take care of them, and there can still be a lynch, which leads to more discussion and the game progressing. But obviously not every night will there be an outed wolf.
Consider a typical day phase. There should be two main wagons at end of day. If there aren't, you need to interpret well beforehand whether it's due to maf bussing (usually implies a self-hammer), or Dead Air, Dead Villager. So I'm going to give village the benefit of the doubt and say they are forming actual wagons at end of day and not just afking. That being said, there were two wagons, right? If it's a maf flip, then yeah, you're just hunting for who has associations with the wolf. But if there's a village flip, then there's a distinctive lack of information. It's hard to do VCA without knowing whether the wagons were v/w or v/v. So that makes it simple, shoot the counterwagon!
Choosing Your Shot
The idea of resolving players is important here resolving players gives town information on lynch, specifically whether it's a mislynch or not. When you shoot the counterwagon, what you're doing is making up for the inherent information deficiency of vigilante by using it in a way that gives information. I would argue this is the go-to, or fundamental way to play vigilante. This also reduces the risk of outing yourself by shooting your tinfoil. ;)
Just to drive the point home, if there's a widely scumread villager, it is to town's detriment to not kill them right away. This is because if they get lynched eventually, it is to town's benefit to kill them earlier. Putting off a mislynch is about the worst thing you can do, since you're both allowing the mislynch to happen eventually, as well as denying town valuable information.
But what if you're really town reading the counterwagon? Well, you can make an argument to not vig them. What this means is that you don't intend to have them lynched/vig. As in ever. If you read my last topic in FM discussion, there are two ways to resolve a player: lynch them, or lock them as town. Well, this would be the second. This means that you're prepared to push the worldview that the player is town, and that they should be accepted as such. (Remember that if they get lynched anyways, there was no point in not vigging them.) So instead of vigging them, you get a little bit more freedom on who to vig. By a little bit, I do not mean take a hero shot. Shoot a hot-topic scumread.
TL;DR so far
Don't shoot your tinfoil. Shoot the person town has accepted as a wolf (Generally the counterwagon).
Town agenda is more important than your individual reads.
You're shooting every night that you have a shot.
Part the Second: Vig Cover
I don't intend to go to far in depth but I'll go over a couple of basic points:
I would like to go over the mechanical aspects of playing vigilante. Specifically in the context of a vanilla setup.
Who not to shoot.
I get it, you want to be a hero and vig that widely townread player. But seriously, could you not? If you shoot any random person, and they end up flipping town, you are helping the wolves. So the first priority of vig play needs to be avoiding being harmful. Playing vigilante poorly is sort of like random lynching, except you don't get the benefit of doing VCA afterwards, and sometimes you can make it harder to do NKA, if it becomes obscured who the maf kill was. Additionally, if all you do is vig your top scumread, you are claiming vig. Expect to be nightkilled.
What is the role of the vigilante?
Ideally, the vigilante acts as an extra lynch for town. This means that you need to take a more utilitarian approach to vig shots. Instead of thinking "Who am I scumreading?", you should be thinking "Who does town benefit from being killed?" Since vig shots don't show wagons, you are essentially a worse lynch. The plus side of this is that it means town doesn't need to waste a lynch on an outed wolf, as it is your job to take care of them, and there can still be a lynch, which leads to more discussion and the game progressing. But obviously not every night will there be an outed wolf.
Consider a typical day phase. There should be two main wagons at end of day. If there aren't, you need to interpret well beforehand whether it's due to maf bussing (usually implies a self-hammer), or Dead Air, Dead Villager. So I'm going to give village the benefit of the doubt and say they are forming actual wagons at end of day and not just afking. That being said, there were two wagons, right? If it's a maf flip, then yeah, you're just hunting for who has associations with the wolf. But if there's a village flip, then there's a distinctive lack of information. It's hard to do VCA without knowing whether the wagons were v/w or v/v. So that makes it simple, shoot the counterwagon!
Choosing Your Shot
The idea of resolving players is important here resolving players gives town information on lynch, specifically whether it's a mislynch or not. When you shoot the counterwagon, what you're doing is making up for the inherent information deficiency of vigilante by using it in a way that gives information. I would argue this is the go-to, or fundamental way to play vigilante. This also reduces the risk of outing yourself by shooting your tinfoil. ;)
Just to drive the point home, if there's a widely scumread villager, it is to town's detriment to not kill them right away. This is because if they get lynched eventually, it is to town's benefit to kill them earlier. Putting off a mislynch is about the worst thing you can do, since you're both allowing the mislynch to happen eventually, as well as denying town valuable information.
But what if you're really town reading the counterwagon? Well, you can make an argument to not vig them. What this means is that you don't intend to have them lynched/vig. As in ever. If you read my last topic in FM discussion, there are two ways to resolve a player: lynch them, or lock them as town. Well, this would be the second. This means that you're prepared to push the worldview that the player is town, and that they should be accepted as such. (Remember that if they get lynched anyways, there was no point in not vigging them.) So instead of vigging them, you get a little bit more freedom on who to vig. By a little bit, I do not mean take a hero shot. Shoot a hot-topic scumread.
TL;DR so far
Don't shoot your tinfoil. Shoot the person town has accepted as a wolf (Generally the counterwagon).
Town agenda is more important than your individual reads.
You're shooting every night that you have a shot.
Part the Second: Vig Cover
I don't intend to go to far in depth but I'll go over a couple of basic points:
- Don't out yourself as vig or not vig. (lesson over)
- If you're going to vig somebody, don't list them as your top scumread.
- If you're a cit, don't make it obvious that you're not the vig.
- Reacting to the vig shot as really good/bad outs you as not vig.
- If you make it obvious that you don't know who the vig shot is, you're claiming cit.
- Don't talk about the nightkill unless it is obvious who the vig shot is.
- If it's not obvious who the nightkill is, the vigilante is bad.
- If you're vigilante, don't try to "out yourself as cit".
- Reminder: WIFOM is bad.
- If you're going to fakeclaim vig as citizen, please have the decency to get yourself nightkilled.
- If you're vig and see a fakeclaim you either have to vig the person or hope they get nightkilled.
- Vig claims are self-resolving as long as vigilantes have shots.
- Don't bother reacting to a vig claim. If you do, you're claiming cit.
- Don't even think of fakeclaiming if the vigilante has limited shots.
- Ideally, if you fakeclaim, a mafia gets lynched instead of you. Otherwise it's probably not worth it.
- If there is already a vig claim don't fakeclaim vig.
- If you claim vig, you need to say who you're shooting tonight. :^)