Tactics/Strategies as Mafia.

[SparkingJay]

Hello everyone! I wanted to give a few helpful tactics if you struggle to win or persuade town as Mafia.

General tactics I use in Master Rank and work:
- Speaking regularly in discussions: If you wonder why you always get hung despite claiming it might be due to the fact that you haven't contributed to any discussions and tried keeping quiet in a hope they do not notice you. Just by speaking you can lower your own suspicion and will be less likely to be targeted by Investigators and Sheriffs as well as jailed by the Jailor.

- Posting results in chat at the start of day: Mafia is all about trying to out-compete the real town members and convincing them to side alongside you. So just by dropping some fake results such as "N1)X - Innocent." you will be less likely to be hung as you are an active person within the chat compared to a Mafia member who only posts when they are voted up by the Town or jailed by the Jailor. People will be suspicious if you do not post a will regularly!

- Deciding when to push for majority: This is an important part of the game where all you need is to kill off one more town member in order to gain majority and confirm the win for your fellow mafia members. Try not to accuse someone at the start of the game as being evil as this will only backfire on you as when you hang your target, Vigilantes/Jailor will now hunt you down. Try making a push in situations like 2 Mafias v 4 Townies where once you hang the town member and gain a kill at night. There will now be 2 Mafias vs 2 Townies sealing the win for the Mafia.

Tips for every Mafia role (besides Coven roles):

- Godfather: Make use of your immunity, claim roles like Vigilante and if you have anyone who contests your claim then fake shoot them and call them immune. The amount of times this has worked for me is insane and I always manage to win these 50/50's where me and the vigilante are calling each other immune as I memorise the night immunity message "Your target's defense was too strong to kill." whilst the Vigilante only puts "immune", this makes my claim seem much more believable and works the majority of the time.

- Mafioso: Do not always claim Vigilante/Veteran just because Investigators see you as "Vigilante/Veteran/Mafioso", without a defense you are vulnerable to all Town Killing and in a single night the game could be over. Try to mix up the claims by claiming other roles besides Town Killing.

- Consort: Do NOT claim Escort if you plan on roleblocking Jailors and Town Investigatives, they will soon find out you are fake especially if there is a Spy who will see that the person you roleblocked was visited by a member of the Mafia.

- Janitor: What I love to do as Janitor is tell my mafia that I will put the first 2 letters of the cleaned role in day chat for them to see if they ever need to quickly claim a role when being suspected, for example "In" for Investigator or "Do" for Doctor. No one I know in Masters uses this tactic yet it always manages to save my teammates from terrible situations.

- Framer: You can be risky and ask a Sheriff/Investigator who they will check the next night and frame the person they would say they would check, this works most of the time unless there is a spy who will instantly know the person was framed.

- Blackmailer: You can claim investigator and use roles from whispers to your advantage, if a Lookout whispers to the Jailor about the visits then you can write your result as "N1)X - Lookout/Forger/Witch" and ask them for a role in chat just to make yourself seem less suspicious.

- Forger: I never make use of my forges as they are never game changing for me, so what I love to do is to claim Doctor/Bodyguard and visit a TP/LO claim on Day One. If there is a Lookout then they will see your visit and assume you are the Town Protective.

- Consigliere: Try not to visit every night if there is a spy as you will only confirm people as not mafia, deal with the spy before continuing to investigate people, this should also be noted for Framer.

- Disguiser: Do not be afraid of being lynched, if you know the role you disguised as then being lynched will confuse the town members and start suspecting each other as being evil. Unless there is a spy who might work out that you disguised as a certain person.

One more tip! Sometimes I love to claim Lookout and if I know there are no other Lookouts and I am aware of the spies and Town Protectives then it is really easy to fake a will such as "N1)Jailor vb Spy, Bodyguard, Doctor AND Mafioso" Don't forget to work with your teammates in order to help them to get confirmed too, just add their name and just like that they will now be seen as whatever they claimed!

[BabyGobln]

This is a great general guide to the strats and tricks you can use in ranked games. Great job, it was a fun read.

I'm particularly fond the Framer strategy. If you can get one step ahead of the sheriff/investigator, then you can do big damage with a role thats kinda trash.

[SparkingJay]

This is a great general guide to the strats and tricks you can use in ranked games. Great job, it was a fun read.

I'm particularly fond the Framer strategy. If you can get one step ahead of the sheriff/investigator, then you can do big damage with a role thats kinda trash.

Thanks! Good to hear you enjoyed reading it.

[RedWhaley14]

The Mafia works best when it works as a team. Usually, on Night 1, I'll ask what my fellow Mafia are going to claim so that way we don't claim the same thing and so that way I can back them up as an Investigator or a Lookout or something. Blackmailers should share whatever info they find in whispers, Consiglieres should share whatever their target's role was, and Janitors should share what the cleaned target's role/will was.

[Yummysht]

Tried the BM tactic and it worked perfectly. They believed that I am invest.

[wozearly]

- Janitor: What I love to do as Janitor is put the first 2 letters of the cleaned role in chat for mafia members to see if they ever need to quickly claim a role when being suspected, for example "In" for Investigator or "Do" for Doctor. No one I know in Masters uses this tactic yet it always manages to save my teammates from terrible situations.

All really good suggestions. I also like hiding as Invest as Blackmailer in a whisper-heavy Town.

If you wanted to make the Janitor idea even more effective, let the Mafia know in advance that the first two letters of the first message you type will indicate the cleaned role. Then they have time during the day to fake an appropriate will in case of a sudden attack of VFR before you can share the cleaned role at night. That also works well if you get found out during the day and want to pass them your info subtly to the Mafia before you die. It's surprisingly easy to hide things this way.

"In case you missed it, Deodat claimed Sheriff"
"Does anyone have any leads?"
"Should we keep going with VFR?"
"Bonus - maf got the jester"
"Try not to vote with Mafia this time, guys"
"We need leads..."
etc.
etc.

[SparkingJay]

If you wanted to make the Janitor idea even more effective, let the Mafia know in advance that the first two letters of the first message you type will indicate the cleaned role.

Thanks for pointing that out! I did mean it in that way otherwise they'd be very confused if I just randomly put "Bo" (for Bodyguard) in day chat. I will get to editing now!

[BlastingOff]

Small thing, for Janitor, I'd recommend cleaning suiciders (especially Night 1) instead of whoever you are attacking, because it has many benefits:

-The target Mafioso and GF chose may not die for whatever reason and you are wasting one night with this unsuccessful kill. It is also fatal if the target is an alerting Veteran. Cleaning a suicider will always be successful, unless you get RBed or Witched.
-LOs will not be on suiciders, meaning if the LO caught the Mafioso, at least you are not gonna be caught as well. If a full moon night, you also avoid WW.
-If the suicider is WW/SK, it is later easy to push people around for being Arso (whenever I clean one of those, people always think there's an Arso in the game, which means you can get a RT BG lynched. GF can also claim that they were doused).
-Situational, but cleaning suiciders sometimes have made town in my games to get confused as to who was attacked and etc. Again, very situational and relies on Town not knowing how to read chat history, so not the biggest benefit.
-You don't know your target's role anyways, unless they revealed (in that case, they are likely to have a TP or LO, assuming one of them is competent enough), so it's better to make it unclear as to whenever the suicider is a Townie or a neutral.

[LayleCB]

Tip for anybody claiming Spy while Mafia, it may be useful to convince your GF and mafioso to vote for different targets, so if GF is rb'd you'll know because mafioso's target got killed, and you'll be able to "confirm" yourself if you have them as Rb'd in your bug. Alternatively, if Mafioso and GF vote for the same target and somebody else dies, it either means the GF was witched or the victim was trans'd, so you can safely say the victim was trans'd if it's not a witch game and confirm yourself that way.

If you want to be galaxy brained, and Janitor cleans the Jailor, by all means claim Jailor. TIs don't typically check Jailor claims and nobody's sus of a Jailor claim, so long as you can get the Mafia to agree to claim jailed in day chat and wills. This works best if nobody knew who the Jailor was, but if mafia attacked/cleaned Jailor and lived then it's probably safe to say that nobody knew to begin with.

[SparkingJay]

I might make a Part 2 for Town roles, what do you guys think?