Nightkills

[Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪]

'Who we killin', sis?'

Let's talk scumplay for a second. In most setups, scum has two big advantages. The first is self-awareness: maf know each other, can talk to each other, can play around each other, etc. The second, for hostile factions, is the ability to remove a player from the game overnight.

For a lot of people, this is great! Fantastic, even! OM just mowed down two goons back-to-back in a game of 20p classic? Time to strongman him. Cudds just accidentally listed your entire scumteam as townlocks? Better kill him before he starts putting two and two together. For many of us, nightkills are a way to quickly and painlessly eliminate players whose presence directly threaten a mafia win condition.

Sometimes, though, that just doesn't cut it. Sometimes, you need to run up host's deadline for night actions while you and your partners rummage through a 15-minute day looking for PR softs. Sometimes? You need that well-timed idle to throw off the town's tracker. Sometimes, you just have to hit send & pray.

This is a thread for discussing nightkill strategy and nightkill analysis. Things you might consider:

• What makes someone a good nightkill target?
• What factors make someone off-limits to you in terms of NKing?
• What do you look for when trying to determine whether or not a kill was meant to be a frame?

[Snaq ◢ ◤]

Jun 14, 2019 1:34:12 GMT Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ said:

'Who we killin', sis?'

Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ please

[Sir Mister]

You're trying to direct the situation in which scum doesn't get lynched.

First and foremost, it's important to clear out the PRs. If the game ends up in a situation with a VT, a Cop, a Doc and a Mafia Goon, that's just a mechanical win for town, and mafia needs to start as early as possible to prevent that situation.

If PRs aren't an issue, then you just want to start the next day with people who don't have a good idea who scum is.
Generally, I think it's good to kill people who were pushing scum. People will always say "x fearkilled y because y pushed them!".
And even though that's 100% correct, people often end up sticking with their own original reads. (I'm not any different from this tbh)
And if they do end up following the dead player's reads, the dead player wouldve probably succesfully continued their push anyway.

Some people are overly respectful to the dead. So if anyone goes into unreasonable tunnel mode on a town, you can kill them and paint it off as a fearkill.
Depends on the player list.


One thing I reaaally don't like, is killing players based on their reputation.
I've been in situations all the time in which my partner has sent me "We need to kill *enter Roommod name here* as soon as possible, it's just a matter of time before he finds us!"


And finally, this has nothing to do with strategy, but I really don't like killing someone playing their first game, on an early night
Involuntarily disabling someone's ability to play isn't fun for them, and new players should have a nice first experience on their first game.

So to summarise priorities of a nightkill (In my humble opinion)

1. Clear PRs
2. Save noobies on their first game
   
3. Clear people who lean in the right direction with their reads
4. Frame people

And reputation doesn't have a spot on the list.

[chapterseven]

The most important kills are the ones that advance the game in scums favor so naturally you don't kill someone that wouldn't advance the game in scums favor.
I'd like to bring mention to 3v1 Mylo where town most likely will no Lynch here. Now I'm the type of MF to no kill and force town to Lynch because my odds are better for not being lynched if town is force to Lynch between 3 people instead of 2. However this also often creates a cycle because town usually continues to no and hosts does that whole "no more NL or Mafia must kill," type shit but the point is that's a situation where I wouldn't kill

Now let's do the opposite, a situation where a would kill. Pretty much all the time, haha. So who in specific would I kill should be the question. Well let's assume doc is dead, and I have no idea who cop is at all. I'd take a random shot in the dark, but I would at least try to make it the cop inspection. It's 1 less clear for town and cop wasted their inspection, in addition to that it lowers who the cop pool is for me. ofc if I think cop is going to inspect me then we just go all guns blazing and try to go for cop.

Ditto what sir mister said about newbies call it game throwing but if I know cop is a newbie I'll let them get like 2 inspections or let them get me/my partner before I kill them.

This is a work in progress btw so expect edits and updates to this post as the day goes on I have more things I want to add to this just busy rn.

[gimm1ck]

What makes someone a good nightkill target?
This is somewhat theme and player dependent, but you can boil it down to a few key points;
-let's say OM is manhandling the entire scum playerlist again. It is to your best advice to kill him, as he (and any other similar players) likely form a town lock after backhanding enough scum, and it prevents you all from literally being lynched then and there.
-in doctorless themes/strongman abilities, it is a good general point to night kill all possible clears in the setup.
-power role claims and power role reads usually have an extremely high priority to be killed (exceptions include blockable roles - if you have a scum Roleblocker with, say, a cop and a doctor, if the doctor ends up claiming early, it's best to Roleblock the doc and attempt to kill cop, or other way around).

All of these contribute towards your win chance as scum. Reputation/Fearkilling is, sadly, a very viable and very common strategy (unless you have a very good way of dealing with the person in other ways).

I would kill an active and continuously scum hunting town that's making progress over a clear townie who's doing nothing.

This also depends on the time and theme. If it Is night one of idea, go ahead and fearkill (if nobody claimed lol). If it's night 3 pre-lylo in vanilla, you think about reads, likelihood of people lynching scum if x person died, etc.

What factors make someone off-limits to you in terms of NKing?

Besides PGO claims, if people generally hold someone in a scumlock/many people sr them, I would definitely keep them alive over better night kill options because if you or one of your partners are being lynched the next day you can form a reasonable counter wagon and attempt to not be lynched.

What do you look for when trying to determine whether or not a kill was meant to be a frame?

Frames aren't that common actually, as fearkill/power role hunting is much more reliable

Will probably type up some more stuff later today, but those are my present thoughts.

[cyan]

Jun 14, 2019 9:23:15 GMT Sir Mister said:

One thing I reaaally don't like, is killing players based on their reputation.
I've been in situations all the time in which my partner has sent me "We need to kill *enter Roommod name here* as soon as possible, it's just a matter of time before he finds us!

Reputation can be a handy tool at times if you're blank out of ideas and have no idea who else would be a good shot, but that's normally because people with a good reputation for scumhunting (OM is a prime example) can often find and expose scum before anyone else can register it. Having a good reputation leads to clueless town sheeping you, and bam! you're a townleader for what appears to be no decisive reason.

Honestly, a good scumhunter should be killed during the mid-game, not early on in a situation when he isn't as heard as he can normally be. Killing a misguided scumhunter can serve scum more than killing an inactive scumhunter; it opens up a load of WIFOM that can be used to confuse town.

In an optimal game, of course, this won't matter as much since people will be making reads and discussing a lot more. Matter of fact is that reputation causes sheeping, and sheeping results in defined patterns of lynch. And if you're scum, you don't want a hivemind town - you want a town in disarray and confusion. The reason OM, for example, poses a threat to most scum in this game is not because he's often spot-on with reads, but because people believe he is. And while the first factor doesn't really matter much for town if no reasoning can be used to back it up, the second can be frustrating for scum.

[Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪]

I really like a lot of what's been said so far, esp. the comments re: NK etiquette and the general consensus that a kill should advance scum's position in the game.

This is a bit corollary to the notion of killing clears, but I think, too, that it can be helpful to think of nightkills as a way of 'cleaning things up' for scum to play more flexibly in the day phase: more than anything else, scum wants mislynches, and so all night actions (kills included) should be performed with the aim of facilitating mislynches. You kill clears because they can't be lynched, but it's also why you go for potential cop inspects if you're unable to find cop (which, incidentally, also makes it easier to come out on top when CCing).

As far as killing townleaders goes, I kinda lean toward what Gim said about town's optimal state being one of disorder. If someone has high influence over town but is consistently mislynching, then I want my kills to cater to that--I'd rather have a town that's too organized to actually be effective (I've seen a lot of modexe games go in this direction, with town sheeping itself into one misshot after another, to the point where reading for partnerships is almost impossible) than a town that's disorganized but extremely legible afer a few key flips.

One setup that plays into this a lot is Red Flag wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Red_Flag which I would love to see played more often.

[qtball]

I’m always an advocate of killing players with a clue over killing players with a rep

[cyan]

Jun 18, 2019 2:40:27 GMT qtball said:

I’m always an advocate of killing players with a clue over killing players with a rep

More often than not, those two players are one and the same.

[qtball]

Jun 18, 2019 2:41:38 GMT cyan said:

Jun 18, 2019 2:40:27 GMT qtball said:

I’m always an advocate of killing players with a clue over killing players with a rep

More often than not, those two players are one and the same.

and when they aren’t, players with a clue > players with a rep

[jodram22]

Early game, generally n1 if I dont see any pr softs I kill whoever I consider to have the "biggest brain" in the game. I figure that if my kill is going to be pseudo-random anyways I might as well put myself in the best position later in the game. (which would be a state in which town has less strong players)

[tenzhii]

if i revealed my nightkill strats itd be a lot easier to pmeta me and thus a lot easier to get me lynched as scum :[

[tenzhii]

Jun 14, 2019 1:34:12 GMT Schiavetto ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ said:

Let's talk scumplay for a second. In most setups, scum has two big advantages. The first is self-awareness: maf know each other, can talk to each other, can play around each other, etc. The second, for hostile factions, is the ability to remove a player from the game overnight.

For a lot of people, this is great! Fantastic, even! OM just mowed down two goons back-to-back in a game of 20p classic? Time to strongman him. Cudds just accidentally listed your entire scumteam as townlocks? Better kill him before he starts putting two and two together. For many of us, nightkills are a way to quickly and painlessly eliminate players whose presence directly threaten a mafia win condition.

Sometimes, though, that just doesn't cut it. Sometimes, you need to run up host's deadline for night actions while you and your partners rummage through a 15-minute day looking for PR softs. Sometimes? You need that well-timed idle to throw off the town's tracker. Sometimes, you just have to hit send & pray.

This is a thread for discussing nightkill strategy and nightkill analysis. Things you might consider:

• What makes someone a good nightkill target?
• What factors make someone off-limits to you in terms of NKing?
• What do you look for when trying to determine whether or not a kill was meant to be a frame?

whatever, ill take the L

1) good nightkill targets are often targets that the enemy will not be able to link you to; this can be the town leader who is hard tring you or the lurker who you know might serve a threat come lylo. this is because you want as few prs as possible suspecting you, while getting as much value as possible from your factional ability. generally speaking, pr claims should *not* be instakilled, contrary to popular belief, unless one is certain that there's nothing that could prevent their death. in multiball setups, its even a good idea to leave someone you hard suspect is from another scum faction alive for 1 or 2 nights, as they are getting free kills that you wouldnt have gotten yourself. dont push your luck though, because the odds are theyre also going to find out that youre from another faction sooner rather than later, so think 2 steps ahead. 

2) theres never not someone you shouldnt NK (triple negative haha fite me schia) unless it would lead to an immediate factional loss. usually, fearkilling is actually a viable strat (killing the boy on the soapbox, cough cough), and killing the town leader is often not going to link you to their death. to emphasize this, you should put as much distance between yourself and your kills as humanly possible, without making it seem forced; there should be a nice equilibrium in play.

3) frames are usually just gut instinct tbh. sometimes it can be really hard to tell when an idle is a fake jailkeep or when a kill is linked to an innocent, but often you cant come to a conclusion and thus must settle with a guess at best. if everyone can agree to be patient though, often the illusion unravels the next day, at the cost of losing a little bit of time and probably another townie in the process. its just difficult to sniff out a frame without a trade of lives.

[tenzhii]

watch this be a thread for schia to playermeta us L