“Cupid wake up. You may give any two players a Mark of Love.”
From ONUV, on Team Village
The presence of the Cupid makes life very difficult for Team Vampire.
A Team Village player receiving a Mark of Love need not act any differently since the death of their lover won’t affect which team wins. However, a Vampire receiving a Mark of Love now needs to keep both himself AND his lover alive, since the death of either will lose Team Vampire the game.
The Team Village recipient of the Mark of Love should know this and can gauge from their lover’s reaction whether they are a Vampire or not. While a fellow Team Village player will be indifferent to their lover’s death, a Vampire will be quite protective. From the Team Village lover’s perspective, when they are threatened, the more protective their lover becomes the more likely they are to be a Vampire. When they become certain their lover is a Vampire, they should announce their own suspicions and push for either that player’s death or their own death, knowing that either outcome will kill their Vampire lover and deliver Team Village a win (as well as themself posthumously if necessary).
The Cupid should never give herself the Mark of Love. The Mark of Love is only useful if one of the recipients happens to be a Vampire and one is on Team Village. The probability of this happening is maximized if she gives the Mark of Love to two other random players.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Can the cupid place the mark of love on itself?
Allowed, yes, but not recommended for the reasons outlined in the post.
That doesn’t make sense mathematically. If the most useful scenario is when the tokens are one vampire, one village, then it would be best for Cupid to place the token on herself. That way, she could be absolutely certain one of the tokens is on a villager. The other token, she would be taking a chance on getting a vampire. If she puts both on random players, she’s taking a chance on both of them. Trying out a few scenarios, if there are 40% vampires, 60% villagers and she places them randomly, then she has a 24% chance of getting one of each ((0.4 * 0.6) * 100%). If she places one on herself and the other randomly, it’s 40% chance of one each ((0.4 * 1) * 100%) If there are 20% vampires, 80% villagers, she has a 16% chance of getting one each if she places them randomly ((0.2 * 0.8) *100%) vs a 20% if she places one on herself ((0.2 * 1) * 100). If there are 70% vampires, 30% villagers, she has a 21% chance if she does it randomly ((0.7 * 0.3) * 100%) vs 70% if she places one on herself ((0.7 * 1) * 100%).
I haven’t played ONUV, just ONUW, so I don’t know if I’m missing something else about why a player wouldn’t want to put the love token on themselves as Cupid, but the reasoning given that there’s a better chance of getting one villager, one vampire if placed randomly is simply not true.
Nevermind. This is a Monty Hall-esque problem. P.S. I hate statistics 😛
My group has a completely different view of Cupid, we never try to kill the vampire through the lover. Usually, the lover gives themselves the mark of love, allowing overwriting of previously obtained marks. I’ve found that the lovers rarely find out when their lover is on the opposite team, and usually try to protect them in a somewhat blind effort.
Lets say that I combined UNOW with ONUV that has a Dopplegänger and saw a Cupid card, how do Cupid place the Mark of Love when Dopplegänger already place it?
In the ONUV game, there are extra chips. Four love and clarity’s. two bat, fear, disease, Assassin, and traitor. There is only one vampire mark. I think that’s all the marks. You’d put them like normal, but with the extra marks above the original. Hope this helped!😀