Most beginners are either too keen to just spill the truth at the first opportunity, or to lie without a clear objective in mind.
As a first time player on Team Village, aim to reveal the truth gradually over the course of the discussion. At the beginning reveal who your role was but withold revealing what you did or saw for instance.
As a member of Team Werewolf, lying is essential. As a member of Team Village, lying still has its place as a means of both drawing out other liars and of stalling until you can confirm that you haven’t in fact been switched to Team Werewolf.
If you do intend to lie, before the night phase starts note what roles are being used in the current game and spend the night time thinking about what role you will claim when you wake up. Pick one or two backups in case your favoured role becomes unclaimable.
Key questions you want to be able to concretely answer are:
- What actions would you have performed at night in that role?
- What information would you have gleaned?
- What are all the different ways someone can contradict you?
The simplest case is to pick a role, like the Villager or Hunter, that does nothing at night, gleans no information and can’t be contradicted unless someone either looks directly at your card or sees your claimed role elsewhere on the board. Even the latter won’t lead to a direct contradiction if multiple versions of that role are in play, such as Villagers or Masons.
If there is a Werewolf majority then the game flips on its head. Instead of trying to identify who is on Team Werewolf, the Werewolves can openly debate who is on Team Village and therefore should be targeted for termination. Depending on role selection, a Werewolf majority can be an virtual certainty. There can potentially be eight Team Werewolf roles if the Doppleganger, Alpha Wolf, Minion, Paranormal Investigator, Cursed and the Curator’s Claw of the Werewolf artifact are in play.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Hey I have an open question: what are thoughts on side talk during the Day? Should players be allowed to talk in private?
Whether or not side talk becomes game breaking or not will likely vary by playing group. Try it out, see how it plays, then house rule on it one way or the other and let us know how it played out for you.
I’ve found that even if side talk is allowed in your group, players soon realize that it doesn’t serve their interests and so don’t do it. First, with a limited time for discussion, engaging in side talk takes you out of the main discussion and so you may miss something important. Secondly, you can’t guarantee that others won’t hear what you are whispering about unless you physically move away from the group, but that then you’re almost guaranteed to miss something else.
By its nature, the day phase is unstructured play. Technically anything should be allowed except for looking at your cards or touching your cards. Just be pragmatic about it and allow everything until it specifically becomes a problem in your group, then house rule against it if it does.
Question:
If the Paranormal Investigation transformed into a Werewolf or a Tanner and everyone voted him to died, How can we know if he will state what he seen during his turn during night?
I’ve noticed the same loophole since the narrator is an App and doesn’t see what happens in the night phase. Though this is a lying and bluffing game you just have to trust that your friends aren’t so shitty and will tell the truth when the game is over. I personally haven’t had this problem in my group.
But I guess it doesn’t help the P.I. that much to lie if he gets killed. He is going to lose anyway (unless he is a Tanner and most of the time it would be easy to call him out on that for example if the Tanner is in the middle). But he could easily lie in the end of the game and pick the team (Villager/Werewolf) he want’s to be on in order to win and get points (if the group is counting).
Similar problem I see when for example when the Robber takes a card like the P.I. He doesn’t know what the P.I. saw and for what team he is playing or does the Robber just play as a regular P.I. aka a villager?
If the Robber steals the P.I. card, then he is whatever the P.I. looked at. The trait sticks with the card, not the player, so the Robber would have no idea what team they were on and would have to deduce what the P.I. saw and adjust their strategy as they go.
This still relies on honesty by the original P.I. player at the end of the vote though.
If the minion is killed does the village or werewolf team end up winning? Or neither?
If there are werewolves in play (not in the center) and the Minion gets killed, he and the werewolves win. If there are no werewolves the Minion is on the villager team and if they kill him the villager team will lose all together.
Werewolf
At the end of the game ask what people did at night to figure out P.I. if you suspect cheaters.