From ONUW, only wins if he dies
The mere presence of the Tanner plays an important role in balancing the game toward Team Werewolf. As the Tanner yourself, it is extremely hard to win. On the face of it, you want to be caught out in a lie to generate suspicion but not so blatantly that you are obviously the Tanner seeking to get lynched.
In practice I have never seen someone win as the Tanner by implying they started as a Werewolf. The times I have seen the Tanner win have almost always been by pure chance (such as the player becoming the Tanner without knowing) or by appearing to receive a Werewolf card from another player (as distinct from making others think you started with a Werewolf card).
Playing effectively as the Tanner requires preparation. Some possible strategies for the Tanner include:
- When someone has just started to arouse suspicion, claim to be a Robber and say you robbed them. Say that you can confirm that they are an innocent on Team Village. Either other players will disbelieve you are the Robber and accuse you of both being Werewolves protecting each other (resulting in a 50/50 chance of you being lynched). Or the person you claim to have robbed will take the bait, say they were a Werewolf and since you now possess their card you should be lynched.
- If a Troublemaker claims to have swapped you with someone else, claim that this is ironic because you are a Paranormal Investigator and you saw that the person with whom you have been switched was a Werewolf, so now as the recipient of your ‘Paranormal Investigator turned Werewolf’ card they are still a Werewolf and need to be lynched. Play dumb when it’s pointed out that you received the Werewolf card yourself. If either the other Werewolf does a good enough job defending himself OR if the Troublemaker reveals they never switched you after all, then your chance of being lynched increases further.
- Claim to be the Witch and you gave yourself a card from the center that is strongly suspected to be a Werewolf card
- If the Mystic Wolf and Seer are both in play, then the Tanner can open the game by claiming to be a Seer who looked at another player’s card. When the first person reveals their role, the Tanner can say that as the Seer they looked at that card and can corroborate their story. Since no experienced Seer would choose to look at one other players’ card instead of two cards in the center, the Tanner will hopefully be accused of being the Mystic Wolf and lynched.
What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.
If someone claimed to be be the hunter, you can also say he’s lying because you are the hunter.
So, if this is not so obvious, other people will think that one of you is the hunter and the other is a werewolf, and will vote against one of you, thinking that at the end, a werewolf will anyway die.
If they vote against you, you win.
If they vote against the hunter, he will kill you thinking that you are a werewolf, and you also win!
I won recently as the Tanner in a fairly large group of eight players. (This was the first time we had played with the Tanner.)
I did it by suspiciously claiming I was the Insomniac and had woken up to be the Seer. It did help that someone lied about being the Troublemaker and the Seer claimed to have found the Troublemaker in the middle. It probably also helped that I claimed to be the Seer as a lone Werewolf the game before!
I remember when I won as the Tanner. I claimed to be the Dopplegänger and saw the Seer card from one of my cousins. As the Doppelgänger-Seer, I claimed to see a werewolf card from one of my cousins. Someone claimed to have swapped me and the werewolf. But she didn’t really switch us! They voted for me and I took the win at the Tanner! I still can’t believe they fell for it. Now when we play, they don’t trust me…😝🤣
I won as the werewolf by claiming I was the werewolf. When I looked in the pile, since there was no other werewolves, I saw the tanner was in the pile, and thus knew if I pretended to try to get myself killed by making myself too obvious, I was able to make everyone believe I was the tanner, so no one accused me in the end.