Welt aus Licht und Schatten

Wait, I'm EVIL now?

The biggest hurdle for new scum players is getting used to a very different motivation from the Townies. The Townies are interested in lynching a very specific guilty set of players. YOU, on the other hand, want them to lynch anyone else. For players who rely on a strong moral core, this is difficult to do - you have to deliberately misdirect well-meaning players against each other. Otherwise, you still have to deal with the fact that you're already aware that any scumhunting and lynches that further your Win Condition are inherently misapplied.

In addition, the Town's primary motivation is offensive in nature (find and lynch scum) while the Mafia's Win Condition is a bit more defensive (don't get lynched). This is why proactivity is so important - the Mafia doesn't really have any intrinsic reason to help Town in its quest to hunt scum or just do more than the bare minimum, BUT those are the sorts of players the Town is hunting for! If you want to avoid looking scummy, you have to get your hands dirty and look like you're making an effort to find scum.

One method of getting over this hurdle of not having any proactive motivation is to pretend that you're looking for an anti-Town group in the game, just like you would if you were Town. For one, you ARE looking for a group - of power roles that you can expose and deal with at Night. In larger games, there actually MAY be other anti-Town groups to look for, which will help this further (although you can't do too well with finding them during the Day, or you'll get killed - some of the advice for playing as a third party comes into play here).

YYYYYES! I AM INVINCIBLE!!

One of the benefits (and potential drawbacks) of being Mafia is that you have a massive information advantage over the Town. You -know- what is going on most of the time, whereas the Town is essentially relying on educated guesswork. So if you notice something about yourself or a scumpartner that looks really bad, don't panic - the chance of a Townie noticing it is low, the chance of it becoming a talking point is lower still, and the chance of a lynch coming of it is low enough to where it's normally not worth making a big deal over.

Along those lines, if someone starts to catch onto you, it's not the end of the world. YOU know that they're on the right path, but they don't. Play it off with the best plausible explanation you can give, and move on.

Note that things may still sometimes not go your way. The person you've been trying to lynch for two Days may turn out to be a confirmed Town power role, or your partner just said something condemnably scummy and earned a near-lynch wagon while you were away. Oops. Rather than panic, you need to adapt. Townies can be very wrong too; you need to be able to deduce what you would be doing as Town in that scenario and try to follow that - without actually helping Town, where possible. To this end, it's helpful to keep in mind a Townie thought process behind everything you do, so that if you're asked why you said some particular thing or weren't on some particular wagon you can come back with a plausible alibi.

Never quit. Never, never, never, never quit.

On the other hand, suppose you really got put in a bind and your lynch is starting to look like a real possibility. Don't resign yourself to the lynch - remember, the Town doesn't know yet that you're scum. In practice, there are very few truly unwinnable or purely negative scenarios for Mafia - there's always the chance that the wagon can be deflected to someone else, or you can make some Townies look very bad when you flip, or if nothing else you can bamboozle the Town into losing its momentum. Never surrender entirely, and never let them know they're on the right track until the absolute latest possible moment.

Be ready to make big plays.

Playing modestly can win some games against Towns full of newish players - they'll lynch themselves into oblivion with no real effort on your part. But when the pressure comes onto you, you have to be able to react well enough to ensure that you won't get lynched. There are all kinds of devious ways to do this - fakeclaiming, deliberately dropping "accidental" Towntells, or even just springing into decisive action. These sorts of gambits are inherently risky, of course. However and remembering the information deficit Town is working against, the chance of you getting called on a given gambit is fairly low, so the only real limiting factor is your own courage (or lack thereof).

A solid gambit can hand the entire game to you if executed properly. Look for ways to do it. (But be careful - people who are known for gambiting are less likely to be believed in the future.)

Begin with your end in mind.

This follows from the previous point, but warrants its own mention. Towns tend to be reluctant to lynch claimed power roles, especially Day 1. (The merits of lynching claimed power roles is currently under review in the mafiascum.net community.) You need to decide what role you want to claim at L-1 or in massclaim as early as possible, and act like you actually have that role throughout the game. A convincing claim can completely shift the game's momentum in your favor.

If you are forced to claim before being lynched, you should always claim a power role unless there is no chance of your claim being believed. Even if it's Day 1 and you don't think it'll get you off the hook for the rest of the game, you have to at least try - if nothing else, you're buying time before the first scumlynch, bamboozling the Townies along the way. Or perhaps you will draw another Town power role out in a counterclaim. There's little harm in trying.

Fake it 'til ya make it.

Learn to convincingly appeal to emotion. Getting upset works better than getting sad. What generally doesn't work is vanishing. You never know what can tip the scale away from your lynch, but not trying is usually considered an admission of guilt.

Weigh the benefits of sacrificing your teammates.

One massive advantage scum has is in its numbers, allowing it to coordinate and maintain a decent grasp on public opinion. Because of this, initially "bussing" (deliberately being a major contributor on a scum lynch) was a hugely effective manuever - scum wouldn't sacrifice one of their own so readily; and if you can't trust the people leading lynches on scum, who CAN you trust?

There are two big problems with bussing in the current meta. One is that more often than not, bussing rarely happens as defined. What happens instead is "distancing" (scum attacking each other during the Day). If done poorly, distancing looks very obvious to people who know what to look for - mostly-baseless attacks out of the blue against an otherwise unremarkable player. In this current meta, this is probably the only good associative tell without flips.

The other problem is that lynching away one of your partners is a major dent to the Mafia's power to influence the Town and does not directly make the game easier to win. Furthermore, bussing attempts are intended to give the bussing scum Town credit for leading the lynch on scum. That may not happen for one reason or another, in which case you just shot yourself in the foot.

The best kind of bus looks organic - catch your scumpartner on a legitimate scumtell and orchestrate an argument that looks convincing but is actually intended to pull in Townies and make them look suspicious. This is easiest to do if your partner knows that the bus attempt is coming; otherwise you will likely just make your partner very upset as they wonder why you're unnecessarily singling them out.

Another factor that makes bussing look good lies in proactivity. It's a bit late to start slaying your partner if it's already likely that they will get lynched regardless of what you do. You want to be early on the lynch if you see it as inevitable, but not so early that it requires you to look like you're tunneling on your partner - yes, your partner will flip scum, but the Townies will start wondering if your conviction came from KNOWING you were right all along.

At the bottom line, though, deliberately sacrificing your teammate lets another game Day go by without any progress toward your Win Condition, and as the game slowly winds down to LyLo the job of avoiding the Town's ire gets more difficult. The sacrifice made by bussing has to be worth having to survive another Day.

You are not alone!

When you are given the ability to communicate with your scumpartners, USE IT. The ability for scumpartners to coordinate with each other with no concerns about each others' allegiance is a huge advantage for the Mafia. Discuss who you want to target with your factional kill, who might be a power role, your plans for how you want to enter the next Day, how you think you should interact with the other members of the team, who you think the best mislynches are probably going to be, or anything else that may help you. A functioning Mafia team is much stronger than the sum of its individual members.

If you have been given the ability to communicate during the Day phases, unless you are playing in a very quick game there is no reason for you to NOT be able to orchestrate whatever maneuvers you like at any given time. If utilized properly, daytalk is a huge boost to scum power.

Mafia, but not scum.

Don't spoil the game even if you have effectively lost. Let's say you know who the SK is, but you're getting lynched as the last Mafioso. It's very bad form to out the SK with your dying breath - it doesn't matter to you whether the SK wins or not; you still lose. Let the others have their fun and plot revenge after the game