Werewolf Strategy
October 8, 2007 – 7:40 amGiles Bowkett just wrote a couple of posts on Werewolf. I’d like to dig deeper into one particular strategy that, like most, could be used to good effect by both werewolves and their opponents.
In a game with a healer, it can be very interesting for the seer to reveal in the first round - that way, the village can collaborate on who to check each night, and the werewolves are reduced to randomly picking people to kill in an attempt to take out the healer (who should either always protect the seer or switch randomly between protecting the seer and confirmed villagers - the latter makes sense because the wolves are unlikely to waste a turn checking to see if the seer is protected, so you might get lucky and get a no-kill some night).
This strategy is particularly useful in a no-reveal game, since the wolves won’t actually find out when they’ve killed the healer and will have to check the see if the seer is protected every once in a while (in this case, of course, the healer should always protect the seer).
Now the flip side; this can be an even better strategy for a werewolf. If one of the wolves claims to be the seer in the first round, they get 1) instant credibility (since they already have perfect knowledge of who the other wolves are, they can sacrifice one or two of their compatriots and protect the remaining ones), and 2) the healer will be wasting a turn every night protecting the “seer.” Again, a no-reveal game makes this strategy even more compelling, as you can sacrifice villagers by calling them out falsely as werewolves (though this could come back to bite you - no pun intended - if the rest of the wolves are unable to muster the same indignity as a falsely-accused villager when it is there turn to die).
Clearly, though, if a werewolf claims to be the seer in the first round, the real seer should speak up immediately afterward. I haven’t figured out the best solution for that problem (from the villager or werewolf perspective), but I think that, in a reveal game at least, you should keep them both alive and have them check the same person each night. If one of them dies in the night, you lynch the other one (since the survivor is guaranteed to be a wolf). In the mornings when both survive, have them whisper the result of their investigation to their neighbors before announcing it to the room (that’ll keep the second one to announce from just copying the first). If they ever disagree, something has gone massively wrong and you should probably kill both of them ASAP.
Alternatively, you could just always lynch the second one to announce, on the assumption that if the killed one is a wolf then the first to announce is the seer (but then, two wolves might announce in the first round - the sacrifice of the second aiding the credibility of the first)…
Werewolf: the Texas Hold’em of party games.
