In-depth Tips to Day 1

This page is a non-exhaustive analysis of a few core ideas to start a day 1, applicable to most setups. For a more brief and general overview of day 1, see Bruhmoments's Brief Guide to Day 1. As stated there, keep in mind that nothing is absolute in mafia - context is everything, and the same play won't work every time.

If not explicitly mentioned otherwise, the following should apply for either alignment. For the sake of brevity, game settings are only assumed to have the mafia be aware of each others' identities (i.e., Night Start or Informed Day Start).

## Goals on Day 1

The start of a mafia game stands out from other parts of the game, as the town initially has no information to use in order to find the mafia. On the other hand, this makes it relatively easy for a miscondemn to happen on day 1, as the mafia is less likely to be considered scum for their actions on day 1.

In reality, however, every players' interactions with one another can give a wealth of information that can be used to win the game for your alignment. The basic goals of any town-aligned player on day 1 is to:

* Making yourself appear like town, and therefor unlikely to be condemned
* Finding out who is mafia, and condemning them

These two basic points are the bread and butter of mafia, and arguably boil down to the same thing - trying to win the game for town's perspective. Information regarding either of these goals is usually the topic of discussion.

Implementing these goals is, of course, the difficult part. All of the following resides on questioning other players as to why they act the way they do.

* Finding out who is a specific power role (especially as mafia)

* Finding out which players are agreeing with one another
* Finding out which players are disagreeing with one another
* Finding out which players do not talk much to one another
* Finding out other players' opinion on strategy
* Finding out someone's identity based on their behavior
* Finding out if any players are signaling or baiting in some form
* ...

All of these share one key idea: in order to progress town's win condition, players need information to discuss. Information about any of the above points can be indicative of someone's alignment, but are still impractical on their own. The ideas on this page spawn discussion that can be used to more directly push towards these goals; you are encouraged to think about this, and add your own ideas.

### How to read this

tl;dr: *Any play that forces players to make meaningful decisions provides potentially useful information.*

All of the following can be interpreted differently based on the context and the players in question, and the nature of mafia is such that no single play will always work.

The following ideas are essentially flowcharts of glorified if-statements with singled out specific scenarios in order to make this somewhat readable and practically applicable. A virtually infinite amount of variations on these ideas exist, and you are encouraged to apply your own ideas to the game - this page is intended to give insight into possible ideas and to get people thinking. While identifying these plays isn't useful in and of itself, realizing the intent behind them can hopefully give you new ideas to play the game.

Finally, most of the ideas below do not end in '...this means X is town' or '...this means X is mafia', but rather '...this leads to a new topic of discussion'. It's for the same reason that the ideas here also do not state hypothetical players' alignments, but rather whether they look town-like or not based on the information you can gather. This is by design: much like in the real world, if people lie, they are most easily found through repeatedly exposing smaller lies or bad leaps of logic: lies beget more lies. (Note: I cannot reasonably back this up scientifically, but if there has been research on this, that'd be great.) Use human psychology to your advantage.

The reason the gathering of information through discussion is especially important on day 1 is to help solve the game later on. This is for two reasons: in most setups, days beyond the first always have a certain amount of outed information; at the bare minimum, a player's death (for Night Start games, the first death does not give information as it's essentially random).

## Steering the conversation

It's very common for mafia games to start through common jokes - this can be anything from the deck the game is using, pregame conversation, whoever dies night 1 in Night Start games, to in-jokes or memes. You can use jokes both as a means to question others, and even as a way to be questioned yourself. The real power of this strategy is not in the questioning itself, but the reaction of all the other players on the direction you're pushing the conversation. Essentially, the goal here is to force other players to make a stance on the conversation you're pushing. Note that if a player ignores this play, the act of knowingly ignoring in and of itself is a decision.

As this is still very theoretical, three examples are given here in a hypothetical day one in a Mario-themed deck, where we look at the game from the perspective of the Bowser player.

***Variation I***

Imagine the game starts with the Luigi player voting on Mario, stating "Mario's hat is red, so he is bad!".

While it may seem moot to question Luigi's reasoning, the reaction of both the player in question and others can be used to progress the game in many different ways, *even if the questions themselves contain little practical value.* Bowser decides to ask Luigi the following seemingly meaningless questions:

* Why did you vote on Mario?
* Why did you vote on your own brother?

***Variation II***

Alternatively, Bowser can decide to actively join Luigi's plea, stating "Get rid of Mario, he's bullied me for too long!", and votes for Mario to be condemned.

***Variation III***

Lastly, Bowser can attempt to turn the vote onto Luigi, stating "That pun was so bad, get Luigi!" and casting a vote on Luigi.

### Effects

Any of these variations will inevitably cause one of four fundamental reactions from other players, each of which signals something different. Let's presume Peach is one of the other players in the game, and Bowser randomly decides to focus on them.

1. The player may join the bandwagon, with or without reason;
2. They may choose to push another line of conversation;
3. They may speak up against the condemnation of Mario, with or without reason.
4. They may choose to not talk altogether;

If Peach (or several players) join the vote on Mario, it is important to distinguish whether or not they talk about the vote on Mario. If their votes cause Mario to be one a few votes away from being condemned, this could indicate that this player wants an easy miscondemn they are unlikely to be blamed for - after all, it was Luigi and Bowser that decided to jump on Mario. If they did give a reason, that's great - you now have something new to talk about, and you can use this discussion to move forward.

If Peach decides to ignore Bowser and Luigi, it signals that they do not believe it to be a discussion they want to pursue, particularly if they didn't actively contribute to the conversation prior to Luigi's statement. In such a case, this could be seen as a way to **deflect** attention away from Mario. Depending on the context, this can be interpreted either as the player trying to get more information before they vote or trying to defend Mario from being condemned. In the latter case, it often means one of two things. Either Peach and Mario are both mafia, or Peach believes Mario to be town. Since both of these would be useful information to the town, it can be fruitful to follow up by asking Peach's opinion on Mario. This is weaker argument if the Peach player was already talking about something relevant, however; in that case, it's likely the Peach player simply doesn't have the time to respond to every tidbit of conversation.

If Peach decides to speak up against the vote on Mario, they are likely to point out that the vote on Mario is essentially random (which isn't entirely true, but more on that later). This gives a new avenue to discussion: is there a reason to dislike the vote on Mario over any other vote? This line of argument often leads to votes and discussion surrounding any (and usually several) of Bowser, Luigi, Mario and Peach; it can often decide the focus of day 1.

If Peach doesn't talk altogether, they are not adding anything to the game. This stands out in particular if Peach did talk beforehand, which could be a form of *clamming up*. It can indicate Peach is uncomfortable with the current situation, yet doesn't know how to react to it, instead choosing to do nothing. As such, there is once again reason for Bowser to question Peach.

### Summary

The core of this approach is to use statements from another player (in this case, Luigi joking about Mario) to advance the game by steering the conversation in a useful direction. You may have noticed that all of the above cases cause Bowser to interrogate Peach, who is essentially a third party to the Luigi-Mario conflict. Other players are likely going to talk and form opinions about all relevant actors in this scenario (i.e. Bowser, Luigi, Mario and Peach), which gives everyone a degree of focus. This play significantly increases the odds that one of the four actors gets condemned that day. While this may seem risky (for example, if all four actors in are town-aligned), mafia is forced to react much like Peach, and this reaction is again something that can be brought up by any player in the game to push the game forward.

Finally, Bowser's initial statements are all jokes themselves. This is by design in order to disguise the fact that Bowser is essentially pushing their own agenda. While this approach does definitely not need a joke delivery in this fashion, it can aid in order to not seem like you steered the conversation in a certain direction, which is something players may otherwise push you for if they do not read your intentions.

### Caveats

Defending, distracting

Notably, this approach is **reactive** in nature: you cannot reliably do this, as you have no agency over Luigi's actions. It's not possible to rely on this play, as the strength of it depends on people being willing to speak up in the first place, combined with the fact **most people do not want to be at the center of attention in mafia**, as any time the spotlight is on you, it is easier for both parties but especially mafia to find an avenue to try to get you condemned, be that on day 1 or later in the game. Additionally, this approach also attracts attention to you as the Bowser player, and forces you to be at the heart of the conversation, exposing you to the same risk of having the spotlight on you. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that **pushing the game forward makes you seem more like town**, especially on day 1.

Secondly, other players may interpret this play as an attempt for Bowser to defend and/or pocket Mario, i.e., Bowser could be considered to be mafia because they are trying to make Mario like them by agreeing with Mario. In either case, this play likely means Bowser and Mario are going to interact with one another during the game. This can mean that the death of either of them can be used to frame the other, as a simple example.

A potential downside to this approach also lies in the focusing aspect: assuming all of Bowser, Luigi, Mario and Peach are town-aligned, mafia could try to lean back and let town self-destruct. It also makes it less likely for the other players in the game to scumhunt among the other players.

Finally, it was noted that Bowser *randomly* focuses on Peach out of the other players, and in one case Peach also states that Luigi's vote on Mario is essentially random. There is typically little reason to single out any specific player as Bowser (and indeed, the same holds true for Luigi's initial statement on Mario). This is because *any initial random vote at the start of the game is disproportionately likely to be on a town-aligned person*. This holds true as long as you assume that mafia's likelihood to randomly vote on a town-aligned player is greater than the number of town-aligned players divided by the total amount of players. More simply put, mafia will typically prefer to 'randomly' pick a town-aligned player. For example, if the setup size is 12 players with a 9-3 distribution, it's true as long as a mafia's random selection is more than 75% likely to be on a town aligned person. (The math is slightly more convoluted as you should disregard the player making the random choice, but this a simple enough concept to keep in mind.) All of this essentially boils down to both Mario and Peach being slightly more likely to be town-aligned by virtue of being 'chosen' by Luigi and Bowser, respectively.
While this fact has little practical value on its own, it exemplifies why it is good to have several different people make decisions: the more decisions mafia is forced to make, the more opportunities town has to distinguish their numbers from the rest of the town.

## Forcing a choice

Instead of waiting on another player to state something, Bowser decides to vote Mario, stating "This is a random vote; I want to see X amounts of votes on this."

This play is a reaction test, both for other players and especially for Mario. Other players are as clueless as you on day 1, so any play that can give them a sense of direction is a potential avenue to start the game in proper. This approach will generate the same four types of reactions described above, but typically with more players defending the Mario player or players that vote on Bowser.

Regardless of other players' reactions, Bowser gauges Mario's reaction. Should they clam up or appear to panic, Bowser has just gained a reason to either suspect Mario to be mafia or to be some kind of power role. If they don't, Bowser decides to unvote Mario for the rest of the day and asks "Mario, who do you want to vote?". Mario then votes on Luigi and gives a simple reason.

A variation on this play can be done by Bowser voting on themselves rather than another player, but this is risky and should only be done if you are confident in your ability to defend yourself. There are setups in which this is always a bad play, and many players perceive self-voting as either trolling. On the upside, it does have the benefit that some players may attempt to stick their vote on you for too long.

### Effect

This approach makes another player (Mario) bear the burden of selecting a 'random' person to vote, presumably under the pressure of being voted themselves. Even if Mario decides to choose Bowser as their vote, it is very unlikely to gain traction considering it would be an omgus, which is generally perceived to be a bad play. The confusion this play can create sometimes leads to players having interesting timings on their votes and unvotes, which allow for further questioning.

### Summary

In essence, the idea of this play is to abuse the fact omgussing is perceived to be a bad play to your advantage, by forcing another player to bear the burden of choice. Regardless of whether the Mario player is intimidated or not, Mario and Bowser will be credited for starting the conversation, making it even less likely either of them gets condemned on day 1.

Unlike other plays, this approach notably can take a very short amount of time, as Bowser can simply say "Ok, thanks, that's all I wanted to know." and move on to a different topic.

### Caveats

This approach needs the cooperation of a few other players to succeed, and can be dangerous in games with the simple majority setting. This is not because mafia can jump on the bandwagon, but rather because the person who hammers the vote can defend themselves later on by stating "I thought Bowser wanted to vote off Mario!". While this is a weak defense, Bowser will look worse for the play, as it's difficult for Bowser to state "I didn't really want to vote off Mario" despite that being the truth.

# Tips and tricks

*Make useful statements more quotable in the future*

Signaling to future players that you want to draw attention to something can allow you to strengthen a case later on, or even significantly influence the game significantly posthumously.

*Baiting players into a bad condemn and pivoting*

The idea here is to make a purposefully bad case against a player in the hopes of starting a bandwagon on it, and subsequently pointing out your own argument is flawed and scumreading the players that followed you ('pivoting' the vote to those players). This is powerful in that it outs the fact that the players who followed you readily accepted faulty logic or lies. The obvious downside to this is that you can get called out for doing this, much like a caveat for 'Forcing a choice' above.

*Listing a preferred condemn order*

Rather than simply stating "I think Mario and Luigi are suspicious", specifically stating that you would prefer to condemn one specific player is a strong catalyst for conversation. You can do this simply because you have a stronger scumread on one particular player, but also because you prefer to see one player who is the center of discussion condemned. This can be useful to settle arguments between players; for example, if a few players think Mario is mafia, but another state they think Mario is town, knowing Mario's actual alignment can give a huge amount of information for day 2 and onward.
Another added bonus is the fact that doing this makes you seem confident, which generally people interpret as being pro-town early on in the game. However, it is also possible for players to interpret this as you having more information than you're letting on, for example by purposefully putting a mafia member on the bottom of your condemn order as mafia. Conversely, if a mafia member is at the top of your condemn order for *no good reason*, it could be seen as bussing—condemning your teammates to look pro-town. Read the situation, and act accordingly.