Attack in speech: the rule of four and fifty links

The mafia wins when two reds are removed from the table and its own team has sat to the end. So the blacks need candidates for removal: civilians whom they can call black so that the table believes it. This lesson explains when attack is mandatory, when you can stay silent, and gives a set of fifty speech links on which an attack rests.

Why attack is stronger than defence

If you play against nobody, people will play against you and your team. When redness grows on one part of the table, the other part darkens, and the other way round. A player who has no claims about other people's speeches, and in his minute only speaks well and holds a clear position, does not form in the town the needed range of suspects: the town simply does not know whom to look at except you.

There is another consideration. The one who "struck" first sets the agenda of the round. The others have to answer his questions rather than ask their own. Do not be afraid of conflict: a well-built conflict takes the black card off your back and moves it onto someone else's.

The maths of the necessary attack

At a strong table the reds have many players with understandable, readable redness: from speech and non-verbal behaviour it is visible that the person is a civilian. Then, besides you and your partners, the town simply has no suspicious candidates. The blacks need to remove two to win, and it does not matter at all how many lines of play form at the table.

From this comes the rule of the number four.

1. If among the civilian town there are not four suspicious players, you must attack. The brakes are released, you can pick at the slightest slip, and team-against-team play works best.
2. If there are four or more suspicious players, you can sit it out: give a quiet, unnoticeable, conflict-free speech.

Why four? The sheriff most often dies in the first or second night. Even having made two red checks, posthumously, he "closes" only two players. Of the remaining, two must be removed for the win. If there are only three suspicious players or fewer, there is no reserve: any mistake and there is no one left to remove.

The number four unties your hands regarding the other three civilians. You can give them any colour, even the reddest; the main thing is then to kill them in the following nights or to buy the vote. But if you "give red" to more than three people, at some point you will have to play against your own blacks, and by default you should not. There is always the option of overriding the real sheriff with your false sheriff, which is strong play, but the probability of winning is higher if the leader of the reds is killed as early as possible.

How to use the list of links

Mafia is a game of interpretations and attitude. There is no exact definition of a black card at all, and this can be used when collecting votes against one candidate or another. The fifty links below are not ready-made lines to memorise. They are fifty grounds that you can refer to when explaining to the table why a player is black.

It is better to work with the list like this.

1. Read the link and assess how applicable it is in your games.
2. Next to it write a probability from 50 to 100 percent with which, in your experience, a player with such a sign turns out to be black (it cannot be below 50: that is already an either-or guess).
3. Separately write the ground: what reason could make a mafioso like this from a civilian's point of view. Why do you think the player is mafia and not a civilian?
4. Go through the whole list and mark the links that can be said about any player regardless of his moves.

For the first three links the author gives examples with his own estimates (these are his subjective figures, everyone puts in his own): "took a player into the team without grounds" (a black buys a vote, knows the colours, pulls out his mafia), about 70 percent; "addresses only one player in the speech" (buying a vote, or shame at contacting those he attacks), about 85 percent; "does not give a position or smeared it" (sits it out, finds it hard to speak clearly and much, afraid of catching a slip), about 80 percent. Further he suggests you work on your own.

Fifty links

For convenience we split the list into groups by the substance of the argument. The numbers correspond to the order in the book.

Group 1. How a player builds teams (1 to 4, 8, 11, 12, 20)

1. Took a player into the team without grounds.
2. Addresses only one player in the speech.
3. Does not give a position or smeared it.
4. Threw a player out of the team without grounds.
5. By the count of the game that the player builds himself, he is mafia himself.
6. Did not play with anyone, though he should have set accents.
7. Collects only a red team.
8. Pulls out a black player.

The ground of the group is one. A red builds teams from logic and information, a black builds them from knowledge. If the links and breaks in the construction do not follow from what was said, perhaps they are dictated by closed information.

Group 2. Structure and time of the speech (5, 6, 7, 33, 34, 36)

1. Cut his speech short early.
2. Stretched the speech.
3. Speaks too clearly for a player who does not know the colours.
4. A "ragged", not smooth speech.
5. Too quiet and lulling a speech.
6. A prepared speech.

A red does not know the answer and so speaks with pauses, slips, questions. A black, not knowing what to talk about, has to invent, and it shows in the form: either too smooth and "as if rehearsed", or ragged, when the player weighs what can and cannot be said. The link works better if you name the observation and ask the table to compare it with the player's past games.

Group 3. Non-verbal behaviour and emotions (9, 10, 24, 27, 37)

1. Shows an unnaturally large amount of non-verbal signs.
2. Sits too quietly.
3. His emotional state changed since the last game.
4. Fiddles with the mask, worries, any sign of worry.
5. Ignores that people are playing against him.

Here remember the base of comparison: you can assess only relative to how this player usually behaves. If the table does not know you, referring to "the emotional state changed" is dangerous.

Group 4. Behaviour in others' speeches and conflicts (15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 31, 32, 38)

1. Does not follow the game.
2. Clings to words.
3. Makes poor contact, reacts to provocations.
4. Is passive, not interested.
5. Is excessively attentive.
6. Fuels a conflict.
7. Dampens a conflict where a mafioso certainly sits.
8. Turns the table over.

It is at once visible that opposite statements work equally: both "excessively attentive" and "passive". The author stresses: behind each phrase an argument for blackness may hide. If you said "looking for the sheriff", any activity can be explained by it; in the extreme case a ground can be invented, and it will work. The choice depends on what you need, not on what the player said.

Group 5. Round zero and moves (18, 25, 26, 39, 40, 41, 42)

1. Did not wish the reds victory on the first slot.
2. In round zero played against two civilians.
3. Plays precisely against one red, me.
4. Nominated in order to break.
5. Nominates nobody.
6. Played under the sheriff.
7. Gave a beacon.

A beacon is any action by which the sheriff or the victim of an agreement can be found. If there was no beacon, the author notes directly: nobody prevents you from inventing one. That is metagame, and it is admissible provided you are ready to answer for your words. Sometimes what matters is not so much to "flood" a player as to annihilate his redness: one mafioso finds an argument for why the player is "not necessarily red", and another loads the attack onto the prepared ground.

Group 6. Mistakes, slips, control (13, 14, 19, 23, 28, 29, 35, 43, 44)

1. Spoke badly.
2. Spoke too "sweetly".
3. Twisted the speech.
4. Plays as a civilian, speaks or gestures not as one.
5. Ignores me in his speech.
6. Sucks arguments out of his thumb.
7. Could have said the same to the blacks.
8. Made a slip in the speech.
9. Controls his speech.

Group 7. Interaction with the team and the result (30, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49)

1. Everyone played with him, he is a "sweet black".
2. Deliberately did not play with the shot red (metagame, friends!).
3. Played against a red check.
4. Did nothing for the civilian town.
5. Sold his own black.
6. By those who woke up, that is, by the course of the night, mafia.

The fiftieth link

The fiftieth item in the book is left empty: it must be your own. Start your own list and after each game add the argument that worked and the argument that did not.

How to build an attack in practice

1. Choose one or two candidates, not five. An attack smeared across the table looks like an attempt to overload the table.
2. Formulate the reason in one phrase: "because". An explained reason persuades better than emotion.
3. Agree with your partners in advance who gives the argument and who reinforces it.
4. Prepare a fallback. If the table does not accept the argument, you must have a spare candidate.
5. Do not attack those whose hand you intend to buy in the critical round.

For the red

Knowing the list helps to tell a strong attack from a template one. Ask: "Why is this argument applied to this particular player? Would he apply it to himself?" If a link from the list is confirmed by nothing but words, and the player saying it himself fits its description, you are looking at a black metagame move.

Application

1. Attack, play strong.
2. Do not fear conflicts: whoever "struck" first is the one who did well.
3. The planning of the black team is built on the presence of suspicious candidates in the town and their number.

Self-check questions

1. Write the fiftieth link. It is your personal one.
2. Write ten phrases with which your black player can be defended (this connects to the lesson "Defending your own").
3. How can you understand by the logic of the game that among three suspects there is one red? Why do we start from the probability of a random player being mafia being 50 percent, not 33.3?

Practice

Write your probabilities for the first thirty links and compare them with reality after twenty games: in how many cases the player named by this link was black.

Typical mistakes

• Attacking everyone without a reserve of candidates.
• Using a link that fits yourself.
• Changing a player's colour without a reason ("changing shoes").
• Forgetting that an explanation must stand behind every link.

Source of the idea. The chapter "We attack" from Dmitry Novik's book "Mafia in the Style of Zen" (2020). The grouping of links, explanations and the order of work were compiled by us; the percentage estimates in the book belong to the author.