Assassin in the Palace

Assassin in the Palace is a nightless mafia variant invented by Kelly Chen and first run for Marathon Day. A larger version ("Assassins...") was run subsequently in Theme Park.

There is one King, one Assassin, and the remainder of the players are Guards who are all told the identity of the King.

The Assassin has one kill that they can use at any time during the game, typically after being lynched. Their goal is to identify the King so that they can use this kill against him. If the Assassin successfully kills the King, then they win, otherwise the King and Guards win. The Assassin doesn't need to survive to win.

This setup differs from normal mafia in that the "town" has more information than the "mafia" does. Every Guard that is lynched narrows the number of targets the Assassin must consider, so the challenge for the Guards is to find out who the Assassin is as quickly as possible without giving away the identity of the King.

Breaking Strategy

It has been presented that the best odds for a town win is to merely quicklynch every day having no other discussion. This effectively allows the Uninformed Majority to use both factors to their advantage: The "Uninformed" part by reducing discussion which would inform the assassin(s) and the "Majority" by causing lynches when they want them (i.e. ASAP). Whilst the assassin(s) can still win with this play, it becomes much more a random coin flip than a calculated decision.

With this strategy in play, the assassin's best chance of winning is to survive as long as possible to reduce the number of kill choices, however, if they are selected for a lynch at any time, it would be distinctly anti-town to plea their innocence and argue against the lynch, as the optimal town play is to merely lynch and be lynched silently without giving out any information at all.

This strategy is difficult to implement, mostly due to the fact that it cannot be discussed without lowering its effectiveness (as discussing its validity puts out information the assassin wants). However, it still allows the town a distinct advantage and turns the game into little more than a lottery.