No-kill gambit

A no-kill gambit involves scum intentionally not utilizing their nightkill, with the intent of confusing town power roles.

When To Use

When the mafia know or have a good guess on the town's Power Roles, and believe the PRs will come to inaccurate conclusions on player alignments.

Especially effective if a mafia member has high reason to believe they will be targeted by a Doctor that night.

Execution

For example, if scum no-kills and a Town Roleblocker targets a townie, the Roleblocker may believe he stopped the kill and will gun for the townie as "confirmed scum".

The effectiveness of this gambit is highly dependent on what roles town has:

• Roleblockers might falsely believe they roleblocked an attempted mafia killer.
• Doctors might falsely believe they protected the mafia kill target.
• Jailkeepers might believe they roleblocked the killer or protected the kill target.
• Bulletproofs might believe they were the kill target, leading to inaccurate NKA.

Additionally, the mafia can also no-kill in order to set up a future Power Role claim, e.g. a Doctor who successfully stopped the nightkill, or a Bulletproof who was shot.

Risk

Unless scum know what actions the Power Roles will take, there is always some level of risk in no-killing:

• Roleblockers might block scum correctly and assume they were the killer.
• Doctors might falsely confirm their target as town.
• Town might simply recognize that scum no-killed and gain reads based on that.
• Depending on player count and kill rate, the game may end up with an extra night phase due to a no-elimination in melo, thus giving town additional opportunities to use investigative power roles, or even give the town an additional miselimination.