2020 Match 1 of The Resistance: Avalon

At some point, someone came up with the idea of picking teams backwards so the next leader would have a ready-made team to add themselves to (so, 1 picks 10 and 9, then 2 picks that plus themselves) and backwards became sort of a thing, I think.

Ah, I think I get it now. Because you pick teams backwards, you build the chain backwards so you can pick the team that includes the chain. I think.

It, in theory, creates the strongest chain. As well as makes a theoretical team 2 leader have an easy choice.

Yes, and although I’m not sure it’s better than picking forward and having team 2 leader add Person 4 and doing the chain forward, at least in my eyes it’s more about having a standard so that we know when someone’s deviating from it and picking purposefully rather than randomly. I’m not complaining, though, because it means people like me at the bottom of the list get to be in on the action from the start.

Edit: added an “and” for grammar, and writing this because if I recall correctly you’re supposed to write if you edit anything

cries from seats 7&8

Pretty sure that theory was created by an evil person in #1 that had evil friends in the #9 or #10 spots. But we’ve pretty much run with it ever since!

At any rate, the current play will build a chain of (mis)trust that we can leverage all game long.

So the trick to the game is to realize that everyone is always lying. I get it now!

Bingo!

Except when they’re not

Man. This is a tough life.

Exactly. One guy I’ve played with would lie about everything, including things like which mission number it is, whether or not a vote got approved, and whether or not it was the fifth mission pick that you had to approve.

Yeah, but that’s just how Dave rolls.

That was IRL, though, and I hadn’t played with him before and got really confused for a second.

I kind of want to do this now.

Sorry, had logged off for the night. @Snebmi is good.

@Knightsaber, the meta for vetting / picking teams backward stems from two things: first, every team leader is going to include her/himself on a team, and second, the teams increase in size. The idea is that if you choose the people behind you for the first team (a team of 9, 10, 1) and the team succeeds, then the second team leader can choose that entire team plus her/himself (a team if 9, 10, 1, 2) to make the next team, with no ‘unknowns’ and a slightly higher chance of success

If you do it the other way (first team is 1, 2, 3), and the team succeeds, now the second team leader has to add an ‘unknown’ team member to make up a fourth.

The difference is marginal but non-zero, and of course it all depends on the actual alignment and knowledge of the first few players in the roster. And so people don’t grant the argument, so you can’t necessarily infer anything from someone starting off differently.

Peanut gallery question: I’d assume Merlin and Percival might have their own reasons to steer differently, yes?

Yes. This is why some people don’t like the idea that there are some expected, standard moves: because they lock players into sub-optimum moves, or assuming those players do something else, draw attention to them. And this particular standard is really pretty weak, since the odds that players in positions 9-2 are all on the side of good are quite thin.

On the other hand, there are some very obvious standard things where, if you don’t do them, you pretty much out yourself as evil.

I agree it’s important to differentiate between moves that are “Evil” because they deviate from the standard and moves that are “Evil” because they’re pretty clearly Evil. I think having a loose standard is good, but obviously there are reasons to break it.

When I play this IRL I have a friend who’s a math professor and he’s obsessed with this formula he calls “the algorithm” and if you go against it he calls you a traitor without fail. (Needless to say I always vote against it)