There's always a lot of bad decisions being made in janitorial games, especially with night actions and basic logic. I’m looking to clear up some of these mechanical fallacies with this thread:

Statistical arguments provided in small text, skip them if you agree with the intuition.

Guilty Testing

Lynch in cop claims if you have two. Lynching the guilty is a cop out(no pun intended) used by bad, unconfident players to avoid taking blame in case they lynched the wrong cop. You get confirmed reports for the rest of the game along with a clear PR.

Situations + reasoning against guilty testing:

Uncc’d Cop

Why it’s a bad idea: you don’t know the janned role. At best, you lynch the lawyer; which is useless anyway since the cop dies right after (doc janned). If the cop’s fake and manages a lucky guilty on the miller you’re pretty much in autoloss. You also lose the ML.

• P(RealCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMafia) = 0.66, 1/3 mafia is lawyered and a miller possibly alive. => P(GuiltyMafia & RealCop)= 0.5 x 0.66 = 0.33 ; i.e. 33% chance of the guilty being mafia
• P(FakeCop) = 0.5 Even if the guilty’s mafia, there's still mafia in the pool outside.

Cc'd Cop

Why it's a bad idea: the real cop either has a guilty on the miller or the lawyer (nilla is lawyered). On the other hand, the janitor may have a lucky guilty on the miller, or bus his nilla. There still is reasonable doubt on who the real cop is.

• P(RealCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMafia) = 0.5 => P(GuiltyMafia & RealCop) = 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25
• P(FakeCop) = 0.5 P(GuiltyMiller) = 0.2 => P(GuiltyMiller & Fake Cop) = 0.5 x 0.2 = 0.1 ; to put this into perspective, this happens once every ten games.

Cops With Contradicting Reports

If the cops have an innocent/guilty on the same player, only test the guilty if the miller is naked. The janitor might be bussing his nilla, and the real cop could have an innocent report on the same guy.

N1 Save

Always lynch day one after a docsave. The setup is balanced around the janned role n1, which means one can never be 100% certain on any situation. Lynching janitor takes away the mafia's ability to hide a role, making the setup extremely townsided. Even if the cop's uncc'd, you lynch day one for the lawyer/janitor. Getting either is a near autowin. You have at least two clears the next day, with a hypothetical five- cop, oracle, doctor, save, innocent (if the lawyer's lynched)

Oracle Decisions

1. Always orc cop if someone was janned. It confirms his reports to be legitimate and allows for report-deduction. Cop reports are extremely useful on LYLO.

2. If there will be another clear alive the day you die (say, the doctor), always orc your townread. If there's no clears alive the next day, orc your scumread.

3. A continuation of the previous point, always orc your scumread when there's only one mafia alive. Your TR might still mishammer on LYLO, but revealing mafia gives you a guaranteed win.

4. Sometimes, a player in the table brings up the 'oracle testing' strategy. This involves lynching the uncc'd oracle to reveal a cop claim, and sounds very appealing to new players. At least it's not as bad as guilty testing because you're now certain, right? Not really; you've still wasted the ML and lynched a PR. Now you're going into 3way with no clears at best. At worst, your doc was janned and the cop dies the next night, leaving you with 3 back-to-back LYLOs, one report, and zero PRs.

5. Even when not 'oracle testing', someone will always try to fish the oracle even when there are cop cc's. The oracle should claim only if the cop's uncc'd. Don't allow yourself to get fished, and don't unnecessarily roleswap with someone you don't particularly have a townread on.

Report Mechanics

1. Straight off the bat, any innocent is clear if the lawyer is last mafia alive. This is a very important deduction, and sometimes results in autowin on LYLO.

2. The number of the day is an indicator of how much more important a report is. The same report is thrice as important on day 3 than on day 1, assuming the player is still alive.

3. You can narrow down on mafia with reports on later days. Sometimes, there are 2 innocent reports alive on LYLO with 5 players. The oracle is usually still alive, which gives a direct cc between the two non-reported players (one is confirmed lawyer for sure). They could both be mafia too.

I'm pretty sure I had more situations in mind when I started writing this out, but that's all for now. Do post anything you think I've missed out on, I'll add it to the thread.

tl;dr:

• guilty testing is not a smart idea
• lynch if the doctor saved n1
• use your brain as the oracle
• basic logic applies to reports