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THE UNOFFICIAL SECRET HITLER STRATEGY GUIDE

Secret Hitler is a social deduction game for 5–10 people about finding and
stopping the Secret Hitler.

The majority of players are Liberals. If they can learn to trust each other,
they have enough votes to control the table and win the game. But some players
are Fascists. They will say whatever it takes to get elected, enact their
agenda, and blame others for the fallout. The liberals must work together to
discover the truth before the fascists install their cold-blooded leader and win
the game.

This is an unofficial strategy guide for Secret Hitler. We wrote it to
immortalise the insight gained from our group’s 400+ games in the form of a
living document. We will continue to update this guide as we butcher our
metagame and reassemble it into some horrifying meta-Frankenstein’s monster.

If you have suggestions for additions or improvements to this guide, please
submit an issue or pull request to the repository.

Jump to...
 1.  Rules
     1. Presidential Powers
        1. Investigate Loyalty
        2. Special Election
        3. Policy Peek
        4. Execution
 2.  Strategy Overview
     1. Liberals
     2. Regular Fascists
     3. Hitler
 3.  Basic Strategy
     1. Chancellor nomination
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
        3. As Hitler
     2. Presidential Actions
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
     3. Chancellor action
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
     4. Aftermath
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
     5. Disputes
 4.  Advanced Strategy
     1. Double dispute
     2. Self-downvoting
     3. Maximising Presidency
     4. Reveal trickery
        1. As a Liberal president
     5. Card Counting
     6. Avoiding power plays
 5.  Fascist Track Powers
     1. Investigations
     2. Executions
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
     3. Choose president
        1. As a Liberal
        2. As a Fascist
     4. Look at top three cards
 6.  Experimental Strategy
     1. The Flip-Flop
     2. The Slow Burn
     3. The Maverick Investigator
     4. The Boy that Cried Wolf
     5. The Robin Hood
 7.  Etiquette
     1. Setup
     2. Voting
     3. Direct Questioning
 8.  Statistics and Probabilities
     1. Liberal Draw Odds
 9.  License and Attribution
 10. Contributors
 11. Glossary




RULES

The year is 1932. The place is pre-WWII Germany. In Secret Hitler, players are
German politicians attempting to hold a fragile Liberal government together and
stem the rising tide of Fascism. Watch out though — there are secret Fascists
among you, and one player is Secret Hitler.

Secret Hitler doesn’t have many rules; the complexity of the game stems from the
social situations the rules create.

Each player is secretly assigned to a role and a party membership at the start
of the game. There are two parties a player can be a part of - the Liberals and
the Fascists. Every Liberal player also has the Liberal role and all but one
Fascist has the Fascist role. The remaining Fascist player has the Hitler role.
There are more Liberals than there are Fascists; this depends on the number of
players in the game, as shown in the table below.

No. of Players 5 6 7 8 9 10 No. of Liberals 3 4 4 5 5 6 No. of Fascists 1+H 1+H
2+H 2+H 3+H 3+H

Hitler does not know who the other Fascists are, but the other Fascists know who
all the Fascists are. There is a deck of Liberal and Fascist policies. There are
eleven Fascist policies and six Liberal policies in the deck. An exception to
this is that in a five player game, Hitler knows who the other Fascists are.

In order to reveal party membership between players, at the start of the game,
one player instructs all players to close their eyes and extend their hand.
Then, Hitler is instructed to raise their thumb and the other Fascists are
instructed to open their eyes. Once all Fascists have made eye contact and know
who they are working with, Hitler is instructed to lower their thumb and the
other Fascists are instructed to close their eyes. At this point, everyone can
open their eyes and the game begins.

The Liberal team wins when five Liberal policies are enacted or when Hitler is
assassinated, whereas the Fascist team wins when six Fascist policies are
enacted or Hitler is elected chancellor at any point after the third Fascist
policy is enacted.

One player is chosen to start as the first presidential candidate and has to
choose another player to be their chancellor for the first election. All the
other players must then vote to accept or reject the government. A majority is
required to pass a government. Players that were part of the most recent
previous government cannot be chosen as chancellor. The president and chancellor
who are up for election can vote.

If a government is elected, then the president takes the top three electoral
policies from the deck and must discard one to the discard pile. The president
then passes the remaining two policies to the chancellor, who must discard
another policy and then enact whichever policy remains. The president and
chancellor are under no requirement to say what policies they discarded and can
lie.

Once five Fascist policies have been enacted, the veto power is enabled. From
this point onward, the president and chancellor can choose to discard all three
policies if they both agree. However, doing so counts as a failed government and
advances the failed government tracker forward.

If three or more Fascist policies have been enacted at this point, electing
Hitler as chancellor will win the game for the Fascists. When discarding
policies, verbal and non-verbal communication between the president and the
chancellor is forbidden.

When Fascist policies are enacted, the president of the current government may
be granted a one-time ability which must be used before the next election
begins. Both Liberal and Fascist presidents can use the abilities. The ability
granted depends on the number of players in the game and how many Fascist
policies have previously been enacted - this is shown on the game board. See the
below section on Presidential Powers for more information.

If a government is not elected, then the next player clockwise is chosen to
choose the next government as president and the game repeats.

If three consecutive governments are rejected, then the topmost policy in the
deck is played and the previous president and chancellor are eligible for
selection again.

If there are less than three policies remaining in the deck then the discard
pile and deck are combined and shuffled.

For more details, it is recommended that the official Secret Hitler rules are
reviewed.


PRESIDENTIAL POWERS

There are four special powers that can be obtained during the game through the
enacting of Fascist policies. Some powers will not be available depending on how
many players there are.

INVESTIGATE LOYALTY

When a president obtains the Investigate Loyalty ability, they are able to
choose another player and view their party membership card in secret.

The president can choose to share the results of the investigation and may lie.
No player can be investigated twice.

SPECIAL ELECTION

The president can choose any other player to be the next president, even those
who were in the previous government. The selected player can choose a chancellor
and the election proceeds as normal.

Once the election is over, the next president returns to the normal rules - ie.
the next player clockwise to the president who obtained the ability.

This can allow the player to the left of the president to become the nominated
president twice in a row.

POLICY PEEK

The president can peek at the top three policies in the deck and return them in
the same order. There is no requirement to share this information with anyone or
be honest about the policies.

EXECUTION

The President executes one player at the table by saying “I formally execute
[player name].”

If that player is Hitler, the game ends in a Liberal victory. If the executed
player is not Hitler, the table will not know for sure if they have killed a
Fascist or a Liberal; Liberals must try to work out for themselves whether the
right person was killed.

Executed players are removed from the game and may not speak, vote, or be
elected as part of government.

It is also recommended that Executed players do not interfere with the game in
any way, including by looking at other players’ cards. These innocuous actions
can often accidentally reveal your true party allegiance.




STRATEGY OVERVIEW


LIBERALS

As a Liberal, your aim is to ensure that Liberal policies are enacted and to
discover Fascists in order to execute or soft-eliminate them.

Liberals should tell the truth about what they see, play, and discard. This is
useful so that the Liberals have the maximum amount of information available to
them when making decisions. If a Liberal is caught lying about something, it can
seriously undermine their trust and make it easier for Fascists to infiltrate
the Liberal block.

Where possible, you want to pass or play Liberal policies. As a President or
Chancellor, you will want to ensure that a Liberal is played if you see one. As
such, the default strategy is to simply pass one across or play one if you have
been given it. This is a good all-round strategy that brings the liberals closer
to victory.

If you are a Liberal, don’t say that you’re Fascist. Some players do this to
make it easier for them to be nominated when they are Fascist, but it just makes
other players less likely to vote for their governments. If you do this as a
Liberal, you are just harming your team.


REGULAR FASCISTS

Fascists want to sow as much dissent and chaos as possible, giving confused
Liberals a path to bring about their own demise. However you must watch out that
you do not trip up over your own lies.

Most of the time Fascists should pretend they are Liberals, only furthering the
Fascist agenda when they have plausible deniability. A player who does this well
will be able to curry favour with the Liberals, allowing them to subtly continue
with their deceit, biding their time for a merciless betrayal when it counts the
most.

Fascists should also do their best to help Hitler gain trust so that they can be
elected chancellor and win the game. This usually involves allowing them to play
Liberal policies and attempting to eliminate other players from the game to
clear the way. But be careful not to support Hitler too much, or the Liberal
players might catch on!


HITLER

Hitler has the most sensitive role, as they can bring about an early victory or
defeat for the Fascists. A good Hitler player can worm their way into the
Liberal block and get themselves nominated while still playing Fascist cards
when they think they can get away with it. A poor one may get discovered and
make themselves a prime target for execution powers, undermining any results the
other Fascists have been achieving.

The most basic Hitler strategy is to just play as a straight Liberal. Try to
make all the same decisions you would make as a Liberal player; playing Liberal
policies, discovering Fascists, voting conservatively. If you can do this well,
you should have a reasonable amount of trust from the Liberal players to get you
voted in as chancellor when it matters. Of course, with this strategy you are
relying on the regular Fascists to enact the policies you need to win the game,
but a straight Liberal Hitler play is a good idea if you aren’t comfortable
trying more advanced tactics.

When you are more familiar with the game, you can try selectively discarding
Liberal policies when you can plausibly deny doing so. However, try not to get
in disputes with other players, as you could quickly find yourself cut out of
the game with no chance of being elected for that early victory.




BASIC STRATEGY


CHANCELLOR NOMINATION

AS A LIBERAL

Since you want to ensure the play of as many Liberal policies as possible, you
should nominate the player you trust the most to be chancellor. If you have
little trust for any other player, you might want to pick a chancellor who has
not been on a government yet to gather information on as many players as
possible. Be careful when nominating a chancellor after three Fascist policies
have been played, as the Fascists will win the game if Hitler is successfully
nominated. Note that if Hitler is playing well, they may be one of the most
trusted players in the game. As such, you need to be on the lookout for strange
votes which might point to Fascists pushing for a Hitler nomination.

AS A FASCIST

As a Fascist, you are one of the few players who has full knowledge of
everyone’s roles. However, you must be careful not to give away too much
information with your nominations. At the early stages of the game when few
governments have gone through, it is often best to stay undercover. One option
is to not take sides and pick chancellors that the group considers reasonable.
Sometimes this will allow you to put two Fascists into a government, but don’t
worry too much if it doesn’t happen.

After the placement of three Fascist policies, you must be more aware of your
nominations. At this stage, watch out for Liberal players hunting for suspicious
actions; if the other players are experienced, then all it takes is one bad vote
to give yourself and Hitler away. As a Fascist, you must balance up your desire
to nominate Hitler or a fellow Fascist with hiding your identity by putting
through sub-optimal governments. All it takes to spoil trust gained for Hitler
in the early stages of the game is for a Fascist to be too eager to get them
nominated. You must also gauge the group’s suspicion of you at this stage and
you may instead try to shift it onto unsuspecting Liberals, perhaps by acting as
if a Liberal is Hitler by nominating them or voting for them when it is
seemingly illogical to do so.

AS HITLER

When playing as Hitler, you should nominate in the same way as a Liberal. Since
you do not have knowledge of the roles of other players in the game, this should
be easy. Do not worry too much about finding fellow Fascists; you should focus
on making yourself a viable chancellor choice. It is usually advantageous to
build trustworthy governments, as this will allow you to push for yourself to be
chancellor later.

If you have managed to work out the identity of your fellow Fascists, it can be
useful to have them on a government. This will allow you to collaborate to
ensure Fascist policies go down. The only thing to watch out for here is whether
they have suspicion on them already. If they do, this can often reflect on
yourself and lead to distrust.


PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

The President has the most power in the Government because they get the first
look at the cards and the possibility of activating a Fascist power. Other
players will be aware of this, so your actions will be under scrutiny.

AS A LIBERAL

When playing as a Liberal, your main choice when giving your cards to the
Chancellor is whether you pass one or two Liberal cards when you draw 2L1F.
Generally, passing two Liberals is only a good idea when the Liberals are behind
near the end of the game; otherwise you can be denying the Liberal team of
information on the Chancellor. Giving a choice to the Chancellor could result in
a Fascist play, in which case you know the Chancellor is a Fascist.

If you draw one Liberal you could decide to discard it in order to gain a
Fascist power. This only really makes sense for the investigation and
assassination powers; the others are not powerful enough to give up a Liberal
play for. This should be done judiciously and not when the Liberals are already
behind on the scoreboard (unless you are fairly sure you can kill Hitler).

AS A FASCIST

Your main choice as a Fascist President is whether to discard Liberal policies
or not. On a draw of 1L2F, discarding the Liberal and forcing a Fascist play
brings your team closer to victory (and maybe gives you a Fascist power), but it
will also cast suspicion upon you. You need to carefully consider the current
state of the game to decide whether you can get away with discarding a Liberal,
or if it’s worth doing even if it’ll likely out you as a Fascist. It is easier
to sell a 0L3F draw if lots of Liberal policies have been played since the last
shuffle, since there will be fewer Liberals in the deck and you can call on the
power of statistics to save you. It can also be profitable to force a Fascist
play if a few Liberal Presidents have had unlucky 0L3F draws, as you add chaos
to the game.

If your Chancellor is also a Fascist, you could even play a Fascist policy on a
draw of 2L1F. If you do this at the wrong time or aren’t convincing enough, this
could out both of you as Fascists and effectively lose you the game, but it is
profitable when it works. By discarding two Liberals from the deck, you make it
much more likely for Liberal Presidents to draw 0L3F, thus covering up your lie
somewhat. If you are going for this strategy, you should be sure to do it as
soon as possible after a shuffle to get as much cover as you can. Of course, if
the Fascist team is far behind, it may make sense to discard two Liberals just
to give you a better chance of winning. As always, consider the trust of the
table and state of the board.


CHANCELLOR ACTION

Being the Chancellor can be a dangerous place to be, as you are somewhat at the
whim of chance and the President. You can easily find yourself in a dispute,
either from your own choice or from the lies of a Fascist President.

AS A LIBERAL

Just play a Liberal policy if you get one. Playing a Fascist card on a choice to
give the President a Fascist power is the only possible reason for not doing
this, but that strategy is incredibly risky and may well cost you the game.

AS A FASCIST

Deciding whether or not to discard a Liberal policy when given a choice can be
difficult. It will put you up on the scoreboard, but will almost certainly
result in a dispute, which may cut you out of the game. Consider how much chaos
is currently at the table, how important a Fascist policy play is, how much
trust the President has, and what Fascist power the President would get when
making your choice.


AFTERMATH

After the card is revealed, it is usually useful to ask both players what cards
they received and what they discarded. The players may not reveal this
information, or they may lie, but it helps to get an idea of how many Fascists
remain in the deck so that you can evaluate future governments.

AS A LIBERAL

Telling the truth about what you saw is a good basic strategy for Liberals, as
it ensures that the other Liberal players have the most information available to
them when making decisions later on, and for evaluating the probability of a
Fascist policy involving foul play.

AS A FASCIST

The aftermath is a key place for Fascists to inject chaos into the game. Telling
the truth can gain you trust, but subtly changing the story can pay off later in
the game. For example, if you draw 1L2F as a President and pass 1L1F to the
Chancellor, it often makes sense to claim you drew 2L1F, as it will create the
illusion that there are less Liberals in the deck then there actually are. This
will make it easier for other Fascist players to justify Liberal policy discards
until the cards are shuffled.

If you give a Liberal Chancellor 2F, then you need to decide whether to say you
drew 3F, or that you gave the player a choice and they discarded a Liberal
policy. This can be even more profitable if you say that you drew 2L1F,
discarded a Liberal to give them a choice, and were then betrayed, as this
creates chaos and increases Liberal discard viability. If you decide to lie and
throw the player under the bus, you need to be able to sell it with your body
language and reaction as well. This can only really be learned by trying it out
and watching how experienced players act. Note that in a high player-count game
you may find yourself cut out of the game if there isn’t a lot of distrust
already planted, so carefully consider whether the benefit is worth the soft
elimination.


DISPUTES

When there is a dispute as a result of a governmental action (e.g. investigator
claims to have seen a Fascist but the investigatee claims to be a Liberal, or
president claims to have passed across a liberal that the chancellor discarded),
this means that there is guaranteed to be at least one fascist within the pair.
If there is a dispute, exclude both players from play where possible. This means
do not elect them to government, do not investigate them, do not nominate as
chancellors and do not assassinate. The reason for this is that there is too
much risk following and trusting one.




ADVANCED STRATEGY


DOUBLE DISPUTE

Sometimes it works for Fascists to create a double dispute. For example, if an
investigation is coming up and the President is Fascist:

 1. The President forces the Chancellor to play a Fascist policy and then claims
    that they were given a choice.
 2. The President investigates a Liberal and claims that they are Fascist.

Since three people are in dispute, it is more difficult to exclude them from the
game and players would be forced to take sides.


SELF-DOWNVOTING

When unsure about your Chancellor choice, voting against your own candidate can
provide information through the other player’s votes. Where possible, have the
next President (who you deem likely a Liberal) also vote for the same
Chancellor. If unsure (Hitler has been enabled) get the next two Presidents to
follow the tactic.


MAXIMISING PRESIDENCY

If you are a possible choice for President (i.e. within two clockwise spaces of
the initial president since the vote count reset), then it can often make sense
to vote down governments to maximise your chance of getting the Presidency and
therefore having more of an influence over the game. This is particularly
important if a strong power will activate if a Fascist policy is enacted. This
is a general strategy that applies to both teams as you can trust yourself more
than the others to make the right decision.

An exception to this rule is that Hitler may avoid becoming President. This can
be for multiple reasons including allowing themselves to become Chancellor for
victory in the future, they might not trust themselves with the assassination or
they might prefer other players use the investigation.


REVEAL TRICKERY

AS A LIBERAL PRESIDENT

If the Chancellor plays a Liberal, then all is (mostly) well. If a Fascist is
played, however, you have a choice to make. You could inform the table
immediately that the Chancellor discarded a Liberal and is therefore Fascist;
this will put you in dispute with the Chancellor and could result in a
soft-elimination depending on the number of players and established meta. For
the most part this is a good strategy, as the Liberals can be certain that they
have cut out at least one Fascist. Alternatively you can keep the information to
yourself until it becomes necessary to reveal it. This will put pressure on the
Chancellor as they will be waiting for you to reveal their betrayal so that they
can best counter your accusation. They may out themselves by reacting to your
lack of reaction, or by making other mistakes due to them being on-edge.

Regardless of the action you took, you need to decide whether or not to reveal
what cards you drew and what you discarded. Generally, honesty as a Liberal is
the best policy. However, if you draw more than one Liberal, it can make sense
to lie and say that you only received one. This will create the illusion that
there are more Liberals in the deck then there actually are, so the Fascists
will be less likely to discard one for fear of being discovered. However, you
should probably reveal this information when the deck is to be shuffled so that
the plays can be correctly analysed by your fellow Liberals.


CARD COUNTING

There are 17 cards in total: 6 Liberal and 11 Fascist.

In the first round of governments, there can be 5 functional governments before
the deck needs to be shuffled (3 cards x 5 = 15). As such, in the first round
you will see 15 cards as a group, but the remaining two will be unknown as they
get shuffled back in. For the second round after the deck is shuffled, there
should now be 12 cards in the deck. In round two you have the possibility of 4
governments which will then see all the cards. If you get to the end of the
second deck and the game isn’t over, there will only be one more government
after the shuffle.

Causing a failed government three times (also known as Brexit or breakfast) will
disrupt this order. In round 1 if you vote past the governments twice you can
see all the cards. In round 2 the failed vote will result in more cards being
hidden.


AVOIDING POWER PLAYS

Until you have some information it is best to vote down a President nominating a
Chancellor who could then be President in the next round. If someone is on the
government two plays in a row then they have a lot of power to influence the
game, and if you are Liberal you don’t know whether that person is Fascist or
not. As such, Liberals should vote down such nominations to avoid giving
Fascists power and Fascists should vote down such governments so as to not give
themselves away. Our group tends to nominate the player directly
counter-clockwise from them if they don’t have any better idea. When it is time
for a Hitler nomination or there is some trust at the table, then you can feel
free to vote in power plays.




FASCIST TRACK POWERS

When a Fascist policy is played, the President may get a special power to enact.
These powers can make or break the game, so a lot of attention should be payed
to when the powers will be used, who will use them, and who you suspect they
will use them on.


INVESTIGATIONS

When there is an investigation and the investigatee is called to be a Liberal,
the probability of the investigatee being Liberal is slightly higher. The four
possibilities are:

 * Liberal President, Liberal investigatee: Should always result in a liberal
   call
 * FL: The Fascist President may accuse the investigatee in order to create
   chaos, or they might call a Liberal to maintain cover
 * LF: Should always result in a fascist call
   * See the Experimental Strategy: The Slow Burn
 * FF: Most of the time the president will call liberal, but they might
   sometimes call fascist to cause chaos.

When there is an investigation and the investigatee is called to be a Fascist,
the probability of the investigator being Hitler is low. This is due to the fact
that Hitler generally wouldn’t want to create a dispute and bring attention to
themselves. Due to our current strategy of soft-eliminating those in a dispute,
if Hitler was to create a dispute this would prevent a Hitler nomination
victory.

The investigation is almost always more useful than it is a hindrance. Do not
Brexit and lose the power.

Chain investigations in 9/10 player games are almost always a bad idea. They
limit the amount of information you can get and can cause chaos late in the game
if you draw incorrect conclusions from them. They are also difficult to trust,
because at least two members of the chain will have been Fascist-playing
presidents, since that’s how one gets the investigation power. You should keep
this in mind when nominating presidents; if a player has been investigated and
called a Liberal, you should not vote for them as president until the second
investigation power has been used. If that player is nominated and happens to
draw three Fascist policies (or pretends to), then the table will have
inadvertently caused a chain investigation.


EXECUTIONS

AS A LIBERAL

You must be careful when you have gained the power of Assassination. The
Liberals only have a narrow majority, so you must make sure you do not shoot one
of your teammates. There are two real choices to make as a Liberal with the
Assassination power: shoot a known Fascist or try to shoot Hitler.

There are only two ways to know for sure if someone is fascist:

 * Investigation
 * Be in direct dispute over a policy

It is often safest to shoot whoever you are in a dispute with as a result of
investigations or policy disputes. They are less likely to be Hitler, so other
Liberals may question your choice, but increasing the Liberal majority is
worthwhile. The alternative is to go after Hitler instead, the hard part is
identifying them. Some reasons to suspect someone of being Hitler are:

 * Support from suspicious players with no prior justification.
 * As Fascists have extra knowledge, they may side with Hitler early on in an
   attempt to help them build trust.

If you don’t know any Fascists, a more risky option is to kill the person you
trust least from a dispute. As you know there is a guaranteed Fascist between
them it is only a 50/50 chance of killing the wrong person. In the worst case
you can use the second assassination power to kill the other member of the
dispute. This ensures that you have killed at least one Fascist, and thus
haven’t unbalanced the voting. If you pick wrong with the first kill or if you
do not have a second assassination this can lead to issues. It’s still possible
to get back in control if Hitler doesn’t know who the other Fascists are.

AS A FASCIST

Ideally you want to kill a Liberal if you get the execution power as a Fascist.
This lowers the voting power of the Liberals and can equalize the player counts
in a game with an odd number of players. As the Liberals’ voting power gets
lower, the Fascists will have an easier time electing Fascist governments and
Hitler.

You need to consider whether or not you can justify killing a Liberal player to
the others. If you can, then it’s safe to kill them. If not, you need to decide
whether it’s more valuable to your team to kill an obvious Fascist to maintain
trust, or to kill a Liberal and out yourself to the table. The latter can be a
good choice if it will even the team counts, or if there is a strong Liberal
block which can be disrupted. For example, if there are three Liberals who trust
each other and keep cycling the governments between them, you could execute one
so that the Liberals are forced to put trust in someone else – maybe Hitler.


CHOOSE PRESIDENT

Choosing the next President can appear to be unimportant, but it can be the
difference between an early Hitler nomination and a Liberal victory.

AS A LIBERAL

If you have activated this power then Hitler can now be nominated for a Fascist
victory. You might think that the obvious choice is to give the Presidency to
the player you trust the most. The problem with that is the President then needs
to choose a Chancellor who is not Hitler. As such, it will often make more sense
to choose a President who is not quite as trusted so that the trusted player is
eligible to be nominated as the Chancellor. Another interesting strategy is to
select the players one or two spaces clockwise. This player will then have two
chances at electing a successful Government, so the first choice can be used as
a trial to look for strange votes or reactions, then the second choice can be
voted through if it seems sound.

AS A FASCIST

A Fascist player should usually go along with the Liberal nomination strategy,
but giving the Presidency to another Fascist if possible. If you do something
suspicious with your nomination, then it could cast doubt on the player you
elect as your President, and the government likely won’t go through either. If
you are feeling particularly devious, you could try playing on suspicion to cast
doubt on a Liberal player by nominating them with little justification.


LOOK AT TOP THREE CARDS

This power is only available in 5/6 player games, but the version which is
present in the rules is not particularly interesting for us. The problem is that
if a Liberal looks at the top cards and says that there are Liberal policies at
the top, then the Liberals can choose to just Brexit to get free Liberal plays.
If a Fascist gets the power and lies, then it’s easy for them to be outed. This
can be addressed somewhat by either making the examiner shuffle the three cards
before they put them back on top, or (our favourite) barring them from
communicating what the cards were before all three have been played or
discarded.




EXPERIMENTAL STRATEGY


THE FLIP-FLOP

Early voting can be unproportionally counted on compared to other votes. In the
first round of voting, Fascists have the advantage and it is likely that
Liberals will vote against, wasting a potential government. Flip-flopping
between games can help mitigate this due to balancing skeptical Liberals to
optimistic ones. WARNING: This has a side effect of unpredictable player meta;
players may see you as untrustworthy because they cannot reason about your
initial vote - especially if you were next in line to be President.


THE SLOW BURN

Here a liberal, investigating a fascist, claims the investigatee is a liberal.
They sit on that information for a while and then reveal that the investigated
player is a fascist later.


THE MAVERICK INVESTIGATOR

Liberal President forces their Chancellor to play a fascist to receive the
investigation power (only available in 6+ player games) to investigate their
Chancellor. An extension to this play happens when the Liberal President finds
their Chancellor is a Fascist but informs the other players that they are
Liberal. The reaction of the Fascist Chancellor may reveal if the Chancellor is
a Fascist or Hitler. Hitler would not react to the move, whereas a Fascist may
be startled by answer.


THE BOY THAT CRIED WOLF

Claiming to have accidentally played the wrong (i.e., fascist) policy.


THE ROBIN HOOD

Being Liberal president, discarding liberals and forcing chancellor to play
fascist to get power. Doing this if the Liberals are not ahead on the board is
usually a bad idea as it will reduce the trust for the president. Do not do this
on the first turn of a 9/10 player game, as the Liberals will find it very
difficult to bring back the deficit as Fascists will be able to hide more easily
and the Liberals will likely not trust the investigation.




ETIQUETTE


SETUP

When examining your envelope, be sure to examine both your party membership and
role cards even if you are a Liberal. Everyone should look at both their cards,
otherwise you can tell who is a Fascist by whoever looked at both their cards.
By looking at both cards, the game starts fairly for both teams and this cannot
be used against anyone throughout. This is also important for all liberals to do
since if a liberal does look at both cards you may be inclined to judge them as
fascist for doing so.


VOTING

We aim to make it the responsibility of the current President to call the vote.
This allows the President to begin the countdown after the Chancellor has been
selected.

Sometimes conversations and discussions occur during and after selection is made
but before the vote is called. This is generally allowed but it is important
that the President ensures everyone knows who is nominated for Chancellor.
Occasionally we have had games where a vote is called before everyone knows who
the nominee is or a vote is called unclearly resulting in a late vote.

Vote at the same time as everyone else. The president should count down from
five, at which point everyone should flip their cards at the same time.

The recommended way to vote is to decide in advance who you wish to vote for,
take the appropriate card out (yes or no) and enqueue it, keeping it out,
clearly in front of you and ready for flipping. This way others can see that you
are ready to vote and also that you have not switched/made a decision based on
any other visible cards.

It is inconsiderate to vote late as you may see others votes and be influenced
by this. As a house rule your group may decide that late votes automatically
count as “nein” votes.

It is also recommended that you do not leave votes lying out even if your
intention is to vote that way.


DIRECT QUESTIONING

Your group may decide to disallow direct questioning, such as asking “Are you a
fascist?” and staring the player down until they answer. Some groups may see
this as fair play, others – particularly those where some players do not have
good poker faces – may see it as unfair. See what works for your group.


STATISTICS AND PROBABILITIES


LIBERAL DRAW ODDS

The first government of the policy deck is often the most important and most
revealing about a player’s action. It is only during this point in the game that
all players know the number of liberal cards in the deck. From this we can work
out the odds of drawing at least one liberal card at these stages. After
governments have passed this becomes harder due to the possibilities that
players have lied.

With the table below we can work out what the odds are that at least one liberal
will be drawn based on any permutation of government. The y-axis is the number
of presumed or known liberal cards still in the deck, the x-axis is the total
number of cards currently in the deck. For example in the first round of the
game we know that there will be 17 cards in total (6 liberal and 11 fascist). As
a government draws three cards, the chances of them drawing at least one liberal
is around 75%.

Percentage Chance of Drawing at Least One Liberal Total Number of Cards 17 16 15
14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3



Number
of
Liberal
Cards

0 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 1 n/a n/a n/a n/a
n/a 25.00% 27.27% 30.00% 33.33% 37.50% 42.86% 50.00% 60.00% 75.00% 100% 2 n/a
n/a n/a n/a 42.31% 45.45% 49.09% 53.33% 58.33% 64.29% 71.43% 80.00% 90.00%
100.0% 100% 3 n/a n/a n/a 54.67% 58.04% 61.82% 66.06% 70.83% 76.19% 82.14%
88.57% 95.00% 100.0% 100.0% 100% 4 n/a n/a 63.74% 67.03% 70.63% 74.55% 78.79%
83.33% 88.10% 92.86% 97.14% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% n/a 5 n/a 70.54% 73.63% 76.92%
80.42% 84.09% 87.88% 91.67% 95.24% 98.21% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% n/a n/a 6 75.74%
78.57% 81.54% 84.62% 87.76% 90.91% 93.94% 96.67% 98.81% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% n/a
n/a n/a




LICENSE AND ATTRIBUTION



The Unofficial Secret Hitler Strategy Guide by the Edinburgh Secret Hitler Group
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.

Secret Hitler was created by Mike Boxleiter, Tommy Maranges, Max Temkin, and Mac
Schubert, as were the images and CSS used on this site. They are also licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License.


CONTRIBUTORS

Simon Brand, Fraser Cormack, Sean Jones, Mark M. Miller, Meenakshi Ravindran,
Tatjana Starcenko, David Wood.


GLOSSARY

Word
Definition
Brexit Voting down three governments in a row, thus causing a policy to be
revealed at random. So-called because some players would vote “no” in order to
register dissent, assuming that everyone else would vote yes, but if too many
people do this, then the government will actually fail. Breakfast Another name
for Brexit. Chain Investigation The second investigator in a 9/10 player game
investigating the first investigator. Cut Out Someone who is still alive, but is
no longer considered for Governments by the table due to them being in a
dispute. Liberal Block/Corner A perceived group of Liberal players who are
trusted by the majority. Power play When a player is on the government two
rounds in a row. Soft Elimination When a player is cut out. Maverick Cop Someone
who throws out unsubstantiated claims and their belief cannot be shaken.
Wheelbarrow Someone who is doing something so crazy they should be carted off.
Guide 2017 Edinburgh Secret Hitler Group — Secret Hitler 2016 Goat, Wolf, &
Cabbage