Notes for Newcomers
These notes are from are from my own experience playing on SecretHitler.io and watching high-ELO games there. I hope these notes give you some idea of what the more recent strategies for both teams are.
I assume some basic knowledge of the game already: there is a glossary here for any terms I use that are unknown to the reader. As a result, these notes are not comprehensive, but instead focus on strategies and considerations that are less well known to newer players.
That being said, at the end of the day SH is just a game, and the goal remains to have fun.
- Why people insist on a Meta
- A word on the Hitler Zone, the Special Election, and Gunpoints.
- Card Counting
- Conflicts
- Misc Tips
On SecretHitler.io, people tend to insist on a "Meta" (i.e. a set of conventions as to who should you nominate as chancellor? who should you investigate as president?) Metas are considered by some to be controversial, but I think they help the game develop.
When liberals deviate from the meta, it's a crapshoot. Occasionally you get lucky, and you improve your winning chances. Yet other times, you probably made things worse. But when fascists deviate from the meta, they'll pretend they deviated randomly, but they always deviate in a way that helps fascists.
So if you allow deviations, fascists can take advantage: liberals can't.
If you see someone deviating from the meta, they're either a lib, and the deviation could be good or bad, or they're a fascist, and the deviation is always bad. If you're more competitive, you assume that nothing is ever accidental, and they're hurting the liberal team, and they're not accidentally hurting the liberal team, etc., etc., and so they're probably a fascist.
Please note: It is not against the rules to play against the meta, despite what other players may say.
Opening meta is most developed for 7p, 5p (and to a smaller extent 10p) games.
- In 5 player games, the order is either:
- 14 41 etc. until a red is played, at which point the govt. becomes 25, 42, 53 or 13, or
- 14 41 etc. until the 1st deck finishes (5 govts. of 14/41 have passed)
- In 6 player games, the order is 14 25 36 4-BP.
- In 7 player games, the order is either:
- 15 26 37 45 or 46 if 15 was red, or
- 15 26 37 51 etc. (the "skip 4" meta), or
- 15 26 51 62 etc.
- Edit: March 2019: * 7p meta has become much more 15 26 51 62 etc. than previously. If 15 26 51 are all blue and 62 is then red ("RRR" or "RRB") 15 is usually played, but 73 is rarely played too.
- In 8 player games, the order is 15 26 37 48.
- In 9 player games, the order is 16 27 38 49 5-anyone blue.
- In 10 player games, the order is 16 27 38 49 5-10.
Investigation meta on drawing RRR is most commonly:
- Investigating your chancellor;
Investigating another president who also claimed RRR is neither recommended nor widespread.
- Game sizes have decreased over time (see pic above).
- In particular, 8p, 9p, and 10p games are much rarer in Season 5 (the current season).
- However, I'd argue that the increase in 5p games is mainly due to private games being mostly 5p.
Focus on the presidency, and get the most liberal guy in the presidency. The chancellery will take care of itself. This is true regardless of which team you are on.
Liberals have two things to worry about in the Hitler Zone. One, that Hitler gets elected chancellor. Two, that a fascist president gets elected. One seems much scarier than Two, but Two is much more important than One.
Firstly, unless you are extremely good, you probably can't tell who Hitler is. Hitler can be quiet or loud, he can be more of a leader, and he can be more of a follower. You just have to live with the risk of a Hitler election. Unless you realise this, it is far too easy for a fascist to scare people off a liberal chancellor by insinuating that they might be Hitler.
What's the problem with having a fascist elected president? Well, recall that any president in a government that plays the 4th or 5th red gets to shoot somebody. And the chances of drawing RRR or RRB are good enough for fas that electing a fascist president in the Hitler Zone is usually game winning for the fascists.
In a 5p, 7p, or 9p game, shooting a liberal means that the liberals no longer have a majority, and fascists now have a 2nd game-winning strategy if they cannot or don't want to pretend to be liberals anymore: fascists can top-deck to the end.
- The odds of fascists winning via top-decking range from over two-thirds (when the score is 4-4) to 75% (4-5) to virtually 100% (there are less than 4 blues already enacted or other special circumstances).
The fascist strategy is split between trying to install a Fascist or Hitler as president and trying to elect Hitler as chancellor.
The liberal strategy is to stop Fascists from taking the Presidency.
As a liberal, You should always Special-Elect the most liberal player to be president. If you trust them enough to give them a potential bullet, then you should also trust that they won't deliberately nominate Hitler as chancellor. Trust their judgement here.
If, however, the president whose govt. played the 3rd red Special-Elects a president who claimed RRR or somebody in conflict, and the table „nein“s the SE'ed president, the SE is said to have been thrown. In fact, anyone who chooses somebody dodgy to SE is probably a fascist.
With all due respect to tartanllama, who recommended making the most trusted player chancellor and giving the presidency to somebody else, it is usually far better to avoid a slow and certain death via top-decking than to be paranoid of accidentally dying by electing Hitler chancellor.
If everybody agrees that a certain person is the most likely to be liberal, the table might let that person gunpoint someone else.
That is, the president and chancellor both get elected, and if the president draws RRB and gives his or her chancellor RB, either the chancellor plays the blue, or the chancellor plays the red, at which point the president can execute him. Obviously, if the president draws RBB he simply forces BB, and if the president draws RRR then well, it didn't matter who the president nominated.
As long as you trust the president, you can „ja“ even if you are certain that his or her chancellor is fascist.
In an ordinary game, there are 6 blues and 11 reds in the deck. After five govts. pass, the deck is reshuffled. (If you like, you can take 11 hearts and 6 spades, shuffle them, and see how many spades you tend to get in the first 15 cards.)
Roughly half the time, you will get 5 blues in the first 15 cards / 5 govts; another half, you will get 6 blues. Very rarely, (about 11% of the time), you will get only 4 blues. This is the natural deck, and this is what fascists work with.
Pay attention to the deck.
Always force (pass "BB") to your chancellor if you draw "RBB". If you give your chancellor "RB", you should be and will be under continued suspicion that you made a blue up, and makes it that much harder for liberals to verify what you really drew. If you force, two people (you and your chancellor) can confirm that two blues have been seen.
If you give your chancellor a choice and they play the red instead, this is terrible, and any loss will be blamed on you. The normal price for a conflict is the loss of one blue. The price of gaining information through a conflict through the loss of two blues is way too high.
A common and generally accepted behaviour is to claim "RBB" when you drew "BBB" even as a liberal. There is no consensus as to the extent to which this lie helps or hurts liberals.
Pay attention to the deck.
Work out when to gain trust, possibly at the cost of playing a blue, and when to play a red, which is actually your formal job.
Claiming RRB when you drew RBB increases trust on you and your chancellor while making any presidents who claimed RRR a bit more suspicious.
If you're Hitler and you receive RBB, you can discard a blue. If your chancellor plays the red, you cover your fascist by claiming RRR. If your chancellor plays the blue, however, you can claim to have drawn RRB.
If your government is fas-fas and the president draws RRB, it is possible for both players in the govt. to lie and claim RBB and BB respectively.
These are how many blues the first five governments claim to have seen.
This is a deck that cannot occur naturally. Somebody has overclaimed (claimed to have drawn more blues than they really have), probably to provide some cover to a fascist teammate who can then claim "RRR". Those presidents whose chancellors are unable to provide verification are most likely to be under suspicion, like presidents who claim BBB, presidents who claim to have given a choice to their chancellors, or presidents who claim RRB and have conflicted with their chancellors.
This is a very good deck for liberals. There will be little to no blame placed on any RRR presidents: they still won't look liberal, but they won't look fas either.
This is a fair deck for liberals. You probably half-suspect that somebody underclaimed (drew "BBB" but only claimed "RBB"), but things are still looking fine. You probably play people who played blues quite preferentially over anybody who's claimed RRR though.
This is where things get serious. Since naturally occurring 4 blue decks are so rare, you assume that any RRR president could have dropped a blue, or that a fascist has underclaimed. You do not nominate or play any president who claimed RRR. If the game is "rebalanced", this is a deck that cannot occur naturally.
This is a deck that cannot occur naturally. The game is almost certainly in the Hitler Zone after five governments. Scream at every RRR president, interrogate every RRB president, and intimidate every RBB president. I assume that you, the reader, are yourself beyond reproach at this point. There is no way on earth you even remotely trust any president or chancellor who was part of a RRR government.
If two people accuse each other of being fascist, do not take sides. Liberals shouldn't know who to trust, and therefore fascists should pretend they don't know who to trust either.
That said, as the game continues, based on voting and behaviour, you should probably have some inclination but very rarely complete certainty.
Delayed Conflicts work for both teams. Honestly, they usually help fascists more than they do libs, so delayed conflicts and fake conflicts are never held for very long at higher ELO level games.
Please note: Delayed/Fake conflicts should be resolved by the end of the deck in which they occur, or when Hitler Zone starts to avoid violating the ToU.
Be aware of how many conflicts there are at any point. For example, in a 7p or 8p game, there are only three fascists, so if there are three conflicts, then you should have one or two confirmed/guaranteed liberals.
Bearing in mind the number of conflicts also helps you when you are mentally weighing up possible fascist teams.
If the peek is claimed to be Blue-something-something, you should Top-deck. Either you get a free blue or the president who peeked is outed as fascist. Having a confirmed outed fascist is a significant disadvantage in a 5 or 6 player game.
If the peek is claimed to be Red-Blue-something, you can still consider Top-decking.
If the peek is claimed to be Red-Red-Blue, be aware that liberals can lose if the peek is actually RRR.
| Real Peek | Safe claims | Risky claims | Scorcha claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you see | [NOT FOR BEGINNERS] | ||
| BBB | BBR (td) | BRR (td), RRB, RBB | |
| BBR | BRR (td) | ||
| BRB | BRR (td) | RRB | |
| BRR | BRB (td) | RRR, BBR, BBB | |
| RBB | RRB, RBR | ||
| RBR | RRR | ||
| RRB | RRR | RBR | |
| RRR | RRB (td) | RBR |
- A safe claim will never out you as fascist. That is not to mean that safe claims are always the right move.
- Telling the claim truthfully is always safe.
- Claims marked with (td) mean you should, if nobody is already, push for a top-deck.
- All risky claims become safe if your teammate ends up being the next president after you.
In the veto zone, unless a president draws RBB, liberals need a govt. of a liberal president and a liberal chancellor in order to not lose immediately. In particular, the orientation of the govt. does not matter, i.e. XY = YX.
As a result, Confirmed Not-Hitlers become less important, because the risk of a fascist victory through passing 6 fascist policies outweighs the risk of electing Hitler chancellor.
Lines are proposed and possible fascist teams. As an observer, you might hear someone claim that lines are "345" (that 3, 4, and 5, are the three fascists) or that lines are "14X" (that 1, 4, and somebody else are the fascists). As a liberal in seat three, you might hear someone say that lines are "345" but that is not a line to you, because that's not possible. As a vanilla fascist, you know the lines already.
As a liberal, figuring out who to trust and which is the real "line" can feel overwhelming, but bearing in mind that in a 7p game there are only ever 20 possible fascist configurations, a good liberal player will quickly discard many of the 20 possibilities.
One of the most common ways for liberals to figure out what the fascist team is when an inexperienced fascist team votes as a bloc. The further along the game is, the more likely it is that the voting blocs reflect the teams. That being said, in higher-elo games this is shakier to go with.
- Home page for wiki.
- How to play and basic strategies.
- Guide contributed by gw12346.
The Comprehensive Secret Hitler Guide
- Guide contributed by Iconic.
- Guide contributed by djderie.
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- About the game and site.
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