The Syndicate

Inspired loosely by the double elimination baseball and basketball tournaments of my youth. Days are the winners bracket and nights are the losers bracket.

On D1 half the player base (half minus one if an odd number) is “eliminated.” Every “night” the “eliminated” players vote half their number (half minus one if an odd number) to be eliminated a second time, resulting in their final removal from the game.

On D2 the winners bracket choose half their number to be eliminated (half minus one if an odd number). On N2 the D2 eliminations are added to the losers bracket and they vote half their number (half minus one if an odd number) to be eliminated, resulting in their final removal from the game.

Rinse and repeat until one side wins or it reaches 2 in the winners bracket, at which point the brackets are combined and it becomes normal mountainous mafia. The town win by killing the mafia, and the mafia win at parity OR if the winners bracket is entirely made up of mafia.

This may be a bit confusing, so here’s an example:

16 players A-P, with three mafia (A, E, F).

On D1 players I-P are eliminated and move to the losers bracket. On N1 A-H cannot post or vote. I-P vote to eliminate M-P, who all die and flip town.

There are now 12 players alive, 8 in the winners bracket and 4 in the losers.

On D2 only A-H can post and vote. They vote to move E-H to the losers bracket. Now on N2 E-P vote to remove I-P. They all flip town.

There are now 8 players alive, 4 in each bracket, and 3 of the 8 are mafia.

On D3 A-D vote to move C-D to the losers bracket. On N3 C-H vote to remove F-H. F flips mafia, the other two flip town.

There are now 5 players alive, 2 in the winners bracket and 3 in the losers. The two brackets are combined on D4, and the game plays as mountainous for f5 (and f3 if necessary).


This game can work with most numbers (with tweaking to whether half minus one or half plus one is killed in the losers bracket), I think it works best as a racket with 24/24 phases so the post numbers don’t get out of hand. Winners and losers brackets can make reads on people in the other bracket freely, it’s all one game just with an artificial separation post-D1.

It’s a bit convoluted to explain but I think it’ll be a fun fast paced setup perfect for a racket.