To make it easier on the mods I’m not gonna make this nomination myself due to arguable potential bias reasons
But I would like to recommend the nomination of @Bellatrix for Best Use of a Power Role in BotF XVII - Pick Your Poison
The role that Bella received was the Damsel. For people unfamiliar with the setup, it’s basically a negative utility town role, like Merlin in Avalon but without any of the “knowing the mafia” stuff. All the starting mafia know that a Damsel is in play, and once per game one of them can publicly out mafia to guess who the Damsel is. If they’re right, the mafia win on the spot. Why is the word “starting” italicised? We’ll get to that.
On Day 1, she got approached and converted by Kiiruma, the Mezepheles (Mafia 1-shot Consensual Converter). Her role is, objectively speaking, one of the worst roles you could possibly convert to mafia. Due to the specifics of the wording, her ability would instead make mafia lose on the spot in the event of a correct guess. Her role, as mafia, was not only entirely negative-utility, but the act of her no longer existing as a town role meant that one of mafia’s foremost ways to win (with all 3 mafia members accruing suspicion on Day 1) was down the drain.
But she did have one tactical resource that most other players would miss: the fact that, if she outed mafia to guess a player as the Damsel, everyone would assume that a Damsel was, indeed, in play. She started constructing her plan around it on early Day 2, and pulled Jake (a townie) aside and claimed to have mechanical information that he was the Damsel. Wary, he claimed to be the Damsel to her.
In Blood on the Clocktower, there is no dedicated mafia chat. Instead, the mafia have to communicate through publicly declared whispers, while the town also pass each other their roles and information through these whispers. Kiiruma did not know what role he converted until Bellatrix told him on Day 2, and the rest of the mafia team didn’t know until later days.
In the middle of Day 2, Zone (mafia) had a hunch that something was weird about Eliza’s (town) claim, and outed mafia to guess that she was the Damsel.
Since this guess can only happen validly once per game, the sensible move would be to scrap the plan she had that relied on her making a credible Damsel guess.
Instead, she decided to use a small hole in the ability to paint her guess as valid: the fact that only starting mafia’s guesses could count towards the 1-guess limit. So when Jake claimed that he was the Damsel after Zone’s guess, she decided to paint him as the converted mafia who outed themselves so the Damsel thought they were safe. About a half hour after Zone’s guess and Jake’s public claim, she claimed outed mafia herself and guessed that Jake was the Damsel.
The town bought it hook, line, and sinker. After a bit of thinking and public discussion after the mafia claims, the town felt smart coming to the conclusion that Zone was the convert who tried to bait the Damsel into claiming publicly and Bellatrix was the starting evil who used the guess legitimately.
During late Day 2, projecting confidence that the Damsel guess was definitely used up, Kiiruma caught onto Bellatrix’s plan and completed it by pivoting his claim to Damsel. With this final piece in place, Kiiruma was considered to be confirmed town as the only Damsel claim. After all the outed evils were cleaned up by Day 4, he was left in a 1v5, which he sailed to a victory without ever having a finger of suspicion lifted against him. He secured 2 mis-executions, but he could have easily gotten a 3rd if he needed it, and possibly a 4th if he fought tooth and nail for it. That was how deep it sent Kiiruma: that he could even think about securing 4 mis-executions in a 12 player game.
In conclusion, Bellatrix took a seemingly garbage role and used subtle strategic resources in the role’s details to concoct a plan to send a wolf so deep they were never even voted after Day 2. The gambit’s effectiveness was underscored and supported by her manipulating townies into thinking that they were smart while they were playing right into her hands. And just as importantly, she incorporated unexpected events to support her plan without breaking stride, commanding a mastery of the mechanics of the setup.
