Our group plays The Resistance and Avalon quite a bit. I wanted to start working through some of the basic strategy and statistics. This is on Mission Results for a simple game of The Resistance. We're going to ignore voting and other forms of soft information here, and just talk about mission failures (hard information.) Specifically, this post only examines mission 1.
Mission Results are the most basic and simple information that the resistance team has to work with throughout the game. More specifically, mission failures give guaranteed information. Successful missions give you absolutely no information. They can "suggest" things later on, but that suggestion can be gamed. Failures on the other hand are the single guaranteed solid source of information in the game. Unfortunately, they come at a very high price (you lose a point.) Obviously, you should avoid any failures that you can, but when they do happen, you need to be sure to take all of the proper information from them that you can.
In this, and in general, the best way to look at information gathered is not to try to figure out who the two spies are, but to figure out who the two spies are not (which combinations are definitely NOT the spies.)
Let's assume a five man game, with players A, B, C, D, E.
There are 10 combinations out the gate of who the pair of spies are:
[A-B] [A-C] [A-D] [A-E] [B-C] [B-D] [B-E] [C-D] [C-E] [D-E]
Now let's say that you are player A who is a member of the resistance. As resistance player A, you know that you are not a spy, so you can remove four of those right away, leaving you with 6 possible solutions to what the spy pair is:
[A-B] [A-C] [A-D] [A-E] [B-C] [B-D] [B-E] [C-D] [C-E] [D-E]
In a five player game, this is where all resistance people start. Each good guy immediately has 6 possible solutions to "who are the spies."
One of those six is right.
One of those six is entirely wrong (it's your two other good guys)
Four of those six contain one spy and one good guy.
But don't worry too much about that. Just know at the start that you have 6 potential answers to the question "who are the spies?"
Let's start the game and read the results:
Mission 1 - 2 man : Success
Mission success here means that you learn nothing (from the success.)
- Mission succeeds (you included): You learn nothing.
- Mission succeeds (you not included): You learn nothing.
You get no information from this, but don't fret over it too much. You do get a successful mission down, and now must only win 2 of the 4 remaining.
Mission 1 - 2 man : Double Failure
Double failure obviously means a game ending failure on the part of the spies. This should not happen unless you are playing with some very new people.
Mission 1 - 2 man : Failure
The best information for you is obviously that a mission fails that you are on. You now know the other guy is a spy, and can now narrow your possibilities down to 3. Let's say [E-A] was sent and the mission failed. As A, you now know that E is a spy. So your 6 combinations above now only include combinations that include player E:
[A-B] [A-C] [A-D] [A-E] [B-C] [B-D] [B-E] [C-D] [C-E] [D-E]
That's a pretty good bit of information for mission one. Heavy cost, but good information.
The other fail situation is that the first mission fails when you are not on it. Let's say [B-C] was sent and the mission failed. You now can eliminate only one combination. [D-E] is not the spy pair. One of them may be the spy, but they can not both be spies as a mission failed with neither of them on it.
[A-B] [A-C] [A-D] [A-E] [B-C] [B-D] [B-E] [C-D] [C-E] [D-E]
Some people may argue that you can also eliminate [B-C] as it's unlikely that both spies were sent on the first mission since people tend to send themselves and they tend not to send the other spy if they are a spy. This may hold (depending on your group's metagame), but it's not hard information since it's definitely possible for a spy to send the other spy and coordinate a single failure. It's also not the worst idea, as I'll get into later.
With any of these scenarios, you can not possibly know after the first 2 man mission that any other player is definitely good. Even in the most informative scenario (where there's a failure that you are on), the other three players are still all suspect (see combinations above.)
So let's look at what information is gained by the resistance as a whole from a 2 man failure:
If the first mission fails without a double spy, 2 of the resistance will have combinations down to 5 possibilities, and one of them will have it down to 3 possibilities. (For a total of 5 pieces of elimination information given to the resistance in total.)
If, however, the spies coordinate a double spy mission with a single failure, all three of the resistance members will only have it narrowed down to 5 possibilities. (For a total of 3 pieces of elimination information given to the resistance in total.)
So, for the spies, the best first mission failure situation is actually to send both spies and coordinate a single failure. This gives a Fail point and communicates the least possible information to the resistance.
For resistance, if there's a failure, you should be hoping that you got one resistance member on that failed mission and that he gained some extra info. Because all you get in hard info is the elimination of one spy combination.
What if you get to send the first mission?
As resistance, you should always send yourself and one other person.
As outlined above, the worst situation for resistance is both spies going and coordinating a fail. It's a fail point and it give the least info. If you send yourself and one other person at random, that can't happen. You're either going to get a success (and no info) or a failure (and decent info, for yourself specifically.)
The other (and more obvious point) is that sending yourself and one other person means that you have a 50% chance of a guaranteed success (two resistance members going.) Sending two other people gives you only a 16.6% chance of that. (Also, if you choose two other people, happen to send both spies, and they coordinate a single failure, you now look extremely bad in terms of soft information.)
As a spy, you should also always send yourself and one other person, because since sending two other people is an awful tactic for resistance, making this move makes you look like a spy. (Though choosing two other people who are both good can do some pretty funny/useful things to soft information depending on your groups meta.)
