Grim Scenarios Lleech Episode Notes

How to Play Lleech

Choosing a Host

• Since you are picking a host on night 1 (in most cases) and picking blind, try to take social dynamics of your group into consideration as much as possible. Who is most likely to survive until the end? Who puts up a good fight when nominated? Who is the least likely to look suspicious even when they’re giving out poisoned information and who will trust their information still, even when there are indicators that it might not be right? They will generally make good hosts, though do mix it up every once in a while, to not be super predictable.
• You might benefit from choosing someone you have a rapport with, as it will be helpful to figure out what role they have, what information they gain and what they contribute to the game, and it will look less suspicious if you are talking to them frequently. Bonus point – they might be less upset with you if you end up winning the game by hosting them!
• Conversely, hosting someone that you don’t play with occasionally can make it less obvious if you are known to pick with certain players. Plus, it gives you a reason to talk to them and make new friends.
• Don’t be hesitant to host Minions occasionally! This is the only way to guarantee an all evil Final 3 (in a two plus minion game), and the community at large still doesn’t quite expect it to happen much, so it might be a great strategy to get a surprise win. All evils alive at the end is really the gold standard of evil play in Clocktower, and making it happen in Lleech games is usually a delight, even if it ends up with a grumpy minion sometimes. There are some minions that make a very natural pairing as a Lleech host, which we will talk about more in the Storytelling/script building section.

Keeping the Host alive

• The main benefit to hosting a good player as the Lleech is that the host will read good socially and will be less suspicious throughout the game, because they genuinely pulled a good token and are playing for the good team. Use this to your maximum advantage. Gently nudge any confirmatory players’ abilities towards checking that your host is good, and you might just coast through.
• If possible, turn the host evil! Again, all evils alive at the end is the ultimate goal. Of course, don’t be too obvious that the reason you are trying to turn them evil is that they are the host.
• Imagine yourself to be a minion, and your host to be the demon, because they effectively are the demon for that game. Try to look somewhat suspicious, but not suspicious enough to be discovered as the Lleech either. If you can make the town say “eh, at best they are a minion”, then you might not even get tested, depending on how scary the minions are on the script.
• It’s hard to resist the voting pattern that socially ties you and your host together, but there are ways to hide that tie. One of the main ways is to pick a second player to be your imaginary host, and also socially tie yourself with them. Another is to vote on your host occasionally, as long as it seems like there aren’t enough hands up to actually put them on the block.
• Throw your minions under the bus as much as necessary – as long as your host stays alive, your minions are expendable.
• Given the choice between yourself getting executed and your host getting executed, make sure that you go on the block over your host, without making it too obvious. Take the temperature of the room and if you feel the wind shift towards your host getting executed, subtly make yourself more suspicious so that the target shifts back. If you get discovered as the Lleech, your odds at the end are 50/50, but if your host gets executed, your odds are 0/100, so sacrifice your discovery if it gives you a chance.

Choosing kills

• Keep as many potential demons and host candidates alive as possible and plan your kills around that. Anybody seems confirmed? Get rid of them! Does their information sound plausible? Get rid of them too!
• If you think a player is confirming your host as good, taking them out early might be beneficial as it’ll leave other players as unconfirmed.
• There are roles that might naturally look like a Lleech host (the Drunk, puzzle-drunk, your Marionette, etc.) because they have poisoned/false looking information. Keep them alive to frame them as the host if necessary.
• Similarly, talk to your minions and see if their abilities have made anybody into potential host candidates – if your Widow poisoned someone, keep them alive. If it seems like your poisoner sniped a Night 1 info role, keep them alive too. As usual, evil coordination and evil puzzle solving/grim reading are keys. Don’t sit back and relax as the Lleech because you can’t die – you’ll get discovered pretty quickly and the town will go host-hunting.
• There are roles that might not be able to figure out that they are a Lleech host – e.g. Outsiders that don’t wake or do anything, demon-bane roles such as Farmer or Ravenkeeper. Keep them alive to frame them as a Lleech host. As the game goes on, good players will start to question why they are kept alive and will be paranoid that they are a Lleech host. Use that feeling to your advantage.

Bluffing a good role as the Lleech

• Ideally, don’t bluff a role that might make you look like a Lleech and tempt town to test you, like Sailor or Pacifist – all it’ll do is confirm you as either Lleech or good, and the town will never test you again and go host-hunting under the assumption that it’s a Lleech game. It usually doesn’t end well for you. I don’t think these roles are a good fit for a Lleech script anyways, but we’ll talk more on the Storytelling/script building section.
• Hidden Lleech is the best Lleech – another gold standard for a Lleech game is to get yourself executed in final 3, and only in final 3. Make sure to use your bluffs towards this objective. This might require bluffing ongoing information to deter town from executing you, or a highly costly execution role such as Barber/Plague Doctor.
• A minion taking a Pacifist bluff is ideal, if you really need to explain why you didn’t die.
• Try to seed the idea that you might be a Lleech host subtly towards the end of the game (and not so subtly in final 3) so that you get executed in final 3. This usually entails starting to bluff information that seems to look false, or malfunctioning mechanical abilities like protection roles. A Lleech that hasn’t been tested who says the person they protected going into final 3 died is chef’s kiss.
• Thwart information that makes you look evil by bluffing roles that might make you look evil – e.g. I once almost nullified two sets of Seamstress information by bluffing Recluse. You can also bluff that you are a red herring to roles that have one (e.g. Fortune Teller, Lycanthrope) because of course the Storyteller put that red herring on you, for whatever reason. Or push the narrative that whichever player makes you look evil is the Lleech host.
• If you do get fully outed, embrace the nature of playing an outed evil game. There are many delights in playing some mind games with the town and going into a Bond villain mode where you explain your evil schemes right in front of everyone. Tell them who you’re killing next! Tell everyone you hosted them in a private chat, and watch their reaction! What are they going to do, kill you? They already tried and failed! I once told a Moonchild that I was going to kill them before I did and that they should try to kill my host back with their pick, knowing full well I had actually hosted my Marionette and there was simply no way a Moonchild could kill my host. They picked me, but had they fallen into my trap and picked a good player, I could have outright won there and then. I think I still won that game.

How to Fight Lleech

• Find the Lleech! A lot of players start to look for Lleech hosts before it is even proven that it’s a Lleech game, and that’s just usually executing good players and handing voting power to the evil team in a game that might not even have a Lleech. Follow the info pointing towards potential evil players and execute them, and you just might find one that’s going to survive. Once you do, feel free to go host hunting, but not a moment before that.
• Look for the poison, and try to differentiate Lleech’s poison from other misinformation – e.g. if someone has been Juggled correctly but their information seems wrong, then they’re not the Drunk and are more likely to be the host.
• Clever tricks can sweep looking for both potential demons and Lleech hosts in one go – e.g. the Artist asking if certain players are “non-Lleech demon or Lleech host/the player we need to execute to win the game”.
• If there are other reasons for players to survive execution, while it might be onerous, the double-tap is the surest way to make sure someone is the Lleech and not, say, Devil’s Advocate protected. While I am not the biggest fan of both on a script, lots of people still do put them together, and it’s still kind of important to differentiate one from another.
• If the Lleech is outed fully, try to read into the subtle things that they do and say, or look into their play patterns before they get outed. It might give you an idea on who might be the host. Once in a game we caught a Lleech because their host was the first person that they talked to and have gotten into a role swap with.
• Sometimes it won’t be obvious who the Lleech host is, and that’s just a given in Lleech games. If everything looks a-okay and yet somehow something feels off, the host is probably someone that can’t know at all whether they’re the host or not through their own information. Try to eliminate as many candidates as possible and hope for the best, and not feel too bad if it comes down to a coin toss. It means the Lleech has chosen their host well and hidden it socially well enough, and maybe have gotten a little lucky, so congratulate them for a game well played. 

How to Storytell Lleech/Select a Lleech Script/Interesting Interactions

• Put in a mix of characters that might and might not be able to know they’re the Lleech host. This usually means a mix of information and mechanical abilities. Leech benefits from host ambiguity – if it’s all information roles, it’ll quickly narrow down what information stands out as poisoned, if it’s all mechanical, the chances of a mechanical failure will increase significantly and it’ll make it obvious who is poisoned much faster than it should.
• Try to avoid putting in too many passive roles at once – this usually leads to a crap shoot on who the host is and not fun for the town.
• If you can, if the Lleech host has ongoing information, try to give at least one piece of misinformation that could subtly hint that they are the Lleech host. While the misinformation from the Lleech should generally benefit the Lleech, this hint could be part of the balancing act – if the host seems entirely sober, it might not be super fun for the group. Try to time this based on how well the evil team seems to be doing.
• Once per game and you start knowing information as hosts – generally tend towards giving misinformation rather than good information. Because this is the only chance that the Lleech poison will have any effect on the game, if unsure, leaning towards misinformation will generally lead to more interesting games. Should not be obvious if possible. Misinformation also gives good a chance to solve for it, rather than trust it completely and miss the host. Still, sometimes the best misinformation for the Lleech is no misinformation at all.
• Not the biggest fan of a whole lot of good sided BMR roles with Lleech – they usually tend to make very obvious Lleech hosts because they are very mechanical, and even the intended effect of hiding who the Lleech is with execution survival roles has the opposite effect – anyone that survives gets discarded as a host candidate and hosts are found more easily as a result. Also, “science” roles wanting to test themselves makes for a terrible Lleech host as they will advocate for their own execution and will win the game for good if hosted. Still, some are probably okay.
• While I have written some scripts with DA & Lleech in the past, I came to the realization that they are especially onerous to have in play together, so I tend to even avoid putting them together on a script now. BMR is balanced around one evil sided execution survival against 5-6 good sided execution survival, and shifting that too favorably toward evil by putting two together tends to swing even the most balanced script out of whack. Teensyville might be one exception since they tend to go so quickly, even with both on script/in play.
• While selecting a script/building a bag, try to include a few minions that make naturally well Lleech hosts – Marionette is pretty perfect with Lleech, alongside roles like Baron, Goblin, Boomdandy, maybe to a degree Xaan, etc. Mez is also a good one to have on a Lleech script with the opportunity to turn the host evil.
• Some folks hate the possibility of mid-game Lleech, but I find it quite enjoyable – it negates the disadvantage of Lleech picking their host blindly. This can make it a bit of a shell game, but sometimes so is an SnV game with a late Barber death – so your mileage may vary. A good Storyteller can quite easily adjust the obviousness of a Lleech host based on how late it comes into play, but sometimes it’s just impossible to do if Lleech picks an already confirmed host or a passive role. Meta your fellow players accordingly. For that reason, I am a fan of it with the likes of Summoner/Pit-Hag/Hatter, but if you do hate that idea, probably avoid it.
• Scarlet Woman is quite controversial as they have a path to automatic victory if the Lleech dies on 5 – either house rule it, or don’t put them together.
• Courtier specifically feels like a big no-no as they can drunk the outed Lleech and a similar issue with Engineer. Exorcists can pick them every other night although at least they’ll know who it is and might have a chance to kill them. 
• Lycanthrope can kill the Lleech host unless you make them Faux Paw or house rule it. Similar issues with the likes of Golem/Moonchild.
• Mathematician & Acrobat might be able to find the host too easily – proceed with caution.
• Alsaahir’s job might become significantly easier if the Lleech is outed – although they can kill any obvious Alsaahir, so might be interesting too.
• Soldier/host/Lleech final 3 is an awkward state, so if you do put them together (as I have on one of my Lleech scripts) give evil a few ways to deal with the Soldier – Pit-Hag, Assassin, Godfather, etc. can help out quite a bit.
• If the Lleech is outed and the town and the Lleech refuse to proceed, Fiddler becomes awkward – I would highly recommend house ruling a Fiddler between a host and a host candidate of Lleech’s choice. Any Lleech worth their salt knows it’s the same thing as just taking it to final 3 though, so if you are in that situation, please be nice and just proceed with the game. One sink for fakeout shenanigans might be acceptable, don’t drag it too long.
• Give the Lleech bluffs that’ll help them hide, but not in the way you’re thinking – giving them Sailor, Fool, etc. might set them up for failure as that’s the path of least resistance they’ll take and get themselves outed. Every once in a while is okay but generally less than most people think. A mix of ongoing information roles, roles that will discourage them getting executed, and roles that’ll explain why they might be reading as evil/the Demon is best.