On the Atheist and its Strategy
A Clocktower Essay by Emma
Introduction: The Two Clocktower Puzzles
A friend recently shared the opinion that the Atheist is a character in Blood on the Clocktower with no strategic value, since they begin the game already knowing the solution. He compared this to trying to strategize a Wordle puzzle after being told the word. I disagreed. You can hear this debate on an upcoming episode of the Grim Scenarios podcast.
But I wanted to take some time to get to the heart of our disagreement: I don’t believe that knowing the solution removes strategic depth from the game for the player who knows it — for two key reasons.
First, knowing the answer is only half the battle in Blood on the Clocktower. In some of the groups I play with, we talk about what’s called a “moral victory”: a game in which you, a good player, correctly identify the demon and the true world, but still lose because you fail to convince the rest of your team. Despite solving the puzzle, the good team fails to execute correctly — or the evil team simply does a better job of persuading others to act against their own interests.
The most important thing about a so-called moral victory is that it’s a loss. Strategically, it’s a loss that provides a clear opportunity for growth: not in deduction, but in persuasion. You didn’t fail to identify the demon or their minions — you failed to convince your fellow players that your solution was correct.
Second, having one or more players know the solution is core to social deception games. The entire conceit of the genre is that a puzzle exists, and an informed minority begins with the answer. Usually, this minority is working to obscure the truth — but not always.
So where does this put the Atheist? The Atheist is akin to an evil player in that they start knowing the solution. Moreover, they know the Storyteller is going to be laying traps, removing key info, and bluffing info to distract town. The Atheist always holds the so-called moral victory. Their job is to transform it into an actual one — by convincing the town to believe them.
Playing the Atheist with Strategy
Ruling Out Other Worlds
The Atheist must be approached as a strategic character, answering one of the most crucial questions in Blood on the Clocktower: How does the player who knows the solution convince others to believe them?
Andrew Nathenson addresses this well in his essay “Blood on the Clocktower is a Strategy Game.”1 While Andrew makes some bold claims in his essay (I’m sorry but I simply don’t believe his claim he’s only ever voted on a good player in final three thrice,) he lays out the fundamentals of Clocktower strategy with clarity. Two of his points are especially relevant for thinking about the Atheist: execution order is good’s most common mistake, and:
BOTC is a team social game… you’re going to sometimes just lose because you can’t convince your team to believe or trust you or your logic; deduction and communication are two very different skills, both of which are essential to good play.
Andrew doesn’t dive deep into execution order, and I won’t either, but here’s the crux: executions are a limited resource for good. In a 7-player game, you get three. In a 12-player game, maybe five — depending on whether the Monk gets a save. These are good’s most precious tools.
Sometimes you can spare one execution — say, on a confirmed Washerwoman Day 1 to let the Undertaker check them. But often you can't. You rarely have the luxury to execute the Butler who is the sole face-up outsider in a two-outsider game — even if no one wants a Butler in final three.2 Wasting executions reduces the chances that good wins.
And even non-wasteful executions can be costly. Consider this scenario:
Six players remain. Two possible worlds:
World 1: Abe is the demon, with dead minions Betty and Carl.
World 2: Danielle is the demon, with living minions Evan and Francine.
(Scarlet Woman is in play.)
Executing Abe might win you the game — if he’s the demon. Maybe there’s even a 60% chance he is. But you should not execute Abe. Why? Because you can execute Abe tomorrow. If Danielle is the demon, this is your last chance not to lose.
This principle recurs throughout Clocktower: sometimes, you let a suspected minion live to focus on demon candidates. Sometimes, you execute a player who is probably good — because they’re part of a plausible three-evil-alive world — instead of someone who is probably evil in a one-evil world. It’s painful, but strategic.
Ok but what does this have to do with the Atheist? The Atheist knows the correct world and the right timing to execute. There will always be a final three (or a final day in a Leviathan script), and that’s when the Atheist must push for the storyteller’s execution.
But the Atheist’s team — the good team — will only win if the other worlds have been sufficiently ruled out before judgment day. The Atheist must guide the execution order to eliminate worlds so that, on the final day, good players feel confident enough to end the game correctly.
I’m not going to go into detail on how to rule out worlds — that’s a topic for Andrew’s essay or my podcast. But here’s the key: the Atheist must pay special attention to this process. They know what needs to happen at final three. If the groundwork isn’t laid, it won’t.
So here’s some things the Atheist needs to do:
1. Figure Out Who Your Demon Is. (It Might Be You.)
The Storyteller will be framing fake evil teams using the information good now holds. That information must be coherent. In a normal game, you don’t exist — so in every fake world, you are evil and have a demon. That demon needs to die. Good players should have enough info to logically identify your demon. You may even be your own demon. Doesn’t matter. Kill the demon.
2. Figure Out Who the Demon Is — If You’re “Good”
In some of the worlds being framed, you might be a good player lying about being the Atheist. That’s fine — in fact, most Atheist scripts will include mechanical reasons for someone to do just that. You could be:
A Mutant
Cerenovus-locked
An alignment-shifting outsider
The Drunk who thinks they’re the Atheist3
If any of these are true,4 they imply other players aren’t the Drunk, the Cerenovus target, or the Mutant. That’s useful. But more importantly, the Storyteller might be presenting you as a good player lying about being the Atheist. That means you must identify which world fits that framing — and figure out who the demon is in that world.
Because those players need to die, so the team can correctly execute the Storyteller at final three.
The beauty of playing the Atheist is that you don’t start with complete knowledge of all the fake worlds — only the real one. So, like a Monk in Trouble Brewing, you have to solve. You must work with your team, using the same skills and tools — deduction, collaboration, and communication — but with no direct help from the Storyteller.
Just like every other good player.
Death is Trust; Life is Nomination Power
A common approach for the Atheist is to offer themselves up for execution early—sometimes even on Day 1—to prove their trustworthiness. While this can be a valid choice, it has several drawbacks. Most importantly, players often don’t enjoy this pattern. Being alive is usually more fun, and early execution can feel demoralizing. This is one of the chief complaints about the Atheist: that they “have” to die early, making games repetitive and discouraging evil players from bluffing the role.
But here’s the cool thing—you don’t have to die on Day 1. You don’t even have to claim Atheist immediately. You can lie, delay, or stay quiet until Day 4. All you're sacrificing is a bit of trust.
And yes, if town doesn’t trust you, they might not be willing to execute the Storyteller at the end. But let’s dig deeper into that.
In Blood on the Clocktower, trust is a currency. The more you have, the less likely you are to be executed—but the more likely you are to die at night. Take Trouble Brewing, for example. If you're the Virgin and a townsfolk nominates you, you’ll likely be confirmed, maxing out your trust. You won’t be executed—but you probably will be killed at night.
The general pattern is this: telling the truth in a believable way builds trust. Lying or acting evasively reduces it.
Let’s consider two Fortune Tellers. The first says, “I’m the Fortune Teller, and I got a ‘no’ on Amy and Bob Night 1.” They’ll likely gain trust. They sound truthful. Any double claim will seem suspect, and no one else is likely to contradict them.
Now imagine a second Fortune Teller who says, “I’m the Soldier. Come at me.” They might avoid being targeted at night—but they’ll probably lose trust. The real Soldier might be in play. Their lie might read as a lie. They might get executed.
There are trade-offs either way. The lying Fortune Teller might survive longer and get more info, but they risk execution. The truthful one is safer from execution but more likely to be killed. Managing this balance—your “trust budget”—is strategic.
Some roles benefit from high trust. The Virgin, for instance, wants to be nominated early to confirm their identity and filter information. Other roles, like the Slayer or Monk, become more powerful later in the game. If these roles are too trusted early on, the Demon will kill them quickly.
A trusted Slayer on Day 1 likely dies Night 2. But a Slayer alive on final three? Terrifying. They can shoot one player, then nominate the other if the game doesn’t end. A Monk alive at four players can often predict and prevent the kill—and I've never seen a Monk lose after landing a save on a 4-player night.
When I draw the Monk, I aim to appear suspicious—but not too suspicious. That’s what Demons do: they’re shady, but not shady enough to get executed. I rely on my ability to avoid execution. Then, on a final-four night, I protect the right player, the Demon panics, and we win. I’ll make a bold claim: this strategy works. Not always. Sometimes you get executed or preemptively killed. But if you make it to final four and save the right person, you win. Every time.
Most roles aren’t the Monk or the Slayer. They don’t have a mechanical “dunk” on the Demon. But everyone can nominate the Demon on final three—and if you’re alive, you can make your case. The Atheist, uniquely, always knows the correct target on final three. No risk of hitting a minion or frame. That’s not as flashy as a Monk save, but it’s powerful. And you can’t do it if you’ve already died to prove your innocence.
Like the Monk or Slayer, the Atheist can manage their trust level to improve their odds of surviving to final three. Want to be trusted? The Storyteller might kill you at night. Want to seem suspicious enough to make final three? The Storyteller might not kill you.
You can also pivot. Start with a low-trust strategy, realize it’s failing, and shift into a high-trust mode. Or start high-trust and pivot low when it turns out you’re the only remaining demon candidate, and need to be executed. Maybe you’ve been bluffing another townsfolk role. The point is: the Atheist doesn’t have to die early. They can watch, adapt, and choose their moment.
That’s strategy.
The Atheist is a Demon
Let’s return to the original complaint: The Atheist knows the solution to the puzzle, so there’s nothing to solve. I don’t mean to dismiss this entirely—it has some merit.
But really, it’s a complaint about social deception games in general.
In any standard Trouble Brewing game (outside of something like Teensyville), at least two players—the Demon and a Minion—always start with the solution to the puzzle. They know who the evil team is from the beginning. In fact, you’re less likely to be one of those “informed” players in an Atheist script, since only one player holds the Atheist token—fewer than the two or more evil players that exist in a standard game.
This reflects the basic structure of the genre: there’s a puzzle, an informed minority who knows the solution, and an uninformed majority trying to solve it. The Atheist fits perfectly within that frame. They are the informed minority, just like the Demon. The Demon is told the solution on Night 1. So is the Atheist.
You might object: That’s different! The Demon is trying to obscure the truth. The Atheist is trying to help town reach it.
Fair enough.
But think about how the Demon plays. Their job isn’t just to lie—they must craft plausible worlds. They work to eliminate possible worlds that could lead to the truth while preserving at least one false world that looks real. Ideally, by final three, the only world the good team believes in is the wrong one—and they vote accordingly.
Now compare that to the Atheist’s job: they must work to eliminate all incorrect worlds before final three, so that only the correct solution remains. So when the time comes, the good team is left with no choice but to execute the Storyteller.
It’s the same process, just in reverse. Both roles require understanding the moving parts of the game, seeing how narratives can be constructed and deconstructed, and nudging the town toward (or away from) specific outcomes.
In fact, one of the biggest reasons evil teams lose in Trouble Brewing is that the Demon focuses too narrowly on killing recurring powerful roles like the Empath or Undertaker without considering the big picture. Then suddenly they’re facing a Librarian-confirmed Saint, a trusted Recluse, and a Butler who’s slipped under the radar. No one left to frame. No plausible worlds left to hide in. The Demon gets executed, and evil loses.
Good teams can lose an Atheist game in the exact same way. If they leave too many plausible worlds intact, they’ll reach final three unsure of what’s true—and vote into the wrong world. The Atheist, as the one player with full knowledge, has a special responsibility to avoid that outcome. They need to help prune the decision tree, just as the Demon tries to fertilize it.
This doesn’t mean the Atheist has to dominate the game or be the loudest voice in the room. It just means that if the Atheist wants to win—not just know—they need to work just as hard as a Demon would to track and dismantle false worlds.
That’s what Demons do, after all.5
An Advanced Character for Beginners
When thinking about the Atheist as a character, I’ve already emphasized how they interact with the core mechanics of Clocktower: identifying false worlds, guiding execution order, managing a trust budget. But here’s the real issue—and probably the biggest reason a lot of people don’t like the Atheist:
Good is overwhelmingly favored in Atheist games. Not just slightly favored—heavily. In my experience, Good’s win rate should jump from around 50% in a standard evil-team game to closer to 95% in Atheist games.
There are many reasons for this. Some are good:
Storytellers often lean toward a Good win because it’s more satisfying to have a winner than a draw—and no one wins an Atheist game if the Good team loses.
Without socially evil players muddying the waters, it's easier for Good to work together.
Some reasons are bad:
Storytellers sometimes use “it’s an Atheist game” as a justification for wild or incoherent behavior that only makes sense in hindsight.
Players may treat the game as unserious or throwaway, assuming they can’t lose.
But a well-storytold Atheist game shouldn’t be a guaranteed win for Good. The storyteller should break the rules subtly—just enough to create doubt by final three. The Good team should be given all the tools they need to solve the puzzle, and just enough traps to fall into if they mismanage their information or execution budget.
That’s a high bar to meet.
Frankly, I can count on one hand the number of storytellers I trust to run any Clocktower game well for any group. When it comes to Atheist, I’m not sure I can count on one finger. That’s not a knock on most storytellers—it’s just that Atheist requires a very precise touch. I’m not saying most storytellers can’t run it, only that I’m more selective about when and where it works best.
And that’s a shame, because Atheist is one of the best tools available for learning to play Clocktower strategically. The stakes are lower (you’re probably going to win even if you misstep), and the information is simpler: all the key facts come from the storyteller, which means they're actually true—if interpreted correctly.6
Atheist games are an ideal environment to practice reading and using information, without the distortion of lies coming from evil players. Take the Investigator in Trouble Brewing, for example. They learn that a Scarlet Woman sits between the Mayor and the Soldier. From there, you have to consider a huge range of possibilities: the Investigator might be drunk, poisoned, lying, evil and honest, or just… wrong. The truth gets lost in layers of misdirection.
But in an Atheist game, information from the storyteller is either correct or intentionally misleading within bounds—and you know no evil player is fabricating claims. That makes it a perfect setting to hone worldbuilding: constructing plausible configurations of the script and player roles, and testing how they hold up.
Similarly, Atheist games give players a rare opportunity to practice lying as Good, without the social cost of "throwing" the game. In regular games, lying as Good can be risky—you may end up confusing your team or drawing a kill or execution. But Atheist gives players the freedom to experiment and explore the boundaries of the trust economy. You can test what kinds of lies can be recovered from, and which ones collapse your credibility. Want to see if you can bounce back after claiming Monk on Day One and getting no protection kills? Try it. You might learn where the line is.
This is especially valuable for players who’ve seen experienced Good players lie effectively but haven’t yet understood why or how to do it themselves. Many lie just because they’ve heard that “good players lie too,” but without intention or structure. Atheist games offer a low-pressure way to engage with those dynamics.
And then there’s execution budgeting—arguably the most important macro skill in Clocktower. The Atheist knows the correct final execution must be the Storyteller. They also know exactly how many executions are available: typically (number of players minus one) divided by two, rounded down. (So 7–8 players = 3 executions; 9–10 = 4; 11–12 = 5; etc.)
That means the Atheist can—and should—actively manage those executions. Each one should target a plausible world that needs to be eliminated. Not wasted on things like “let’s execute the Washerwoman to check her claim” or “let’s kill the Butler because they’re quiet.” Practicing this kind of resource management in an Atheist game trains you to recognize which executions serve the deduction process and which don’t.
In short, the Atheist might be unpopular—but they’re one of the best training wheels Clocktower has. And the skills you build there—world construction, truth parsing, lying as good, trust management, and resource efficiency—translate to every other game.
Convincing Other Players
This brings us to the second puzzle of Blood on the Clocktower. The first puzzle—solving the logic of the game—is one the Atheist still has to engage with fully: gathering information, building possible worlds, eliminating implausible ones through efficient use of the execution budget. But solving the puzzle isn’t enough.
The second puzzle is how to convince other people of what you’ve solved.
The art of persuasion has been studied for millennia. Plato, the thinker at the very foundation of the Western philosophical tradition, spent much of his energy attacking rhetoric—arguing that persuasion, as practiced by sophists, was a corrupting force that subverted truth. But regardless of his critique, the reality remains: in Clocktower, persuasion is an essential skill. Solving the game gets you nowhere if you can’t convince others to act on the solution.
Now, I'm not going to dive deeply into the academic study of rhetoric here—only skim the surface. But we should start with the simplest, oldest, and most useful rule: tailor your argument to your audience.
One of the earliest examples of comparative persuasive styles comes from The Iliad, Book 9—the so-called Embassy to Achilles. I’ve thought about this scene far more than is reasonable. I once read a commentator—I forget who—complain that poor Odysseus tried his best to persuade Achilles, only to be sabotaged by the oafish Ajax. That reading, to put it mildly, is nonsense. It assumes Odysseus, famous for his cleverness, must have argued effectively, and Ajax, the stereotypical brute, must have bungled things. But anyone who’s actually read the text knows the opposite is true.
Odysseus delivers Agamemnon’s offer: treasure, slaves, a princess for a wife. Achilles is unmoved. The entire reason Achilles left the war in the first place was because Agamemnon insulted his honor and asserted dominance. Offering bribes from Agamemnon just reaffirms that hierarchy—it's salt in the wound. Before Odysseus speaks, Achilles plans to leave in the morning. After, he's still leaving—and he’s angrier than before.
Then Ajax speaks. He offers no gifts. He doesn’t try to flatter. Instead, he criticizes Achilles’ pride, shames him for abandoning the comrades who love him and will die without him, and essentially tells Odysseus that they should give up and go home. And that works. Achilles changes course. He stays in the Greek camp. He agrees to return to the fight—under certain conditions.
Why does Ajax succeed where Odysseus fails? Because Ajax speaks to what Achilles cares about. Odysseus delivers what he thinks is a persuasive argument; Ajax speaks to his audience.
This is your job in Clocktower. In one group, persuading people may mean building airtight logical worlds. In another, it may mean appealing to social reads (“they’re too charming to be the Demon”). In another, it might be pointing out subtle rule breaks from the storyteller. The first step in persuasive play is learning what your audience actually finds convincing.
There’s no point offering Achilles Agamemnon’s bribes. You have to reach him through the love of the army.
Most games will include a few swing voters—players who are genuinely undecided between two (or more) worlds, or worse, who have been misled by the Evil Team and intend to vote against Good. Swing voters may respond to entirely different arguments than the group at large. If a poison-locked Empath is clearing the Demon, you’ll need to help them understand why their info is wrong. If the Soldier is entranced by the Demon’s social game, you’ll need to show how they’re being manipulated.
Often, you can afford to sit back, share your info, listen, and think. But sometimes you don’t have that luxury. A Ravenkeeper who saw the Imp in final three needs to push hard. A dead Librarian who confirmed the Butler can sit quietly. Different roles carry different weights of persuasive responsibility.
And then there’s the Atheist. The Atheist is always one of the players who knows the solution—or at least, knows the shape of the puzzle. That means the Atheist is always in the position of needing to guide the town to the solve. It’s not optional. But this pressure is also an opportunity.
You get to practice the art of persuasion under conditions where you're certain of the truth. You know it’s an Atheist game. Your job is to find the right way to make others see it. That doesn’t mean you need to be Odysseus, master of language and spin. It just means you need to be like Ajax—honest, pointed, and aware of what your audience actually values.
Conclusion
I’ve written a lot on the Atheist and strategy around it here. If you listen to the Grim Scenarios podcast, you may know we tiered every Blood on the Clocktower character by strategic depth, and may know that I was quite low on the Atheist’s strategic depth as a character. The point of this essay is not to argue that the Atheist is as strategically deep as characters like the Monk or the Damsel or the Pukka. It’s not. It is to push back on the idea that knowing the answer to a game of Blood on the Clocktower means there’s no strategy for the player involved. It is to talk about strategy a player needs to think about to get from knowing the solution to winning the game, collectively, with their team who agrees to the solution. It is to point out that while other characters may have more strategically interesting ways to find the solution than being told it by the token they pull, the Atheist must always play the second strategic game of puzzle that is only solved through democratic consensus.
https://bloodontheclocktower.tumblr.com/post/701516072579448832/blood-on-the-clocktower-is-a-strategy-game
There’s no reason not to have a trusted butler in final three.
You won’t be the Drunk if I’m running the game, but other storytellers feel differently than me here
Because I’m writing an Atheist strategy essay, this is all written from the Atheist is actually the Atheist perspective. I could write a whole different essay on how to counterplay or bluff the Atheist potential as good or evil.
I’m not really interested in discussing here the homebrew variant of Atheist where the Atheist is listed as an evil demon on the script and the token doesn’t go into play. I understand some people really like that; I think Clocktower stops being Clocktower when there’s not a player who starts knowing the solution. But that’s an argument for a different time and a different place.
See again Andrew Nathenson’s essay on Clocktower as a strategy game for why all information is true, even if it's not.