[SETUP] Wandering Flagbearers

[Jake The Wolfie]

(This was originally for the August Challenge, but since we are well past August, I am putting it here.)

Wandering Flagbearers

1 Mafia Flagbearer

1 Mafia Goon

1 Town Flagbearer

6 Vanilla Townies

In this setup, every player's role is first randed, then each player is randed on the 5x5 matrix, with the following restrictions:

The Town and Mafia Flagbearers must start out near one of their faction, and away from the other team's Flagbearer.

Mechanics

The Flagbearers start out the game knowing their immediate 3x3 area.
The Matrix wraps around (i.e [0,0] is next to [0,1], [1,1], [1,0], [1,4], [0,4], [4,4], [4,0] and [4,1])
During the night, each player may choose to move one space, with Vanilla roles restricted to orthogonal movement.
If two players try moving into the same space, the Mafia Flagbearer holds top priority, followed by the Mafia Goon, followed by the Town Flagbearer. In the event that two Vanilla Town try moving to the same space, neither move.
After the night resolves, the Flagbearers each get a 3x3 matrix, which indicates the 8 immediate spaces next to them.
All Vanilla roles will be told if there is a Flagbearer in their 3x3 matrix, but not where.
The Mafia kill as normal.
If a Flagbearer dies, their team loses.

Here is a visual aid for the Matrix:

[4,0]	[4,1]	[4,2]	[4,3]	[4,4]
[3,0]	[3,1]	[3,2]	[3,3]	[3,4]
[2,0]	[2,1]	[2,2]	[2,3]	[2,4]
[1,0]	[1,1]	[1,2]	[1,3]	[1,4]
[0,0]	[0,1]	[0,2]	[0,3]	[0,4]

[Something_Smart]

Feels pretty scumsided.

The chance of randomly hitting the flagbearers probably roughly cancels out, taking into account that the mafia goon will protect the daylights out of their partner and the town flagbearer will lurk to avoid being a high priority NK. Leaving a vanilla 7:2, with only the grid mechanic to help town's EV. And the grid seems to not be very helpful to town.

Either players can massclaim position each day (this forces the flagbearers to step orthogonally to not be outed), or they can only claim when a vanilla detects a flagbearer. I'm not sure which is better, but either way, a VT claiming they detected a flagbearer is just as likely to out the town flagbearer as it is to out the mafia one (maybe more, since there's a chance the mafia can claim each other's positions if the goon and the flagbearer can both determine they aren't next to the town flagbearer). And actually in the worst case the mafia flagbearer can always claim town flagbearer if outed, and they get two more shots at finding the town flagbearer. So it seems like this mechanic, too, will roughly balance out, and this just balances like 7:2 mountainous which is awful for town?

This mechanic seems like it might work better with a larger player count, so that people have more than a few nights to actually maneuver and use the grid to their advantage rather than stumbling blindly.

[Jake The Wolfie]

Vanilla players don't know their position in the grid, or if movement failed.

[Something_Smart]

But the flagbearers do?

How does the grid help town at all, then?