Noise decoys: TVs, radios & firecrackers

Michael hunts by information, and noise is information you can forge. Turning on TVs and radios creates noise he hears from a distance — a free, item-free decoy that can pull him toward an empty living room while the real work happens elsewhere. Most teams never touch the dials.

The free decoys: TVs and radios

Every powered house is a decoy dispenser. Flip a TV or radio on as you leave a cleared house and you've planted a question Michael has to answer: is that residents, players, or nothing? He can't know without walking there — and his time is the one resource he can't repair.

Uses that pay:

• Cover for objectives. Radio on in the house across the street from your fuse install.
• Escort masking. Noise on the block you're leaving, silence on the one you're entering.
• Disorientation. Two or three sources running fragments his sound picture entirely — he's reported to find the noise genuinely disorienting, not just distracting.

The dependency: decoys need power. A blacked-out block is a silent block — one more reason the light war matters.

The loud item: firecrackers

Firecrackers blind and can stun up close — but their second job is the decoy: a bang audible from far away, placeable wherever you aren't. A firecracker pop on the far side of the map reads as something happening, and a Michael who investigates has left your half of Haddonfield.

The rules of forgery

1. 01

   Decoy away from residents. Pulling Michael toward a noise source next to the family you hid is self-sabotage. Send him to empty corners.

2. 02

   Don't decoy your own escape. The exit you're about to open should be the quietest place on the map until the moment it isn't.

3. 03

   Layer with real noise discipline. Decoys work because noise usually means people — which is also why your own sprinting through quiet houses betrays you. Forge the signal and control the genuine one.