skeletonator said:
Twn2dn said:
And there seems to be a sub-element to this whole "melee negotiating" note, which is to say that no matter how well you negotiate, you may lose simply because an opponent thinks it would be "fun" to arbitrarily choose a winner. In one game, an opponent picked an underdog to help win. Why someone would reward a player for performing poorly early in the game by helping them win later is beyond me, but then again I guess if you're going to overtly play "kingmaker," you may as well use that muscle to swing the game as much as possible.
I saw the opposite to this a few times. Two of the melee tables at which I sat had, for lack of a catchier term, a "kingbreaker" (which is still kind of catchy). The only goal was to put certain players into last, with no regard for who actually won.
Actually you're right, one of my three tables had one of these players too. And to be honest, this makes even less sense to me...to (seemingly) arbitrarily prevent others from winning. To clarify for those who weren't there, these players weren't trying to win, they were just trying to affect the game.
Now, I don't deny that it can be fun to significantly alter a game, and I think everyone is entitled to get something different out of competitive play (ie you don't have to be uber-competitive and always try to win). I wouldn't want to ever dictate to someone how they should be playing a game either. But this approach was a major potential NPE..."potential" in this case only because the person was running the Alliance agenda, and I was able to rush to 10 power on round 1 despite the shenanigans. (I'm sure that just made the whole game even more of an NPE for the two other players though, one of whom could have made top 16 had he won this game.)