Melee had the largest turn out for worlds last year. Don'tr listen to him. You know nothing Jon Surreal.

Sorry man but you are just wrong. There is a large and vocal group that prefer joust (the 1v1 format), but melee (multiplayer) is well supported and seems to have far more people who play it that way if the lead designer is to be trusted.

I also dispute that VTES was the best multiplayer game. The attack to one side and defend to the other side is clunky and artificial, and getting eliminated and having to wait until one player wins the game before we can start up another one just isn't fun.

Don't the rules for multiplayer (the role tokens, specifically) limit kingmaking to some degree?

MarthWMaster said:

I am not sure if there are some specific tournament rules for melee. But I heard some king making happenings in tournaments. Like there were two friends in the finals and the other just boosted the other player to win (when it seemed the other player didn't have a big chance to win anymore). I also heard of some price splits like "I will make everything I can to make you win if you give me 20% split of the prices". These kind of things happens in free for all (everyone vs everyone) multiplayer and some say it is part of the game also.

Surreal said:

I'd be in that camp as well. There's nothing that says agreements made during the game have to be honored afterwards.

Ok let me qualify my previous statement. While Joust in Agot is considered more competative (from what I have seen in my 3 years of play) Melee is still a fully supported and insanely fun game variant. As Penfold rightly said Melee has full and incredibly strong tournament support, my point was that the world meta as a whole isn't melee focused.

That said, there are plenty of people out there that much prefer melee over joust and the unique rules and conditions melee places on deck building and players is definately a whole game of its own. Its worth nothing too that while I say Joust is the more prominent competatively I find 9 times out of 10 my playgroup play 3 or 4 way games. Its much easier, and much more fun, to play this game in multiplayer than any card game I've played anyway and I find it also encourages a lot more table talk and player interaction than most other games.

As for Kingmaking, I've never had the problem in my meta (but maybe we all just hate each other like that) but it is possible, though it seems unlikely. The game mechanics don't really like people helping other people for too long or bashing one player for too long, the game focuses more on the tension between trying to rise to a decent power level while still being the smallest threat before rushing for the win unexpectedly. Obviously there are situations where friends help friends etc. but thats in every game no?

DerBarchen said:

Not in the 2 player ones, or in many other euro style games where interaction tends to be limited. Personally, I tend to prefer two player or limited interaction games because of the lack of negotiation, meta-gaming, etc… When people can gang up on the stronger player, that to me is a flaw in the game. Ideally the better you are at the game, the better your chance of winning should be. Kingmaking in the strictest sense is only one of a whole host of metagaming problems. I don't mind some level of interaction in a multiplayer game, as long as it's limited enough that the stronger player still has an advantage. But if your success at negotiation starts to matter more than your success at actually playing the game, then in my mind that game has failed.

It is a frequent problem of friends helping friends in competitive head to head games. Scouting by way of informing on certain players deck tech, colluding to take a draw so both of you will make the final cut out of swiss rather than one of you in and one of you out (and a different person getting that final slot) are all known things.

And being able to table talk your way to a victory is strategy. Convincing someone to help you at a table, forming an alliance is part of the game, not a flaw. You may dislike it, but that is about your personal preferences not a flaw in game design any more than having to resource cards you put in your deck is a flaw in Cthulhu, or having to play runner vs corp is a flaw in Netrunner. They are features of the game, not flaws.

And if you have ever watched AGoT played at a high level in melee there is a reason why the same players win over and over at regionals and nationals, even though every other experienced player knows that person is very good and wins frequently, because it takes skill. The ability to bluff, cajole, threaten, all based on the cards in hand and on the table, as well as building a deck that allows you to do so is all skill. But it is more than just the skill of playing the cards as you draw them, but also the skill of playing the player. Head to head players like to pretend that what they are doing is playing poker, while melee games are like bingo, mostly just luck. The reality is they are not playing poker, they are playing five card draw, while multiplayer is Texas Hold 'Em.

Perhaps I misphrased that. Being able to interact with other players, form alliances, or gang up on someone isn't a flaw in itself. What I'm trying to say is that when the game ends up being more about the table talk than it is the actual game mechanics, then I consider that a flaw unless it's specifically supposed to be a game about negotiation. If your rules are mostly irrelevant because some other faction ( whether it be luck, table talk, etc…) plays a bigger role in determining the outcome than they do then that seems like a flaw to me. There certainly IS still a skill involved, just not necessarily one about the game.

Calling it a "flaw" of course is subjective. Some people eat up negotiation games, even party games where the actual rules of the game themselves are subject to the players. Some people like games where skill at the game is a small factor, because then everyone has a chance to win. I know others who like *some* skill in a game, but hate deep games because then someone can be enough better that they win nearly every game. They either want enough randomness that anyone can win, or for skill to top out quick enough that you can play on par with anyone after no more than a couple of games. I'm not one of those people. I like the better playing winning nearly all the time. Even if you're the underdog it gives you honest feedback on how you're doing and it encourages you to learn and improve.

I'm not saying anything specifically about A Game of Thrones though, because I haven't played it. I have no way to know what percentage of the game is playing the game, the table talk metagame, etc…

The point I am making is you are judging the game and what is and is not skill based in regards to the game itself based on your own preferences. That is no different than me saying games that only allow the pieces of the game to effect the outcome of the game are flawed. Any game that doesn't allow me to use my creativity, intellect, ability to bluff, and strategize, and outthink my opponent is flawed.

The better player does win in games that have politicing in them, because that ability to form alliances is part of the game.

I bring up AGoT because many of the players who prefer it 1v1 say exactly the same things you do, ignoring the fact that again, the same people tend to win or score highly in multi with the same frequency that the top players tend to win or score highly in 1v1. Diplomacy, Rex, AGoT etc. etc. are not ever determined solely by someones ability to negotiate. The win condition is not get everyone on your side, or to attack everyone but you. Those victory points must still be scored and you must still protect your position, as a matter of fact you must do so against at least twice as many and frequently three or four times as many opponents.

In AGoT you must build your deck with the knowledge in mind that will be facing multiple types of decks, you will need means of protecting yourself AND able to exploit openings where you find them. You also need to include cards that can be used as carrot and stick. And then you have to be able to read the metagame and your specific game to know what kinds of carrots and what kinds of sticks will work best, as well as what your overall strategy is going to be (do you rush all out, do you hang back and appear to be non-threatening, do you disrupt others plans, etc.).

All of this needs to be balanced with the skill of who can be bribed and who can be blackmailed, who can be cajoled, and who can be threatened, into taking actions that benefit you, and what cards you will need to play to do so.

There is obviously nothing wrong with it not being for you, but you are completely mischaracterizing this kind of game. It is literally at least as skillful a game as a 1v1 version of the same game, and a very sound argument could be made that it requires a more diverse but just as deep skill set to do well in it.

Penfold said:

Right, but you're describing a situation like a tournament where everyone is trying to act in their own self-interest. In that situation, the table talk balances out because nobody is going to want to hurt themselves just to take down someone else or throw the game to their buddy.

Casual games aren't generally like this (at least not in my experience) - there you often have at least one biased player who doesn't act in their own best self interest which is when things get thrown off. It's not always even out of spite, sometimes they're just a lesser skilled player who can't judge well what the relative positions are and they give someone a large advantage through a bad play.

Anyway, this is obviously a hotbutton issue for AGoT so it's probably best to drop it.

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but I was only concerned with the situation in tournament play. In casual games, I don't mind if there's a bit of kingmaking, so long as the guilty party(ies) have no chance of winning the game anyway. I'll admit that the less kingmaking there is in a game, the better, but only when it comes not at the cost of interaction with the other players, since that's why I'm playing multiplayer in the first place. So that's where I think dboeren and I must agree to disagree. Negotiation and diplomacy are player skills, just as much as are the ability to predict the outcome of various phases through probability, calculate the remaining contents of one's own deck, etc., and if a player has these in spades, I see no reason for him to use them to assist in winning the game, especially in a setting like A Game of Thrones.

Penfold said:

I love table talking and I play game because of player interaction. I hate the multiplayer solitare games. I am just not so big fan of how AgoT handles the multiplayer. Game shouldn't able to be decided before the game even begins (that is the situation if two friends share a table and what happened in one AGoT worlds melee tournament and this situation is easy to do in AGoT). I am ok if there are deals flying during the game and when everybody plays for themselves. Deals should affect only for the game which is played now and only the winner wins something and everybody else in finals just share the losing 2nd spot. That is reason why I like mechanisms of Vtes so much. King making is harder with that mechanism but it allows a lot of table talking and dealing. I like AGoT 1vs1 a lot tho.

Sorry for double post

Plotting ouside of the game is collusion and is forbidden under good sportsmanship rules which are part of the tourney rules in AGoT. Two people wanting to cheat at the final table is just that. Cheating. Same can be done in the final four of a joust… and has been done, at worlds even.

So it appears the problem is you have an issue with cheating. Great. Me too.