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(Note: this is Risk). I recently played a game with higher-level players. One player was incredibly passive; their bonus would get broken every turn, and rather than doing anything to defend it (and they had enough troops to defend it), they pulled their troops into the middle of the bonus and let everyone else take turns breaking their bonus. This could work fine in a lower-level lobby—eventually the other players might get bored and start hitting each other—but not with better players. Good players realize a couple things about them: 1. They won't retaliate, so I can knock off a few of their troops at no risk to myself. 2. They won't do anything, so any fighting among the rest of the players will effectively be a troop subsidy to them. Since they're unwilling to help anybody, no one wants to give them free troops, and since they've demonstrated an unwillingness to retaliate, there's really no risk with hitting them over and over. So, naturally, they were the next player to be eliminated. One thing that's nice about Risk is there's very little to the mechanics. There aren't combos to practice or build orders to memorize, mostly just an understanding of what other people want and how to negotiate. Pretty much everyone rated intermediate and above has the mechanics down: how to move troops around to not block each other, how to choke out other players, what moves are game ending for you or another player, and so on. The thing that sets apart intermediates, experts, masters, and grandmasters is almost entirely their ability to work with other players. However, since many (most?) players are "smashy noobs", lots of people rise up the ranks by just assuming everyone else is a smashy noob, and playing extremely passively to compensate. It works, until they end up in a lobby full of masters. |