Multiplayer Politics

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Limited

Guest
I know this discussion probably has been done before, but last night the issue of "How far can you go with Multiplayer politics?" really reared it's ugly head.

Four players (amongst them Jorael and myself) were playing a chaos casual game, with one playing a Dwarf deck (lets call him player A), Jorael playing a "land-recursion" deck, player B playing a white-equipment deck and me playing my WGB creature-enchantment deck. Both Jorael and me are controlling forests and Player A has two Dwarven Grunts on the table (1/1 mountainwalk).
Player B casts an Isochron Scepter and imprints a Mind Bend, usually used to bend the protection of his White Knights or bend his Karma.
Player A plays his Dwarven Bloodboiler, but has no way to make one of his 5 dwarves unblockable so he passes the turn to Jorael. Before player B takes his turn, Player A remarks that its "too bad" no one is playing mountains. Player B agrees, but doesn't get the hint. Then Player A just out right askes him if he could bend one of the Grunts to Forestwalk.
Jorael and I object to the severe lack of subtle politics, but Player B complies. It is a good play for him; he just didn't think of it.
In my turn I play a Questing Pheldagrif (hippolictics).
Player A takes the turn and sends the Grunt my way and I take 11 damage. I'm at three. At the end of Player B's turn, i decide to turn all my mana into usefull stuff for Jorael, so that he may have a chance when I'm dead and the dwarves are headed his way. I give him some life, some cards and two Hippo tokens.
Player A takes his turn and charges in my direction. Jorael plays a Constant Mists. All of sudden, "teams" have been formed, but Jorael is still my opponent. I live, Jorael takes the turn and plays an Attrition. I give him a lot of hippos and Player B is out of creatures.
During my turn I manage to flip my Kitsune Mystic by playing a Armadilla Cloak. Now I'm able to move it and my Unquestioned Authority around. After a round of Constant Mists and severe moving around of Authority, Player A is sufficiently disgusted and scoops.
Jorael offers me a draw and I accept.

After this, player A announces that he's done for the evening and leaves. I feel kinda bad about this, but I kinda feel he had it coming.. right?

I am :confused:
 
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Mikeymike

Guest
Its a tough call.

Personally I think he had it coming. He started the politicking, so he has little right in getting offended when the tables are turned.

That said, he probably felt you responded to what was likely a slap on the wrist (because it was Player B who really made the mistake, not him) with a Sledgehammer.

Politics are extremely tough to define, for instance it can be argued that subtle politics are worse than obvious politics, because at least when you are being obvious you are not coming off like a manipulative bastard. That is why I take a very B/W stance on it. Either politicking is allowed, and no one has the right to complain about it, or they are forbidden. It helps prevent situations like the one you ran into last night.

On a side note, I've been toying with the idea of an actual "Political Card", i.e. a card that each player starts out with. When you commit a political action, you have to pass your card to the person you 'offended' at the end of turn. They can use your card as if it were their own, as well as their own card. If you have no cards, you are forbidden from politicking, and if you do the table has to agree to blatantly contradict your request.
 
L

Limited

Guest
I like the card idea, but it might cause endless discussion about what politicking is. Crying out "Oh no" when someone plays a bombcreature is already drawing attention to it.. Players with creature removal will not forget that it's there.
I usually never ask for anything. Golden rule. I'm not gonna ask "If I were to incinerate that players only blocker, would you attack him?" but just going to consider wether or not I can take the risk of not be able to burn the attacker when it's coming my way against crippling that other player.
If nobody asks for anything, people can still apply politics (like giving hippos away) but can't expect the outcome to always be benificial.. people won't have to reply or lie about intended actions. Burning away someone's blocker could also be an insentive to alpha-strike me because the other player has become less of a threat.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
This is kind of similiar to Isty's thread a while back.

I basically agree with Mikeymike. And his words that either it should be agreed upon at the start of the game/evening whether "politiking" should be allowed or not (and I guess it also depends on who the players are - I'm guessing from the original post that it's not people who play together very often? Except jorael and Limited, obviously).

On the other hand, GO DWARFS! :p
 
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Mikeymike

Guest
Understood, there are still definitions that would need to be handled.

At the least, it appears like you guys need to have a discussion as a group, with the intended goal being that you (as a group) do not want what happened last night to happen again. Not so much because it was wrong, but really because you guys are there to have fun and don't want petty politics ruining a perfectly good night of Magic.
 
L

Limited

Guest
Spiderman said:
(and I guess it also depends on who the players are - I'm guessing from the original post that it's not people who play together very often?
This is where it gets complicated. We do play together very often (Jorael, PlayerB and me about once a week, Player A sitting in on every odd week) and have played together a long time.
This had become a problem before. Player A and myself knew each others decks by heart, so in a MP game we could point out to all the others what cards to counter and what permanents to remove. This resulted in us always trying to kill each other, removing each other from the game and not having a lot of fun. We talked about it and discussed that we shouldn't publicly announce the knowledge of each others deck (content or strategy wise) and this worked for quite a while. That's why I'm bothered by the events of last night; politics isn't entirely captured by our agreement, but I still think he was out of line..

About setting ground rules; I think this kinda events will probably be a good deterrent from attempting politics again ;)
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think it's time for you guys to get some new decks then :)

But if you guys have known each other for a fairly long time, then a discussion like this should go pretty easy on whether such verbal politiking is allowed or not. :)
 
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Mikeymike

Guest
Limited said:
This is where it gets complicated. We do play together very often (Jorael, PlayerB and me about once a week, Player A sitting in on every odd week) and have played together a long time.
This had become a problem before. Player A and myself knew each others decks by heart, so in a MP game we could point out to all the others what cards to counter and what permanents to remove. This resulted in us always trying to kill each other, removing each other from the game and not having a lot of fun. We talked about it and discussed that we shouldn't publicly announce the knowledge of each others deck (content or strategy wise) and this worked for quite a while. That's why I'm bothered by the events of last night; politics isn't entirely captured by our agreement, but I still think he was out of line...
I completely understand. Politics, and "too much of another player" syndrome hurt our group severly last year when our most experienced - and probably best - player left (well, we all simultaneously went separate ways). While I miss playing with him/against him, it was likely for the best, as our group has run teflon-smooth ever since.
 
L

Limited

Guest
Compared to my playgroup, I have a lot of cards and several tournament worthy cards.. but I like playing with funny decks.. Winning because you have four Gravepact and four Hymn to Tourachs in your deck just doesn't do it for me.
Player A usually builds great decks, but uses power cards to make them perform (too) well.. Tradewind Riders, Solemn Simulacrum.. stuff like that. I really can't think of a deck in which I would play four Tradewind Riders (which is a spirit by the way) and not feel 'dirty' when playing one.
Result: I play with toned down but fun (well, at least to me) decks and he usually wins.
 
O

orgg

Guest
I'd say the play was a bit... crude, but legal.

Ya'll might've overreacted to it. Pound the guy who was rude and basically said, to quote the movie Willow, "Hey Ugly! Wake Up!"

The guy who decided to give him a fair shot with his new forest savvy dwarf was a simi-innocent bystander.

I like polotics... but something so unsubtle should probably be frowned upon.
 
J

jorael

Guest
This is the first time 'open politics' were shown in a game. Stuff like 'you form teams, we form teams' was said and done. Players will always cooperate together, but usually only for one action, not the rest of the game. In retrospect, if Limited and I helped each other as long as we liked and said nothing about it and had not openly discussed teaming up on them, then it would have gone differently.

We went too far. It was funny at the time, but not for the other players and playing magic should be fun for everyone. Using constant mist once, and using some hippo tokens to establish board control is one thing, totally annihilating 2 opponents and then offer remise is another.

Next time I would be more careful in such situations.
 
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TheCasualOblivion

Guest
4 player game. We have me, playing U/W annoying, some guy playing a Pinger deck, a Mono Red burn deck, and somebody else whose deck I don't really remember. The Mono Red burn deck was doing well. I play Galina's Knight (2/2 Pro Red), and I politely tell the pinger player to leave it alone, that I'm going to rape the red player with it. He pings it anyway, saying its his duty to kill anything that comes into play. I make it my personal quest to absolutely destroy him, and I eliminated him at the sacrifice of my own survival. My Galina's Knight had nothing to do with him, at least not for a while, he should have known better.
 
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Mikeymike

Guest
TheCasualOblivion said:
4 player game. We have me, playing U/W annoying, some guy playing a Pinger deck, a Mono Red burn deck, and somebody else whose deck I don't really remember. The Mono Red burn deck was doing well. I play Galina's Knight (2/2 Pro Red), and I politely tell the pinger player to leave it alone, that I'm going to rape the red player with it. He pings it anyway, saying its his duty to kill anything that comes into play. I make it my personal quest to absolutely destroy him, and I eliminated him at the sacrifice of my own survival. My Galina's Knight had nothing to do with him, at least not for a while, he should have known better.
That's just downright dumb. Why would he kill it? I mean, its not like A) you were going to bother attacking him or B) even if you did he couldn't kill it anyway?

Principle makes people do really stupid things sometimes.
 
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TheCasualOblivion

Guest
Its not really principle as much as dumb. This is the same guy who wasted one of 4 counterspells in an entire deck on some 2/2 bear that was the least threatening card in my entire deck, and he knew it. In his words, he had the mana, he had the counterspell, so he just HAD to use it. I showed him my hand after that with 4 cards he needed to counter a lot more, and gave him the opportunity to take it back. He does dumb stuff like that all the time.

Spiderman said:
Heh, CO, you sound a bit like one of the guys in my group...
I'm not the most politically correct or sensitive person on the planet. I don't care much for feelings or nicey nice. I tell it how it is.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I meant retaliating to the exclusion of the other opponents. This guy in my group does the same; say you Wrath his army or something, he starts gunning for you no matter what the other players are doing.
 
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TheCasualOblivion

Guest
I really don't do that often. I usually try to lay low, then try to win when the game gets a little thin. Its just that particular play really angered me for some reason. You don't destroy a card that only hoses the most powerful player, who is also as a burn player the biggest threat to your prodigal sorcerer deck. He deserved it.
 
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Mikeymike

Guest
TheCasualOblivion said:
You don't destroy a card that only hoses the most powerful player, who is also as a burn player the biggest threat to your prodigal sorcerer deck. He deserved it.
I'd have to agree with that.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Heh, people do some wacky stuff. I've seen many a weird play like that in my group, where there's a player with a much powerful position yet a card that could threaten him is either destroyed or countered because it's also perceived as a "minor" or future threat to the destroyer...

Or even if just a certain card comes out (like Morphling)...
 
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