Board Game Arena

MrBeardy wrote: ↑26 October 2022, 00:06 i just encountered one of these blocker players. First moves are to take 1 and 2 train routes at random places just to frustrate. I see what the OP's on about now.

Are you sure that they're only doing it to frustrate? Some of the one-train routes can be critical for connecting longer routes (the two from Seattle in particular) and in a two- or three-player game it's easy for those to get blocked off early. So reserving them by grabbing them with your first move is a legitimate play if you think you might need them later.

If these moves are chosen just to hypothetically block, they're bad moves. They don't know you're going for those routes, they're not getting many points for them, and they're losing moves by trying to anticipate your moves, which, once you've seen, you can work around.

I don't block for the sake of blocking often, usually because I'm at the limit of my cars just trying to complete my own routes, and playing purely to block tends not to win you many games. Sometimes I will take a route slightly out of its normal way to obstruct another player but I won't tend to grab random routes nowhere near the rest of my trains just to stop an opponent. But occasionally if my opponent hands one to me on a plate and I can afford it, I will, because why not? It's a part of the game and a perfectly legitimate tactic.

@Kruszer no offense but I just took the time to watch your entire game on replay. Absolutely not anyone's fault but yours for that.

1. Not the best strategic move in the first place to take more tickets.
2. Absolutely absurd you did not purchase Nashville-Atlanta as soon as you had Nashville-Pittsburgh and had draw the Miami route. If you had done that you would have had no problems.
3. You could have purchased Nashville-Raleigh and Raleigh-Atlanta a full 4 turns earlier than you began to, and would have connected.
4. You could have even also gone down the Atlantic coast to connect--NY to Washington, Washington to Raleigh, Raleigh to Atlanta, in that order. You would have been ahead of the others.

As soon as you have the train cards to purchase the completion of your route, do it. Don't wait for the optimal efficiency of card play (not using wilds, saving for the future, etc.)

All the best,
SM

Well I have started playing this game a little...

Kruszer is actually correct in a way. At the low rating levels, a lot of players do leave some very obvious gaps in the middle of their network, and no-one else ever seems to take advantage. So I could see how some players might think that there is an unwritten rule that this is not done the thing.

As a Quoridor player of course, I like to block when this happens as it often makes the difference between winning or losing to that player, but I do wonder if I am getting some red flags as it doesn't always seem to go down very well.

Maybe I should try Arena mode - presumably that is a bit more competitive.

The goal of the game is to score more than your opponent, not score as much as you can. There are ticket combos where there's no way for you to win unless you force your opponents to score negative points by blocking. My advice is instead of blaming your opponent for making a strategic block, try to anticipate blocking moves so that you can reduce the risk of being blocked.

I'm with you. I think blocking for the sake of blocking ruins the spirit of a fun game. It's like that in so many other games - the unfortunate mixing of people who play like us and people who like other strategies. I only play with my friends now because I can't stand "cut throat" anything. It's unfortunate as it limits ability to meet new people to play with. It would be nice for BGA to incorporate an overall way to express the type of player you are (e.g. in it for the fun or competitive) and to advertise boards only open to one group or another. Of course there is an option for people to muck with that but red thumbs down will quickly resolve that.

LD4me wrote: ↑23 November 2022, 00:31 and to advertise boards only open to one group or another. Of course there is an option for people to muck with that but red thumbs down will quickly resolve that.

If you wish to request a non-standard play style you can already use the Presentation feature to try to request only like minded players join, I show how above.

Mr_Magic wrote: ↑23 November 2022, 17:08

LD4me wrote: ↑23 November 2022, 00:31 and to advertise boards only open to one group or another. Of course there is an option for people to muck with that but red thumbs down will quickly resolve that.

If you wish to request a non-standard play style you can already use the Presentation feature to try to request only like minded players join, I show how above.

It's a fair answer - the problem is that it doesn't actually work in practise as a lot of people such as myself are non-premium members, and it is very difficult to join games on the "Manual" mode where you can see the "Presentation" as all of the games fill up very very quickly. Hence, we all join games on "Automatic" mode, and hit "Accept" very quickly without reading the presentation to make sure we get in a game after a few minutes of waiting.

As I mentioned above, I am quite comfortable with blocking, and I block quite a bit if I think that it will help me win. I do notice that 50%+ of opponents at lower ranking levels do not like to play that way though, and would prefer to play against similar non-sabotage opponents.

So, I do personally think that this thread is a fair call - well the non-sabotage players could presumably play each other on Training mode? I mean, if you are going to make a big deal about not allowing other players to use valid strategies within the game, then you can't also demand to get ranking points at their expense when you beat them...I think that makes logical sense.

Maybe "Training" mode, should be renamed as "Casual" mode, with the possibility of adding time limits, as calling it "Training" mode is a bit patronising towards people who may fully understand the rules, just not want to play against competitive players.

I think the onus is on the players who wish to play the game in a non-standard manner to organise a group of likeminded people

Uh lots of harsh answers here. I gave my (long) opinion on that post: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27216 (6th post of 1st page).

Always remember you are in a platform with hardcore gamers. That mean that many players will play a lot and will be pretty good. At this point, creating custom rule can be pretty hard to define what is legal and what is not.

If you are playing with friends/family, you can easily find some players which just wanna play for fun. Of course, you would need to block someone sometimes if you need that path. But blocking just for the sake of blocking, especially in 4+ players game is just not fun. It make the player who block win, but for players who just want to get an easy time, they will hate you.

I developped a lot more in the other subject. But here, we are online, (so?) blocking is the norm.

This is such an interesting take. It's just a game, one where everyone is trying to get the most points. Blocking makes a lot of sense.

I get that it's frustrating in the moment, but that's just part of playing games. You have to accept that you're not always going to win every single game. By caring this much, you're taking something that's supposed to be enjoyable and ruining it for yourself.