Playing defensively

[darinx5]

I've seen a few players seem genuinely angry over playing defensively (e.g., drafting a card that may not be useful to you so another player can't get it). This seems to me like a pretty fundamental part of the strategy of this and other similar games (like Sushi Go) but I was curious what others thought. Is it consider too cutthroat to play like this? To be clear, these issues came up in ranked games.

[Arbre Bojo]

The offensive vs defensive aspect of the game, the planning in order to "defend" against strong cards is what makes the game so good for me.
I would argue that not apreciating that aspect means you don't fully appreciate the extent of the game.
But in the end, some people will like it, some people won't, and that's absolutely okay.

[Zarakava]

Counter-drafting is a critical and important part of the game, especially in 1v1. And in ranked games, you do anything you can to win. It can be fun to make other people mad

[jsnoop36]

I have a fair number of thoughts on this, but let me just start by being clear that playing defensively is 1000% a part of the game and in fact a huge part of the strategy and something that every player should without a doubt be doing, especially in ranked games. I think where this becomes a little bit trickier is in 2-player games versus in games with 3 or more players.

I think between this site and another one, I've played more than 3000 ranked 2-player games and I've never had anyone complain about defensive play in a 2-player game and I've in fact received a large number of compliments from players who learned how critical the strategy is from watching me play. 2-player IAWW is a zero-sum game, 10 points that your opponent doesn't score are worth the same amount to you as 10 points that you do score. There are many very interesting decision points, e.g., you are going white/yellow financiers and your opponent is going black/blue generals and to start round 4, you are dealt Casino City and Atlantis. Casino City is worth say 15 points for you, but Atlantis is worth 20 to your opponent, you should actually draft Atlantis.

That said, I don't enjoy 3+ player IAWW nearly as much and I think it is particularly poorly suited for competitive play (I won't ever play ranked 3+ player) as a result of the imbalances with defensive play. And I have many a time seen players get mad at defensive play (or lack of defensive play) in multi-player games. If one of your opponents is not playing defensively in a multi-player game, the game becomes impossible to play. And the game-theoretical implications of "should I play defensively and steal this card, or should i pass on it and require my opponent to play defensively and steal this card instead" can really break the game and create anger between players. And, they are exacerbated ever further by BGA's ELO ranking system, which rewards getting 2nd place, rather than just trying to win every game. So you could do the game theoretically correct thing to try to win the game and then have the player after your get mad and play for 2nd, rather than trying to win himself, and just give the game to the 3rd player. It is all somewhat broken. And if you then factor in that the odds that a 3+ player game has all players of similar abilities, where often one player is significantly weaker and not playing defensively, the game becomes determined by the randomness of turn order in a particular round. Hence, it not being fun.

[darinx5]

Thanks, all. Jsnoop, that's an interesting point you bring up...my experience (for whatever reason) has been specifically with me taking a card that was very useful to my opponent and recycling it. The complaints were that it was meant to be a friendly game. Not sure why they played ranked if that's what they wanted