Board Game Arena

How does the BGA community feel about two players systematically playing together against a third player in Arena?

I’m talking specifically about ***. They repeatedly play together, and from what I’ve seen, their moves are consistently directed against the third player while benefiting each other.

This is not a temporary in-game alliance. It is repeated coordinated 2-vs-1 play by the same pair.

It also appears to have helped Bruno reach #1 this season, which raises obvious questions about the integrity of the Arena ranking.

What is even more disappointing is that reports about this behavior seem to lead nowhere. So at this point, it looks like BGA effectively tolerates coordinated 2-vs-1 play in Arena, even when it affects the top rankings.

Is this really considered acceptable competitive play on Board Game Arena?

Edited by moderator: naming is bad...

I haven't looked at any of these players' history, but this is a problem that arises in Arena. Someone with no integrity decides they want to be Champion and this is how they might try to do it.

In order to get a response from BGA, you will need to:

- Document the frequency with which the players are playing together in Arena games. If it's a very high percentage of both of their Arena games, this is suspect. Arena matchmaking should be random, and two unrelated players should not have simultaneous sessions very often.

- Look at the win frequency of the players when playing together. One may have an inordinately high win rate versus the other player's very low win rate when playing together. This is consistent with kingmaking

- Look at the win frequency of the players when NOT playing together. If these are substantially different than when playing together, this is suspect

- Document any highly questionable gameplay choices, including a link to the replay. These need to be smoking gun levels of incriminating, not just that someone made a bad decision in isolation. If there are many examples of this, send the 3-4 best to BGA in a mod report.

The above all needs to go into a mod report. It takes a lot of time for mod reports to be picked up, and they will be dismissed unless you send solid evidence. Don't be angry or excessively accusatory, just lay out the facts clearly and simply. I've been down this road, so take my advice, and good luck with your complaint

The arithmetic here isn’t particularly difficult. Out of their last 100 games, I’d say they played at the same table in at least 95 of them. One can only admire that kind of matchmaking luck.

I only encountered them once myself. I started looking at their statistics after a series of very questionable decisions that consistently benefited each other — every Freeze and similar effect was directed at me regardless of the board situation. After that I reported them through the dislike/report system, and I haven’t been matched with them again.

I’m definitely not going to go through the long and painful process of collecting dozens of replays and building a full case. In this particular game I’m not chasing rating and I’m not even trying to reach the top 10.

What surprised me was simply the fact that two players can do this so openly and still have one of them reach #1 in the game.

And I’m genuinely curious how players who are trying to climb as high as possible by playing fairly feel about that.

I was curious and just checked. It is not just suspicious ...

Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Blocked both of them.