The Grand Melee - Table Talk

Hello and welcome back to the Grand Melee! We are back this week with an article focussing on table talk. This aspect of the game is very specific to melee and while it will not make you win games on its own, not using it will often spell your doom in a melee game.

At its core, table talk is anything you say at the table to try and influence how your opponents play. The rules of the game provide no guidelines as to what is acceptable or regarding table talk. You can discuss anything you want and even show cards to others players if you wish. This gives you countless possibilities to exploit to your advantage. Ideally you want to use table talk for one of two things: to broker a deal that will benefit you more than your opponent(s) or to convince someone of doing something that will allow you to win. The deals I mention here do not refer to plots like Spending the Winter Stores (QoD) which are generated by cards, but to situations that cannot be achieved and guaranteed through the use of cards, like a free unopposed challenge or the survival of one of your key characters.

So, how can you convince your opponents to agree to a deal that should benefit you more? There are a few tricks to succeeding in this enterprise and I will try and explain some of them. I mentioned last time passive and aggressive deals. A passive deal is something along the lines of “If you don’t do A I won’t do B”. Most of the time it involves not attacking someone in exchange for not being attacked. These deals are usually easy to set-up and can be very profitable. For example the Stark player would be quite happy to not be intrigued by the Lannister player in exchange for not attacking him in a military challenge. These deals have a few caveats though. First, it is quite hard to make this kind of deal benefit you more than you opponent. It really depends on the situation on the table and you should beware of not letting one player benefit from too many of these. Second, unless you are the second player in order of initiative, you have no idea if the other part of the deal will be upheld when you have to keep you part. In my example above, if Lannister plays before Stark, how does he make sure Stark will not attack him even if he doesn’t?

This leads me to aggressive table talk deals. An aggressive deals is the opposite of a passive deal, usually something like “Unless you do A, I will do B”. These deals involve some kind of destructive threat or disrupting resource in your possession that you can direct wherever you want, like Bear Island (AE) for example. These deals tend to be much stronger than passive ones for many reasons. The obvious one is that you have an insurance on these, if the deal wasn’t kept all you need to do is pull the trigger. Furthermore your opponents won’t want the threat t come their way, so they will likely up the ante on deals with you making them more profitable for you. Nonetheless there is some risk involved here, don’t get too aggressive otherwise your opponents might decide to gang up on you and that could be the end. Another form of aggressive deal is to offer to give something in exchange for what you want. This could include getting rid of a crippling attachment with Ill Tidings (IG) on an opponent’s character. Taken to the extremes, you could deal the win to someone, in order to insure second place.

There is another way of obtaining favors from other players which has nothing to do with the cards or their gameplay and that’s whining. I personally do not endorse this course of action, but I’ve seen it used successfully many times. Some players are very skilled at avoiding attacks and threat just by complaining and looking just like Puss in Boots.

Whichever way you choose to deal, a few things will remain the same. A deal will be stronger and less likely to be broken if you give many arguments to defend it (true or not). Make other payers think, show them the danger other players represent, bluff, defend yourself, but always wrap up your deals in something more than just the agreement. Also, when you are not involved in a deal, listen to it and remember it. It will give you hints as what kind of deal other players want. Some players like passive deals, some like more aggressive deals. Use that to your advantage and remember who you are dealing with. As you gain experience in this you will read players more quickly and be able to broker deals tailored for them.

As you can see, they are many ways of convincing your opponents to do something profitable for you. But remember, it’s not about dealing; it’s about dealing to win!