The Grand Melee - Competitive Play

Welcome to The Grand Melee! I’m emptyrepublic and you might know me from the forums or from the CardGameDB series Scheming on the Sands. I’m making a move to The Grand Melee as I’m looking to try something different and because it’s the format I generally play the most. It’s also the thing that really hooked me on the GoT: LCG. So from time to time you’ll see me here with bigfomlof and possibly a few others. Anyway, enough about me, let’s get to this week’s topic.

Competitive Melee

We’ll keep it simple this week as we continue this long running series. So let’s talk about competitive melee or―more specifically―why joust is generally considered the “higher” format for competitive play and melee the secondary. We’ll break down the problems first and then theorize on some solutions.

The Problems

Here are some thoughts on why people don't generally like competitive melee; some of which you may have heard before especially if you frequent the forums on this site or FFG’s site. The list isn't exhaustive, but is a short list of complaints that can be found in the usual GoT communities online.

Problems with Competitive Melee

• Game dynamics too unpredictable or volatile.
• Don’t enjoy table politics.
• Too much “psychology” involved.
• Prone to abuse by colluding players.

Some of the points above feed into each other in one aspect or another but they can still be analyzed distinctively.

Unpredictable Game Dynamics
Concerns about game dynamics being too unpredictable or volatile can mean various things but most simply it comes down to the fact that with four players in a game card interactions can get bizarre. Additionally, the burden on the competitive player is higher because they have to constantly evaluate the board to try and anticipate potential threats and combos. This is clearly much more of a challenge in a four player game than a two player one. Finally, with four different decks in play the probability of unintended consequences will go up as plots are revealed and events are played and a seemingly innocuous plot might turn out to be disastrous.

Table Politics
In Joust there is no table politicking because there is nothing to negotiate over. There has to be a winner and a loser. You do everything you can to be the winner and the other person the loser. In Melee you can increase your chances of winning if you can convince someone to at least enter some truce for a few turns. If you are sufficiently charismatic you could potentially pull off a coup by convincing someone to take out a larger threat while you slow plan to take out your ally. Many people don't like this. Either because the introduction of a meta-dynamic muddles the actual game dynamics or just simply because they've been the victim of such a tactic.

There also the issue of “Kingmaking”. Kingmaking essentially the act of a player who has determined that if they can no longer win to instead deliberately act in order to enable another player to win. To be clear, this is not player collusion. This is simply someone who began the game with the full intent to win themselves, but later on determined that for their advantage―or simply to spite another player―they would throw their lot behind another player if they could not win themselves.

“Psychology”
This ties in partially with the table politics portion in that to work the table politics you need a bit of a grasp of the psychology that’s going on among the players. While Melee format GoT is not the same as Poker there is a large element of psychology that comes into play that is the corner stone of Poker. This is reflected a few ways. First, understanding how your opponent things. If it’s someone you know you might have a reasonable edge in predicting how they would react in certain situations or how what tactic they use. This would often be the case in stable metas where the same base of players play each other regularly.

Colluding Players
To be clear, this is distinct from table politics. In essence player collusion is cheating, plain and simple. There were a few incidents in the past during competitive tournaments where this became a bit of a problem. There’s been controversy regarding what constitutes cheating and so on. Thankfully, Fantasy Flight recognized the problem and have recently addressed the issue by updating tournament rules to provide organizers a framework on how to handle future collusion and cheating. Unfortunately though that doesn't mean it can't happen again and it’s entirely understandable if someone prefers to not get into a situation where they are a victim of collusion when the tournament organizer did not or could not resolve the issue.

In joust all of these problems are essentially non-existent except for unpredictable game dynamics; joust dynamics are not as erratic as they can be in melee. So it’s easy to see why people prefer joust as a competitive format.

Solutions?

So some of the most salient problems with competitive melee have been laid out; is there anything that can be done?

Unfortunately not much. The problem stems from the simple fact that most of the things that people take issue with are not mechanical.

First off, would anyone want the game to be less dynamic? Complaints are already abound regarding new tech like The Long Voyage (TPoL) making the meta stale or uninteresting. Most GoT players seem interested in a vibrant meta with shifting archetypes and distinct lines between the various houses; not moving the game to state where everything feels and operates the same.

Table politics and psychology are entirely disconnected from the game mechanic and stem from meta behavior that is dependent on the personalities and egos of those participating in the game. Opinions of table politicking and player psychoanalysis is likely based entirely on one’s experience with other players and the ability/desire to engage with people outside the mechanics themselves. The simple fact is that some people like this and other people don’t. How one stands on this probably determines their position on melee.

Regarding player collusion, as mentioned before Fantasy Flight has already taken some significant steps to address this. In the official A Game of Thrones Tournament Rules they've gone to great lengths to outline what qualifies as collusion and addressed it directly as cheating.

What do you think?

Melee is present in most major tournaments so it’s not at risk, but when it comes to discussion about competitive play the focus is mostly on Joust. What are your ideas to bring Melee on par with Joust? Are the meta aspects too difficult to overcome or is there a solution that people just haven’t found yet?