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July 09, 2003

Kingmaker in Ad Acta

I played the game Ad Acta last night for the first time. It is a pretty interesting game with the unusual theme of being bueracrats shuffling files around and trying the get the right file processed at the right time. Unfortunately, this game for me was completely ruined at the end by a kingmaker situation (where a player who can't win or even improve his own positions decides who among the other players will win). There were three of us and two of us were very close at the end while the third person was basically out of it. He had one more file to process but it would have gained him very little to do so and he decided instead to spend the last two turns entirely working against me. The result was the score was something like 26-24-20 (he had the 20) whereas otherwise it would have been something like 30-26-20. He took the attitude that this improved his relative (percentage scoring) while I in his situation would have figured I can't affect my position in the game so I will do the best I can for myself (trying to process the last file to get to like 22) or at least not interfere with the two players in contention. Either is a reasonable choice to make, but from my perspective I felt like I played well for 90% of the game only to have it become a 2-1 game for the last 10% and leave me no chance to win and this was demoralizing as it made me feel the first 90% of the game was pointless.

I may not play this game again despite liking the first part, worried this will be a common occurence. Maybe, though, it wouldn't happen in the four player version.

Posted by aarondf at July 9, 2003 10:51 AM

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