Twin Suns : Managing other players

 One of the standout reasons why I love SWU so much is that it has multiple game variants which seem to all be supported to some degree.  Twin Suns is one of my favorites, not only because it changes deck composition which I think leads to more interesting games, but because it's multiplayer.  As I've mentioned before, I come from Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and that game is ideally 5 player games.  You can play with 3-4, and if you have a long weekend maybe 6-7.  Sanctioned tournaments were always make as many 5 player tables as you can.

 As I play Twin Suns with other players, and they clearly have mostly played Premiere, showcases how much different this game format is.  You can't just be the aggressor.  That would require you to handle 3 other players at the same time.  I haven't seen yet a Twin Suns deck that can bully a table, not to say it might not exist.  However managing the other players through negotiation is I think a hallmark skill to this format.

 Diplomacy is an old game that uses the mechanics of making treaties and coordinating your moves, which you could simply be lying and do something else.  It's mostly a pen and paper game with a map. I bring this up because there's an immense amount of online strategy tips on how to play the game.  One of the main topics that is usually discussed, which I think applies to any multiplayer game, is defining the archetypes of players that you face.  This video, while specific to Diplomacy, showcases the archetypes which I think are important to navigate players in multiplayer games.


 Using this video as a guide, you can likely assign archetypes to each player in your local playgroup.  Knowing this, you can now determine which players to negotiate with, which to ignore, and which to be wary of.   I found this to be immensely helpful when playing multiplayer games where just being a glass cannon may not achieve victory. 

 I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which archetype they are.

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