Risk Post Mortem - BPONE
We now can say that we know how Brian feels every Monday after Thanksgiving. There will be no UFR.
Michigan Expected territories: 23.73
Michigan Actual Territories: 18
OSU Expected Territories: 18.93
OSU Actual Territories: 23
We wanted to thank everyone for playing this round. We had 1697 players last night - pretty impressive. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word. Thanks to Seth for routinely squirreling us into the front page. Thanks to our analyst guys for helping us with player distributions. Thanks to East Coast for writing up the beautiful recaps everyday. Last, but not least, thanks to every single one of you who played. We do truly appreciate it. Sorry this isn’t a celebration.
Maybe next year
Risk is always fun, and the CFB version is a worthwhile escape and also a reminder that the world is cruel and depressing.
So we have better analytics, more players and a higher power ranking correct? How did we lose?
Are they less predictable, do they steal our signs, make better allies? What’s the scoop?
You can’t control the dice roll. It wasn’t in our favor last night.
A more detailed answer is that we were taking on firepower from OSU, GT, A&M, AND Wisconsin in the last few turns. We may have more players and power than OSU, but we don’t outnumber all 4 of those teams.
if you combine our allies, Nebraska and Texas, it’s still a pretty large deficit.
So it’s a game of chance, odds and strategy with a bit of survivor. Maybe we need to better OSU in our alliances.
Were we not allies with WI in the beginning? Since they took over all Michigan. OSU becoming allies with WI was what sunk us.
The dice last night were publicly known to be OSU fans and in fact previous banned by the B1G from prior Risk games due to their bias. Board was crooked.
There's a pic out there showing RNGesus patting an OSU die on the butt before the final roll
A huge thanks and up to you and all the other leaders of the Michigan CFB Risk effort this year. We did what was possible, and the rest was (bad) luck.
I get some say we ended up +17 on RNG, but pretty much every day but the last few days don't matter, and we ended up -10 on the last two days while OSU ended up +10.
We were 2016 UM. A few bad bounces and a few assists (refs = RNG) and we end up with the L despite being the superior team.
Need to recruit better risk players! Harbaugh doesn’t get it! Bunch of 3 star risk players will never win championships!
Forgive my ignorance, but over a cumulative 50 rolls in which Michigan had the a significant numbers / star power advantage over any other team in the game, how in the world did we not win? It just seems like after that many random rolls, our lead should have been insurmountable no?
we were taking on firepower from OSU, GT, A&M, AND Wisconsin in the last few turns. We may have more players and power than OSU, but we don’t outnumber all 4 of those teams.
if you combine our allies, Nebraska and Texas, it’s still a pretty large deficit.
So why didn’t we negotiate for better allies?
The alliances largely fell as they were last round. The Red Alliance largely stayed together (though we were able to partner with Nebraska) from day 1. We tried to get A&M to side with us and even had an alliance with them, before we discovered that their dealings with us were complete lies and they were partnered with OSU from the start.
The Blue Alliance fell apart, because Florida decided to boycott, and GT was largely in it for Florida. Then GT had terrible strategy at the end and decided to attack us, because they thought it would help them win, which handed the game to OSU. The irony is that (despite us telling GT that this would lose them the game, and GT agreeing with us that it would have), GT could have won had they not attacked us.
If you want more information on our diplomacy, join our discord server. The vetted chat has a pinned explanation of our moves.
I'm never doing this again or going all in and joining Discord for the next one.
My MMQB game theory take is yes, the rolls were bad, but also our shitty alliance locked powers #2-5 into a full half game of cooperation.
They were always going to team up on us for a time but I wonder if we could have divided the axis powers if we didn't build a lesser-powered alliance that was just powerful enough to keep them cooperating.
Judging by our intel, we were never going to split the reds apart. The Queso Alliance was the only thing that kept us in the game.
It's fine. Was a valiant effort, and you did everything necessary to win. Can't account for bad luck. Believe it or not, all of it will revert someday.
Your posts were entertaining and provided a needed distraction in a difficult time for everyone. It was really cool.
It seems obvious that the strategy of spreading out was not a great one given that we had the most star power. This allowed all of the other teams to join together to hit us which would be their desired strategy. If we do this again, the focus should be to singularly focus on one enemy at a time early on and limit the number of powers that we are adjacent to. Attacking 40 territories and defending 25 may sound good but it really isn't optimal.
God damn Don Brown's schemes killed us again. We were spread out and defeated in detail.
Our approach: Michigan is the best and will have the best and largest group
Others' approach: We'll have to band together to beat Michigan
Seems like one way worked out better than the other alas
Wargame kingmaking is the worst.
I got MVP once. I think that means I get a car. Or a tattoo
Is there nothing the Mods can do about the rampant Ohio cheating the last few days? Or do we just have to wait a few years for the sanctions to hit per usual?
Is it really cheating if nobody stops it?
Ohio's Motto for the last 20 years.
Fear not! Central Akron State Technical College will be punished for OSU’s misdeeds.
Kudo's for Bobby Knight reference, Cleveland State is going to get hammered by the NCAA
One lesson learned: Do not deploy your alt account reserves until the last round.
Lol srsly
True. Also, wonder how they are finding "burner accounts"... Can't you just use a proxy to create dummy IP addresses?
This whole thing seemed risky.
You sound board.
We should prioritize getting protected territories more next year, we were all over the damn place.
As Tim Allen says, "Ohio State is the safety net school of CENTRAL Ohio."
So OSU owns the refs even in RISK? There is no way they can be that lucky over and over again