PBEM Olympics - Samurai Game 1

The first event to get started this year was Samurai on MaBiWeb. This was a really interesting game - not in the general play of it, but in the way the game finished. Typically in a 4-player game, one of the players gets screwed the whole time. Apparently, this was my game to be the guy being bent over. As the game neared the end, I realized I had ZERO chance of being anything but the biggest loser. Thus, I positioned the game such that Justin (blue) would win the game (I was going with the assumption that Chester (yellow) was going to be the harder player to beat of the two of them and didn't want to give him a leg up in the points). What happened next, I hadn't planned at all. We decided that the positioning for the game would be based on: After determining the winner, the next place would be determined using the normal scoring rules for Samurai, but simply taking the winner and their pieces out of consideration. Thus, after awarding first place to Justin - Nathan (green), who didn't originally have a majority, suddenly had a majority and beat Chester out for second place. When it came down to Chester and I - I suddenly had a majority in rice. When the other pieces were counted, I had more and thus placed third. Chester, who had played a good game and looked likely to win a turn or two earlier, suddenly found himself in forth place. An odd twist of events. Now, I'm not smart enough to play this game for that kind of positioning, but I'm guessing the next couple of games should be pretty interesting.