[lokken]

Yeah, but in ND's case the negative relationships (LCH and MISTU) already seemed to exist. ND could not preserve MISTU, as it seems they are always going to be an alliance after us from tick 1. Effectively we'd only have had HR in the bank, but i doubt they'd be sufficient to take down VsN/LCH and even if we did, it would result in a universe massively in favour of HR as opposed to ND - a much longer (and most likely suicidal) gamble than the one ND chose instead. As you observe, it results in certain alliances hands being horribly tied.

I think the alliances outside of LCH/1up would be far more successful if they had far more wiley HC, who were able to look at a 'bigger picture' and have the ability to hold superior alliances to political ransom.

I actually predicted a 1up win for this round, as they were clearly going for a win, understated their hand well, and guessed they'd slowly rise to the top. Sid timed their charge perfectly, and all credit to them.