What if you have a history with another player? This happens all the time. You play a few games and you start to get ruthless as the games progress. You develop a history. Even if you forget what you have done to others, they may not forget it. There comes a time when they want to take revenge and they may attempt this when you least expect it.

Hence, you always need to be prepared and ‘remember’ the history between you and other players. If you suspect that a player is planning to take revenge; you need to contain him or remove him from the game. However, saying this is easier than done. The following scenario illustrates this concept.

Suppose you are Green and you have played with Blue in the last game. You made a move in that game which he didn’t like at all. Now you are together in this game. The board game state is as follows:

This situation actually happened in a particular game. From this point onwards, Blue eliminated Black and used the cards to fortify. Red and Green played conservatively and simply reinforced their current positions. In the next move, Blue eliminated Brown as well. At this point the map looked like this:
   

Blue was strong, and he had to make a choice: to go against Red or Green? The obvious move was probably to go against the weaker player which was Red. Green hoped that Blue will go for Red and ends up weak. This might have given Green an opportunity to win or at least become second (the game was score based).

However, Blue was waiting for this moment all along. All he could see was revenge. Blue attacked Green and eliminated him. There were a few cycles of attacks between Blue and Red, until eventually Blue won the game.

Now suppose you go back to the beginning as shown in the first map position. The following table shows the distribution of cards and armies.

 

 

Knowing that Blue will make revenge on you one way or another, what would you do to survive and hopefully win the game? All you need to assume is that Blue was quite upset in the last game as a result of your actions and you need to consider this in your overall strategy.

What is your strategy?