Are You Being Bullied, Or Do You Deserve It?

Oftentimes we hear people complaining about how overly annoying their opponents are when it comes to placing the robber token. We create this thread to address some of the problems which have been repeatedly brought up over the years.

Being judged based on your potential: When matched up against veterans, an amateur player usually has difficulties in understanding why he is chosen as the target for robbers. From his point of view, he should not be robbed when he is the one with the lowest number of Victory Points at that moment. But it is unnoticed to him that he is 03 roads away from connecting his road segments and taking over the Longest Road; at the same time, he is only one Knight behind the player with the Largest Army. Unfortunately for him, as long as he keeps buying whatever stuffs he has enough resources for instead of focusing on 01 objective at a time, he will be deemed dangerous by the others.

Being judged based on your current VPs: At the other end of the spectrum, a skilled player may also find himself hopeless trying to persuade a novice not to put the robber on him. With 05 settlements + the Longest Road (07 VPs), he knows he is not truly ahead of his opponent who at the time has 02 settlements + 02 cities (06 VPs). But the turn player - who is still relatively new to the game, will rob the 07 VPs person without hesitation as it is every beginner's habit to go after the one with the most on-the-surface VPs. Therefore, avoiding obtaining the supportive VPs, a.k.a. non-productive VPs, from the special cards too early into the game is recommended.

Being judged based on your face-down development cards: These kinds of situations often involve experienced players predicting others' unused dev. cards. It's a common agreement among the experts that each face-down dev. card is worth at least 01 VP. If you have 02 cites + 02 face-up Knights + 02 face-down dev. cards while the Largest Army is still unclaimed, they always see that you are at 07 VPs. Let's say your unrevealed cards are in fact a Road Building and a Year of Plenty, until you have flipped those up, their opinion toward you will not change.

This is the end of the article. If you find yourself falling into one of the categories listed, you are totally not being bullied by your enemies. Hope the stories we told help improve your in-game performance. Thank you for reading!