Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-24705123-20130929131105/@comment-10727129-20131002203416

There was a certain T1 player here, no longer seemingly with us but that's changed before, who admitted his ally list was 8 players. They were some of the strongest here, and they were on his every seed. He did quite well, and it's a very valid (and very cube-cheap) strategy, but I'm just not that cutthroat and I don't recommend others are either. Plus, you can find that if none of those players are hitting, you're boned.

Think of it this way. If you have 150 allies and seed 10 lvl8s, you can possibly have about 20 different groups without repeating any players. Cut that down to 50, and you've got about 7.

But also, the ally list appears to consistently pick offline allies as well, or even groups of low powered ones. With a huge ally list, this happens more often and costs you cubes to finish or reputation if you don't.

On top of that, certain spots in your list seem to be golden. They get a ton more action than others, and it changes from event to event. I've never found any rhyme or reason, but I've cut less active players from those spots before. In this last event, TFKingdom was on almost every seed I sent out, but never hit any of them. Even though they are a T1 player, and I would gladly welcome them back, it was costing me an ally and raising my cube cost. Of course they stormed the last day and finished in T1 and I felt like a heel ;) But they weren't hitting on probably 100 chances and I had others who were. No hard feelings. I cut KryptKeeper too, and same deal. Perhaps I just don't know their style well enough since they just joined me during Optimus.

I find 50 to be about my magic number. If I have the good raid card and a high DP, I'll carry about 20 more because I can handle it and I try to help others. Bottom line, you want at least a couple of your best allies on each seed.

Also, pay attention to who is in your standing invite list. Oddly enough, they seem to end up in your seeds more often than randoms do. If I can't take another full ally, I will leave them in my invite queue and usually they will get a few good seeds. Not as good as being a full ally, but certainly better than being left out in the cold.

I had a beautiful Metroplex 8 seed towards the end. I put a cube in to start, I had several allies hit with one cube each, and some solid random help. Literally it was a great list where everybody got 50k for 1 cube. I imagine this was the original intent behind the ally list, but it's just never quite worked out that way and we as players are forced to adapt.