To my knowledge, Rand games have always been dominated by nations with recruitable SCs / strong bless. Those are the nations that usually require lesser nations to band together to fight. That said, they have also been won by really good players.
What might be interesting would be to try and balance the perceived skill of the Rand player with the power of the nation. Not to say the Hall of Fame leaders have to play dogs, but just don’t give them Ashdod for example. Maybe vote on the perceived player ranking before the game starts. Each player then submits a list of nations and the player that was ranked last gets first priority for his nation. And so on. Even the rankings don’t have to be public if that hurts someone’s feelings, although personally I wouldn’t care.
It would be Semi-Rand. A bit of up-front work but might provide a bit more balance.
@ Calahan: Nice write-up and I agree that Pasha’s PC inverts the lucks scales some how.
