Managing Politicking at the Table

Hi everyone,

I was wondering on people's experiences on how to manage politick-heavy players.

For context, I am in a pod with one player who's main strategy is to politick the table. As a player, this is not remotely my play style, and I prefer the "keep to myself" strategy. When our pod began playing, I found as though I was playing very well while the table was quiet. Then, the one player began to politick the others, and I felt as though I became the target of the pod.

For context, I am playing a Hakbal deck (what I would describe as a mid-high power casual deck). It's to a point where I can't even play a card like [[Sphere Grid]] without the one player telling the others why this card is bad and that I need to be out of the game ASAP. I feel like if I play anything remotely "good", this happens. Naturally, the rest of the pod swings me out, while the politick player eventually wins. It's probably been about 4-6 where I am the first player out of the game due to table politics. The politics were understandable at first, but now it's to the point where I am very annoyed.

This has left me extremely frustrated and has zapped my fun out of playing with my pod. It's disappointing because I found it to be a fun way of socializing. It's hard to see what's happening (i.e., this player manipulate the table) and everyone essentially fall for it, and the cycle repeats itself. I don't want to make a stink of it as I'd feel and be portrayed as a sore loser.

In closing, I'm just curious if anyone else has dealt with something like this and how you manage that?