After the initial meeting of class I was determined that a faction would be best for me, so that I could have others to support my ideas and give me feedback. However being an oligarch wasn't what I had in mind. I thourghly enjoyed the game and I can say will confidence that this has been and probably will be the most fun I will have in any class offered by the University.

One thing that I feel that was left out of the game for faction members was personal history, I would read about the indeterminates and here about their family yet I had none. I think that this could have given each person more persuavive power being able to speak about their families in a concrete manner. I also think that in the end people are going to vote for whatever gives them points on the victory objectives chart, and that the game is flawed in that respect. When trying to get things passed I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle. All of the indeterminates seemed to favor the democrats no matter how much I persuaded and offered money. Their goals would be accomplished through the goals of the democrats and therefore they didn't need us.

One thing that worked against me was that everything I was supposed to believe in was contratry to what I acutaully believed. We know that democracy is the best form of government, and I therefore had a somewhat hard time presenting arguments against it. When the education debate came up I really had to think about how I would tell people that public education wasn't the best thing. I was a public school kid and wouldn't have had an education without it. That really streched my mind and forced me to think outside of the box and find a way to agrue against the democrats. I think that in the end having to go against what you believe was a real learning experience. It forced me to think about why I supported the things that I did and evaluate whether they were the best for our country.

I don't think that I played horribly, however I could have done more in the beginning to help my faction win more in the end. It wasn't until about halfway through the game that I along with my fellow oligarchs realized that the democrats had already broken a deal with some indeterminates. If I would have approached them from the beginning and gotten them on our side then perphaps the game would have turned out differently. I feel that although the democrats were our true enemies that the rich atlete posed the greatest threat to us. He was for most things democratic and therefore was a powerful ally to them, helping them to buy off other indeterminates. I think that I should have tried to get him to our cause, leaving the democrats without many resources.

However I feel that my factions greatest mistake was not planning what we would do after we forced ourselves into power. In retrospect I think that so much went into planning the takeover that we forgot to realize that the democrats would probably fight back and that we should have disposed of many of them first thing. If as much planning went into after the takeover as did the planning then we probably could have succeeded in remaining in power and winning the game. However I am still pleased that we did gain power, even if only for 10 minutes.

Although we did not get many oligarchic things accomplished, I feel that I played adequatly and offered some good counter-arugements to most of the democrats proposals. However I feel, as I mentioned earlier, that the game is flawed because everyone will vote for what gets them points in the end. Even if I presented a spectatular agruement against a democrats proposal, if it was in the best interest of your character you would vote for it anyway, even if the argument changed your mind about the proposal. I can't wait for the China game to get underway and I think I will do a much better job at it because I have realized what I did wrong in this game and will use that to play better in the next one.