[Wayne TenBrink]

On Saturday afternoon, we hold an all-team "brainstorming" session at the kickoff site (thanks to GVSU for making rooms available to teams) and we STUDY THE GAME RULES together as a team. We try our best not to decide a strategy at that time. Everybody is supposed to read them again over the weekend and be prepared to talk about objectives, strategies, and perhaps general design concepts at our Monday evening meeting. Some come prepared, others don't. The self-selected group that comes prepared generally does most of the talking, which leads to the strategy, which leads to the general design concept, which leads to some prototyping and eventually the final designs. The world belongs to those who are passionate about what they are doing and come prepared.

We continue to review and fine tune strategy as the game develops. And, of course, you set the final detailed strategy based on your pre-match discussions with your alliance partners.