[DonRotolo]

Don't take their snub personally.

This year's ranking system allowed some teams into the top 8 that perhaps wouldn't be there based purely on win-loss. (I think this is good, BTW).

A high-performing team might prefer to be picked by another high-performing team, simply because that maximized their chances of winning. If they didn't end up in the top 8, and get picked by a team perceived to be lower-performing, they may be unhappy with their (perceived) reduced chances of winning.

While it is perfectly acceptable to feel like you deserve to be with better alliance partners, it is extremely ungracious, unprofessional and unacceptable to express those feelings in a hurtful way (if at all). What this team did to you is not right, but again, don't take it personally. It reflects poorly on them, not on you.

Later, when deciding how to play the game, it could have been wise to defer to their more experienced strategy and planning performance, and let them call the shots. As alliance captain, you have that right, but sometimes they're just better at it and listening isn't a bad way to learn.

As for telling other teams that they are on your short list: Ultimately it does not matter. They cannot decline another invite and allow you to pick them instead. But getting a feel for their reaction might provide more data for your decision.

In some cases, we have gone to teams explaining that they are on our short list, but we need to see them demonstrate a certain capability that is important to our strategy. So we ask them to do that in their next match and we use that as an additional data point for our decision.

But as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war. Our goal is to pick the best possible alliance, and we don't pick "friends" because they are friends, but because they are the best available team. And (so far) nobody has taken offense to that.

Oh, and for the young teams reading this: We don't pick teams because they ask us to. We work well into the night to identify teams based on their actual on-field performance, reviewing our own match videos and scouting data. The performance claims on any scouting sheets received are ignored. If you are doing well, we see you, don't worry. But if your team isn't that good, we see that, too.