Honestly, I really don’t see anything wrong with the current alliance selection.
The only thing that EPs might want to consider is to look at the possibility of squeezing one or two more rounds of qualifiers. But I do understand that most of the time it is not possible, due to time and venue constraints.
And this strategy of having the top seed going through the entire list of competitors, is what we normally call “burn the alliance selection”.
And it is legit and make lots of sense if the team knows that there are some really strong teams that are planning to pair up, so obviously the team needs to something about it. No?
One of my teams encountered it at 2019 worlds as well. No one wanted to pair up with the top seed.
I even got my team to speak to the top seed beforehand to inform them that we had other plans. But we still got burnt. And along with it, even my team’s Plan B, C, D, E were all burnt as well.
But that’s part and parcel of alliance selection. And it actually test how fast the teams can adapt to a different situation and how to maximise each other strengths, etc to continue to do well.
It does left a bitter aftertaste, and it doesn’t make you lots of friends (but again, alliance selection is the last place you want to start making friends… it should be done before that). But nothing illegal about it. I will never encourage my teams to do that, but at the same time, I still don’t see the need to change the alliance selection.
