Empires of the Mind

This is one of the events in Intaglio, the Annual International B-School meet of IIM Calcutta. It was an on-campus round with prelims and a final round.

Prelims round consisted of a treasure hunt followed by solving upto 12 puzzles. We were given 6 clues which pointed to 6 different locations in the campus. We had to find out those locations, note down the phrase written there and rush back to the place where it started. On submitting the phrases, we were given 12 puzzles to be solved then and there. And this whole thing had to be done in a maximum of 2 hours. We solved around 9 puzzles and thought it was decent enough.

And it was decent enough :) We were invited for the finals in which there were 5 more teams with us. The final game was even more interesting as it involved both game theory and strategic planning to the max! We were 6 mafia gangs and first had to bid for raw materials to make 3 types of weapons. All three weapons used 3 types of materials, though in different quantities and we had a limited sun of Rs. 20,000. Also the weapons so made had different attack and defense capabilities and total available raw material quantity was fixed too. We first thought of right 'weapon-mix' and then bid accordingly for the raw materials.

Our bids were good enough and we made the requisite number of weapons as planned. In the next round, teams were given option to buy more raw materials but a higher price or sell extra raw materials but a heavy discounted rate. The next round involved open negotiations between teams for trade weapons if the need be. We tried with 2 teams to negotiate but they failed. In the end, they did not hurt much :)

Next round was even more interesting in which teams could make alliance with 1 or maximum 2 teams. And then it was WAR time where teams had to attack each other. Points were given according to attack and defense capabilities of each team. Following this, teams were given extra cash and weapons at a fixed rate and we could buy as per need.

The final round was another war but this time no alliance were allowed as each team was on its own. The final score was the numerical sum of the attack and defense abilities and the final result is here.

Some prize money is on the way...!!!