Actually, I just finished the last NvV game and it had it's share of arguments, rollbacks
, bickering, NUMEROUS comings and goings of players, and a failed ending (from my perspective).
However, I was under chrispederson's EXPERT leadership. I have never played against him so his expertise as a player I can't answer for other than what I saw in this one particular game.
But the guy KNOWS this game, inside and out, front to back, and has strategies that only fail because either you let him down (as a team) or the other team makes a Sun Szu like move.
You want to learn this game, play with chris as your captain. He will push you, make you scream, and you wonder what he is doing...but once you catch on, your mouth will drop(Of course we also had Squirrelloid on our team who also is very, very good).
I am NOT saying the other captains where not great. I am only saying that from my experience you could do a LOT worse than play with chris as your captain (and yes using lower case for his name is the way he uses it).
I have played in 2 of these games. And for me other than the learning experiance I got watching good players, two was more than enough for me.