You Can't Win - IMDb

After being dismissed from "Pile-O-Crap Game Store" (the one I've already posted a few TFTS and TFR stories on here) I got another job at a company that puts games and vending machines out on "routes" (like a store or restaurant that doesn't own the machine itself, but that machine's profit is either split with the location, or the route pays a fixed "space rent" to the location)
My duties are mostly the same as the other crappy game store, but with more moving involved as well.
One day, most of the other employees are already in the warehouse, and the owner is shouting to everybody, "We've got 0 working driving games, and one of our customers specifically asked for a driving game. Now I don't even know how long to tell him to wait"
There is one driving game that just had a customer's "out of order" note still stuck to the screen without any details. I had noticed it before but I had been "assigned" to work on something else at the time, which I had since finished. I wasn't in the middle of anything when I entered the warehouse, so my next target seemed pretty obvious.
Now, I had a key, but nonetheless, I didn't actually open it up. I just got an extension cord while the owner was having his temper tantrum, but didn't plug it in until he was actually done talking to people so any noises from the game wouldn't "interrupt" him.
I turn the wheel and press the pedals and buttons. They all feel okay, and the coin return lever feels okay.
I hear that the owner is still just ranting about the same thing, saying it's one of our biggest customers we now can't give an ETA to. I just join the group of others to get flogged.
After thoroughly boxing our ears, the owner just says to get back to work. Not having been in the middle of anything other than the driving game, I go towards it and plug it in to see if it even boots up. It does, and I see the game screen come up in about a minute. I do hear cooling fans running. Despite having a key, I don't want to "disrupt" a project anybody's in the middle of, so I ask the owner if I should go through the test menu on that driving game. He says not right now, just sweep the floor over here. So, I sweep the floor over here. By the time I'm done, it's time for us all to go home anyway. The owner's close enough to the driving game to hear it, but he leaves it plugged in. Probably wants to do a "burn-in" test to see if it will actually run for hours as arcade games usually do.
I come back the next morning, and I was going to ask the owner which machine to get on next, but see he's busy talking to a coworker. The person he's talking to is right in the doorway of his office, so there's no way the owner will see me unless I squeeze my way into the doorway and invade my coworker's space, wave or otherwise draw attention to myself.
I go out to the warehouse area in the mean time, to check on (Driving Game 1) and sure enough, the game is frozen on a black screen with some weird error message. I write down what the message was, unplug and plug it back in to see if it's temperature related. It boots up and begins to show the game screen, but this time, it freezes almost immediately, so I add to the note on the machine that it appears to be a thermal issue, somewhere. I unplug it.
I also notice that there is another driving game that had been brought in. I hadn't been assigned any specific machine to repair just yet, but being that it's a driving game, the same kind that the owner was flipping out about not having any working, I figure that I'll just plug that in, as well, to see if it will boot up and keep running.
On this machine, the coin box was wide open, but none of the other covers are open or missing. It does boot up, and I hear fans running: usually, once everything's tested, a machine got a "good" label on it, but if something was wrong, it got a label on it describing the symptoms, or that it needs an x, y or z, and whether we have it on order or not. This machine had nothing like that, so for all intents and purposes, it looks to me like no one has touched it other than emptying the coin box.
Machine keeps running while I wipe down the screen and visible dirty spots. Then while it's running, I figure I'll ask my co-workers what machines they might be in the middle of working on, so I can avoid disrupting their place in a project. Also, if any of them want me to be a second set of eyes on a hair-puller, they'll say so.
I ask one guy, he mentions a pinball machine that needs attention, so I go to that one. Then, the owner comes along and sees (Driving game 2) plugged in. Then, he says "who plugged this in?" sounding a bit snappy, but whatever. I tell him I did, to see if it booted up, but if anything was wrong, I'd check with him and/or the others before opening it up (the coin box was already open, but I didn't touch anything inside there despite that)
He got mad at me for just randomly guessing what to work on, ignoring the fact that I wasn't really doing anything with the machine other than just letting it run in the background, while working on something else, yet I would still eventually notice if it froze up. Not to mention, it may have been a guess, but was hardly "random" but it was based on what he himself was just having a fit about literally the day before. So, basically, the fact that I did understand why he was angry the day before, set him off a second time.
TL;DR: Why the fridge would you try and deal with the very problem I was just whining about yesterday?

Suppose the game is definitely ending this round, you're definitely not gonna win, and you're either opposed to kingmaking or don't have a preference between the potential winners.
What do you do if you, and only you, can stop a guy from winning, e.g. by taking his home system or some planet he needs for an objective? Does it matter whether you need the help of other people to accomplish it?
A few different approaches:

• You might prioritize maximizing your final score, and kingslay or not based on whether it helps you.
  
  • If yes, would you accept a SFTT bribe in order to kingslay someone? Would you kingmake someone (give them SFTT or tg's or help them score somehow, as opposed to kingslaying someone else) just to ensure that you end the game in a higher position?
  • Do you care about your absolute or relative score? I.e. your VP's or your position on the "leaderboard" (1st/2nd/3rd/...).
  • Assuming the game ends in the status phase: do you care about the actual final score, or what it would be if everyone got to score objectives? I think if Leadership gets to 8, Diplo wins at 10, and Politics would get to 9 but ends at 7, many would consider Politics to come in 2nd place and would consider 9 their final score even though technically they're 3rd. If you care about actual score, you might favor the lower-initiative contender so that fewer people get to score and pass you.
• You can decontextualize from the current situation: ignoring the fact that someone else is gonna win anyway, it is good in general to stop people from winning.
  
• You can decontextualize even further: ignoring the fact that the game is ending at all, think about what would be good to do in your position. Making sure you can score an objective this round is good. Setting yourself up for future rounds is good. Pushing back someone who's invaded your territory is usually good. Stopping someone from scoring a 2-pointer is good, but not something you'd throw away your whole fleet for unless necessary, so you have to consider how hard it is.
  
  • If decontextualizing sounds stupid and artificial: suppose someone invaded your slice to get a 2-pointer and win, but you could easily prevent it. Are you just gonna let them do it because someone else would win otherwise? Most probably wouldn't.
• You could just pass as soon as it becomes completely hopeless.
  

This is for new players that don't really know how to play azir and want to win lane and get a lead but don't know how to do so.
You take: HOB, Cheap Shot, Ghost Poro/Eyeball Collection (Personal preference) and any hunter rune you want. Then you take sorcery as secondary with Absolute Focus and Gathering Storm/Scorch, Double AP shard and take Ignite as well.
Against Melee Matchups:
- You look to slow push the wave and every time they look for a last hit you use W, AA Them Once, Q Then AA twice. (Do this everytime HOB is up and they get in your range) You basically have to bully the shit out of them otherwise you're giving them a free lane, just be careful to not go oom.
- When they are below 30% below their hp you can all in them with WEQ AA and ignite. Also: DON'T DIVE IF YOU KNOW YOU WILL DIE, it's better to force them to recall and lose a lot of xp early then killing them but you also dying since you want to get a huge lead not a favourable trade.
- After lvl 6 when things change look to W Q then AA twice, if you step forward for more than that you might die. So just poke the shit out of them and all in if u can kill them.
Against Range Matchups:
- First wave you will basically just try to get lvl 2 fast and not really interact with them, after that depending on the enemy champion you want the wave in 2 different states: Constantly pushed under their tower or slowpushed. The reason is that you want to always harass them, against champions like xerath you have to push the wave constantly and sit to the side of the lane closer to your jungler, this way they either hit the wave or hit you and they can't do much, when they use their cooldowns on the wave just harass them until they are low enough to go all in. Against more short ranged mages you slowpush so you can harass them and they won't be able to trade back since the wave will be too big, when it crashes into the tower they will have to choose between trading with you and losing cs, or take the cs and lose hp from your soldiers, either way you win from that.
- Most of the ranged matchups rely on you dodging skill shots so i can't give much advice but control the wave, also since this puts you at risk of being ganked always be careful.
Your core build is: Luden's Echo + Void Staff + Rabadon. Drop in a dark seal when u can but don't upgrade it, the 65 ap u get from the 10 stacks is more than enough and since u are probably new to Azir u shouldn't really upgrade to mejai unless ur very confident. The rest of the build is just personal preference, you can go nashor or whatever u want, if u don't want rabadon so early just go nashor's instead, anyway this build gives you basically true damage in the later game of the stages but also spikes mid game. You won't have much haste so be careful with soldier placement.
I hope this was helpful since I am pretty bad at making guides but would want to help the new azir players that lack experience with the champ.
People also wanted to add:
Don't fall below 170 mana, this is the required mana to do a full WEQ combo. Which is how you avoid dying to ganks.
When you are planning to go all in make sure you 100% know that you can kill the enemy. Wait them to use key ability on minion wave.
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