The trolls had Rose's guide. The cherubs had Rose and Kanaya's guide. The B2 kids were driven by the Condesce and LE, who knew how to manipulate them into doing what was necessary.
The B1 kids had NO guide, and they fucked everything up so bad that Bec Noir happened. Seems like some guidance is pretty vital...
The B1 kids had Doc Scratch, troll, and B2 kid shenanigans going on,
forcing the Bec Noir outcome. Plus predestination that
required that 'failure' outcome in order to remain the alpha timeline. Proper game guidance or lack thereof just wasn't a factor in the results.
Ignoring all the paradoxes that would be caused by not causing the Scratch, (no B2 session, no Cherub session, and no A2 session, which leads to no B1 session...) without outside interference Jack would have never gotten the prototyping ring, (no B2 bunny) Cal would have been sprited instead of AltDave, (no Terezi split timeline) and John would have sprited some taxidermy instead of Bec spriting himself, (no Vriska shenaniggans) assuming that scenario even started up the same way. (Live gramps Harley, Jack still subordinate, etc.) and it seems fairly likely the B1 kids would have continued playing the game as it was presented to them.
The A2 trolls, meanwhile, ignored/killed their denizens, only managed one God Tier out of twelve players, (though all credit due,
none of the B1 kids God-Tiered without intervention) sat around shooting at NPCs, gave their destination universe cancer, squabbled constantly, and were instrumental in retroactively causing the Bec Noir problem after he swooped in and stole their victory.
The cherubs screwed up so badly that they made a dead session that was totally unlike the game Rose/Kanaya had actually written a guide for, and I'm not sure Caliborn ever actually completed it instead of hatching a plan to acquire even more ultimate power, leaving the session, and sticking himself into a juju.
The B2 kids managed to make a void session which literally required them to sit and wait for the B1 kids to fly in and fix things, although at that point they'd been so heavily interfered with we can't really say how
anything in their session would have gone if left to play on their lonesome.
Just saying, out of all the sessions we've seen glimpses of, (who really knows what the A1 session was like, other than that they squabbled a lot, and it got Scratched) guide or no, the B1 kids were probably the
best players when left to their own devices.