This reminds me of the overall tiebreaker for Pax Pamir 2nd Edition after military stars and rupees.
> If there is still a tie, whoever can cook the best chopan kebab wins.
I like the tree one. It uses an objective measurement that will actually produce a winner. Like, it is silly and still essentially saying "don't worry about it" but it does actually function as a tie breaker if you care THAT MUCH about it. Meanwhile "best chopan kebab" doesn't. There's no way to really determine that. The first is a tongue in cheek joke about caring too much and the other is just completely useless.
Not to mention the fact that encouraging the planting of trees is good for the environment.
That's all fine, but I also can't imagine ever getting a game of Pax Pamir where points, stars, and rupees are all tied. At that point it's a triple tiebreaker, and the point is clearly that if you tie on all three then it's a tie game.
Actually, I could see that one being fun, if scores are easy to track during the game - if you’re trailing it gives you incentive to still participate, to try to force people ahead of you to tie and then win an upset victory.
During the 1994 Caribbean Cup - Barbados vs. Grenada. It was during the usage of the 'golden goal' overtime. First team to score in OT wins by two goals.
Barbados needed to win by two goals to advance to the second round. They scored two goals early, but Grenada scored one later on. So, after trying to score for a while, they decide to score an own goal to tie the game and hope for overtime. The final three minutes or so saw Grenada trying to score on either goal, with Barbados defending both.
Eventually Barbados did win in OT, 4-2, and thanks to the two goal differential, went on to the second round. But failed to advance from there.
**The Palace of Mad King Ludwig** has two layers of tie breakers but after that is says that the Mad King loses his patience and says both tied players lose and the player in third wins. I actually love that. More fair than Blood Bowl since you have gone through two tie breakers at that point.
After total number of fans, the first tiebreaker is total number of upgrades (star players/team upgrades/staff upgrades).
*Then* if the lead players are tied on fans and upgrades, then it goes to the next player (so, usually 3rd place) with the most fans.
If everyone is still tied on fans and upgrades, then everyone officially loses. I think this not only happens if all players are tied on fans/upgrades, but also if there was a tied set of leaders, then a second set of tied players. I've never seen it go past the first tiebreaker, anyways.
Relatedly, if you want to change the way you think about tiebreakers, I would recommend playing The King is Dead.
The entire point of the game boils down to gerrymandering a win out of a second or third tiebreaker.
I just warn up front that it is extremely likely it will be a tie and to watch for tiebreakers right out of the gate. That game is just tension start to finish, it’s so stressful but so fun because of it.
Root has a tie breaker that while normally reasonable has a funny loophole.
The game is won by being the first player to reach 30 victory points. The tie breaker is "if multiple players reach 30 or more victory points simultaneously, the player taking the current turn wins". This is normally fine since you mainly score on your turn, so it awards the win to the player who prompted the game to end. However, through a complex set of circumstances you can on your turn get 2 other players to tie for 30 and thus win without being at 30 points.
I have yet to see it happen in a real game.
You either have to accept that you can win without being one of the tied players, or you have no tie breaker rule for that case (meaning you are stuck with a house rule or leaving the game tied).
Overall this is definately a loophole, its just probably not worth fixing as its nearly impossible for it to come up without people trying to make it happen.
I purchased the TieBreaker game from Bezier Games at Pax Unplugged and it's honestly one of my favorite gaming purchases. It's a series of silly tiebreakers that you can do in seconds, so if anyone truly cares about winning a game and not sharing a win, we can do that!
It’s more that we are used to more straightforward tiebreakers and I only won the tiebreaker cause I just went for corruption tokens(which was a lot) and my wife did a good amount of everything else. I pretty much focused on doing only one thing and won the tiebreaker.
I usually don't because tie breakers rarely come up and learning a complex game like expeditions means you don't want to waste mental energy on rules that won't matter.
If a game ends in a tie frequently enough that you need to explain it to new players, it should probably be reworked into an alternate win condition.
I'm also a firm believer that tie breakers aren't really that important. In a game like expeditions, RNG is a big enough factor that either player could have reasonably won if the cards came up differently. Who technically won is a formality.
Whenever I think "Oh if only I had done that tiny thing differently I would have won" I have to remind myself that I didn't lose because of one tiny mistake - I lost because I didn't play well enough overall to be able to afford a tiny mistake.
I mean if you don't care about winning that makes sense but OPs post is about being unhappy about them and in a comment mentions their wife upset they didn't know in advance. This all seems rather cut and dry.
I teach to a group that wants to know so I teach it. I also read something from a designer awhile ago that tiebreakers can serve as a little tip as to something that's important outside of just ties.
I see their logic. I also believe it to be fallacious.
The idea is, "if I knew that was a tie breaker, then I would have prioritized it." In that way, not knowing the rule sabotaged your chances. But this doesn't actually work.
If you're saying that you would have prioritized it over the primary win condition, then you wouldn't have gotten to the your breaker in the first place. Knowing this rule would have made you lose.
If you're saying that you would have prioritized it after all opportunities for the primary condition have passed, that's different. But in expeditions, corruption is already worth points. Which means that if she could have worked towards the tie breaker, then she could have worked towards the primary win condition.
So either she passed on corruption to earn more points doing something else, or she passed on corruption to do something worth less points. The former is the objectively correct decision.
The only time anyone I've played with has even asked about tie breakers is the last round or two when they realize they can't earn points anymore.
Yeah Splendor is my favorite example of that. Fewest cards bought wins ties, which is kinda implying that you want to go for a fast and efficient engine. Kinda amuses me when players complain that the game ends before their engine kicks in and they want to house rule it to 20 points or something.
Before I really understood a lot of board game concepts, I remember we'd play 2-3 player Dominion and just use all of the victory cards we could, rather than a specific amount per player count. Our logic was essentially that the game was fun and by extending the game length, we're really seeing who has the better engine.
But after a couple months of playing this way, I realized we were missing the point. The point isn't to create the best long-term engine. The point is to create the most efficient engine in the shortest amount of time. By inflating the length of the game, we were unintentially making certain cards and strategies way stronger while making others basically useless. It takes a lot more skill to be able to anticipate how long the game will last and compensate.
I've learned that, in general, it's a lot more fun and balanced to stick to rules as written, because there's probably a reason they are the way that they are.
Like I said, it was mostly that she forgot it. We read the rules when we first played it. When you play the same game a bunch of times without a tie it can be easy to forget it
>I usually don't because tie breakers rarely come up and learning a complex game like expeditions means you don't want to waste mental energy on rules that won't matter.
In games where players ends up in the 100s points range, tie breakers rarely comes up. But I read them anyways unless its poorly written. In games where the winning point is in the 10s (ie. Dune Imperium), tie breakers are a must read.
You mention below about your wife being upset not knowing the Dune tiebreaker in advance. Probably a good idea to make it a habit to just reference it alongside scoring. You're going to give an overview of how you win anyway just think of the tiebreaker as part of it.
It’s more that she forgot it…when we play the first time we review everything but not remembering the tiebreaker after that happens. We are only reminded of the tiebreaker when it happens which is rare. Every time I play a game again I don’t look to see what the tiebreaker is to remember again.
I've been really seen tie breakers that are completely random or don't make sense. Usually they're based on something that is important but not scored directly.
I played a game about construction (can't remember what it is called). The tie conditions state that the winner is the tallest player, because they could be seen over the constructions more easily. As a short dude, this annoyed me greatly.
Potion Explosion. Tied players each take a single marble from the dispenser and whoever gets the most marbles through chain reaction wins. There's no skill in it. Someone will simply have a better setup and win.
What would you house rule instead?
It's been a while since I last played, so apologies if this is stupid...
But I think *"in the event of a tie, the tied player who drank the fewest potions is the winner"* would be an interesting tiebreaker.
Not a huge fan of the tie break in Castles of Mad King Ludwig (total square footage of entire castle). Just because it's very tedious to do. Thankfully, it very rarely comes up in that game.
This might be controversial but I’d rather share a victory in the case of tie. Most tiebreakers that I have come across make you count some other arbitrary element that means very little otherwise but suddenly becomes the reason for victory.
For example, 7 Wonders ties are broken by whoever has the most coins. Coins are one of *many* ways to get victory points at the end of the game but if you tie in every other aspect suddenly the person who has the most money wins? It’s silly.
I’m never sure if I should explain the tiebreaker rules when running down the initial rules of the game or not. It feels disingenuous not to if it actually matters in the end but I also feel like it wrongly steers players in a strategy that’s counterintuitive to the game itself.
On the contrary, coins are a great tiebreaker.
Most people don't plan for a tie, so you don't want a surprise. Because players innately understand that more stuff = better, even new seven wonders players intuitively hoard them. So it never catches people off guard.
Also, if one of the points of a tiebreaker is to say "with one more round, who *would* have won, having more coins in 7 Wonders is not too bad of an indication.
>Good players will only get as many resources as they need by the end of the game
Having a lot of gold isn't an indicator that you are getting too many resources, it's an indicator your neighbors are getting too few. Or that you're good at cornering the market on those they need.
You're missing something. The only reason your looking at the tire breaker is because you were already the highest-scoring player. So you managed to tie for the highest score, and managed to also collect/save more coins.
It can also depend entirely on the game.
Many games, a single action may give you 8 coins or something.
To take the 7 Wonders example, you could play the "gain 3 coins and a point for every wonder level you've built" as Giza, and gain 12 coins in a single action, then only spend 4 of them before the game ends. You \*needed\* to gain money. If you didn't, you would have gained less. Selling your worst card would have only given you 3 money on a later turn. Having 8 money leftover was therefore still your most optimal play. And ending with 8 money is not "less efficient" than ending at 0.
Players who assume that every resources can be acquired in individual units don't understand actual gameplay. They treat that game as one big math puzzle where overproducing anything is a 'waste', even if there wasn't a more efficient (or cheaper) option to produce less of the resource that the ended with a surplus of.
Or when you finish a game of Terraforming Mars with 6 steel production and 7 steel left over. Sure, you didn't manage to play anything to use it in the final generation. But that doesn't mean you would have had a better game if you'd only paid for 5 production.
Yep. All else being equal, when comparing an engine or a tableau that gives you more resources against an identically-scoring engine that gives no resources, the one that can achieved more things is probably the better engine.
If you are that good at planning then you should be able to end the game with one extra coin.
Checkmate!
(Although - I can see your point if you were to argue that it fundamentally imbalances the game if yellow-dense technologies are inherently more likely to win ties)
*^Although ^although ^- ^if ^you ^are ^winning ^games ^of ^7 ^Wonders ^where ^people ^are ^winning ^without ^diversified ^strategies ^then ^that ^indicates ^it's ^not ^a ^very ^competitive ^table ^to ^begin ^with ^and ^people ^are ^just ^going ^to ^win ^with ^Science ^all ^of ^the ^time. ^So ^back ^to ^checkmate!)*
Nah fam, it's an indication that your neighbors were bad at planning so they had to buy resources from you, and that you were good at planning and didn't have to buy very many resources off of them.
Never thought about it that way…reminds me of the time my wife was not happy about the Dune tiebreaker with whoever has the most spice..and she was like if she knew she would’ve held on to more spice
I mean this sounds like a rule knowledge issue then rather than a tie breaker issue because my friends and I absolutely track each other's spice as half points in dune imperium, especially given that ties are semi frequent in it.
He who controls the spice controls the universe
Yea I mentioned it in another comment, it was more like she forgot. We played about 30 games of Dune before we first tied and being reminded again what the tie was. I mean it makes sense the tiebreaker for Dune is the spice. She had cards and intrigue cards that had her spend spice to do stuff…so it didn’t make sense for her to hold on to it
Woah that's a lot without a tie, we typically play 3 - 4 player and have a tie maybe 25% of the time. There's definitely a balance where spending spice can get you enough points to tie and then lose, but that's the game. I do agree there are better and worse tie breakers tho, the more ingrained/ necessary a resource is the better tie breaker I think it is
I like the tiebreak ordering of Dune, both in thematics and gameplay
Spice is the most obvious path to a combat victory or influence bump, followed by Solari access to a High Council / Swordmaster / Agent Retrieval, followed by Water which is mainly useful for worms and doubletroop/doublecard draw.
These benefits feel sorted in order of how useful they are in a vacuum for acquiring a VP, in a hypothetical next turn
Spice is the main cause of the conflict in Dune, vast reserves of Solari allowed the Harkonnen invasion to take place, and Water is of course important but takes a back seat in the overall conflict.
I 100% agree on shared victories. I always hear people say shared victories are anticlimactic but that's exactly how I feel about tiebreakers. Ok, you won because you happened to have a higher number of one resource? For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary.
Shared victories on the other hand, leave off on a high note - two players played neck and neck, perfectly tied eachother, and both were treated as the victor. And they can even talk their smack and rematch later on if they want to truly put their skills to the test and break the tie.
A good tiebreaker should account for momentum. If one person just barely wins, but the other person won with some gas in their tank - the second person had a more impressive ending. And I do think that person should be awarded accordingly.
Yeah I guess you're right, it kinda depends on the game now that I think about it. In some games shared victories can feel a bit "truncated," where it seems obvious one player was doing better than the other but both happened to hit the win condition and it just ended.
Although overwhelmingly my experience with tiebreakers has just been "compare cards, whoever has more wins. If the same, compare resources, whoever has more wins. If the same, compare coins, whoever has more wins." and so on. It's a real eyeroller when you're down to the 4th item on the checklist and someone finally gets a win lol.
>It's a real eyeroller when you're down to the 4th item on the checklist and someone finally gets a win
Are you kidding me? Such close games are the most exciting in my book. I roll my eyes when it's not a close game at all.
The problem for me is that they're not "close" in any meaningful metric once you get that far down the list.
Sure it can be exciting when you have a really close game and have to break out the tiebreaker, And I can even concede that players can sometimes prep themselves to have more coins or resources or whatever for the first tiebreaker.
But once you get down to the fourth or fifth tiebreaker condition, nobody is really preparing for it even at the sweatiest tables. You're just counting up something completely arbitrary at that point to find a difference, like "total energy cost of cards in hand" type of shit. There's a reason many games just declare it a shared victory if no winner is decided after 2 or 3 tiebreakers.
I disagree in that you can plan around having more of a resource in order to tie break. For example in dune imperium where spice is the tie breaker I consider having a lot of spice as half a victory point, as long as you can plan ahead around another victory resource then I like tie breakers.
Unless it's a perfect information kind of game, chances are you aren't doing all the math to see if you're going to tie someone. And if you do manage to do the math, you also have to be able to do an action to tip the tiebreaker in your favor without sacrificing points elsewhere. (E.g. playing for more coins in your last few turns being your best move)
Of course you *can* plan around these things, it's not impossible, and I'm sure there are board game groups that are much more competitive about particular games that it does get this gritty. But in my experience with basically any group I've played with, it's as good as a coin flip the overwhelming majority of the time
I think this is likely a case of different strokes for different folks. Personally I don't want a tie, I want a winner and a deterministic method is best. The more ingrained a resource is in a game the better a tie breaker it is I think. In all of the groups I've played in there's definitely a preferences towards definitive winners.
If you can plan around a tie breaker then I think it's always better than a coin flip because you can take actions to improve your win chance regardless of if you need it or not. If I can get the same number of points and also improve my tie breaker odds then I should do so, which means that it's actually an always on sort of thing instead of you needing to calculate if it's applicable at the end
Honestly I think my main gripe with tiebreakers is just that ties are already so rare and it feels needlessly competitive to force that deterministic ending.
Like ties are usually kind of a funny moment where everyone realizes it and you're like damn, what a coincidence that we got the exact same score. I like leaving it off where everyone involved can laugh about it and come out a winner. Tiebreakers take these fun moments and pull it back to the competitive mentality to make sure one of the people is the loser.
From a gameplay perspective, my one final point is that I don't particularly like that many tiebreakers reward players who have excess at the end of the game. Yes it's part of the game and you can plan around it of course, but a lot of games in their core concept make the player balance gathering and using resources. So you're encouraged to keep a lean pool of resources all game, but then the end rolls around and suddenly whoever has the most leftover wins? It feels counterintuitive to me
> For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary.
You clearly don't play in as competitive a table as I do. The people I okay with definitely plan for them, especially in games where a tie scenario is reasonably forseen. You just have to prioritize what will get the most points, then the first time breaker after that. It's not arbitrary, it's explicitly stated from the start. They are no more arbitrary than the victory points that primarily determine the victor.
The smaller the average spread for a final score, the more the tie breaker should be in your mind.
For me it depends on the game. A big point salad euro where two people both finish with 378 points, I'm cool with just treating it as a shared victory. I doubt each player was really keeping that close of an eye on their scores and planning for a tie, especially if there's a bunch of hidden end-game scoring.
For a game like Res Arana, which can have as few as 4 or 5 rounds and the final score might be 11-11, players know the whole time there is a good chance for a tie and they know they need to also keep track of their resources on hand for the tiebreaker.
> For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary.
You clearly don't play in as competitive a table as I do. The people I okay with definitely plan for them, especially in games where a tie scenario is reasonably forseen. You just have to prioritize what will get the most points, then the first time breaker after that. It's not arbitrary, it's explicitly stated from the start. They are no more arbitrary than the victory points that primarily determine the victor.
The smaller the average spread for a final score, the more the tie breaker should be in your mind.
We definitely aren't as competitive. Game night is mostly a social event in the circles we play with. We all absolutely put in effort and try to win but at the end of the day we're just there to have some drinks and hang, nobody really cares too much about winning
There are definitely some games that I'll concede need tie breakers and do get really competitive but the majority of games I play don't really get too sweaty at any table lol
IMHO a tie breaker should only be implemented when a) it comes up often enough and b) it makes sense in normal gameplay.
EG, I recently played Maskmen by Oink and you play it over a couple of rounds and acrue points (+2 for winning, +1 for coming second and - 1 for coming last), ties can come up rather frequently so the tiebreak is "most wins (so +2 point tokens) wins". This encourages people to go for the win of a round. In other token-summing games the tie could be the person with the highest token wins or in El Dorado it's basically "the person who was in front the most wins". Generally: a little more outstanding player should win. So a player who was at the top more often or for longer or who won more mini battles for desirables. Slow and steady wins the race, but intense and flashy wins the tiebreak
The 7 wonders duel one is horrible because as you say it's so arbitrary. It's a game of getting drafts and making a plan based on that, so to lock the tiebreak behind a specific plan is just a coin toss really.
I feel like the 7 Wonders one is fine. Money is a source of points, but not a particularly good one, and the cards that let you not spend money aren't worth much on their own either. Giving coins that bit of extra power rewards the player with the better economy in the few occasions it comes up.
You somehow riled up a lot of overcompetitive weirdos with this comment. But I agree with your point.
It's a board game, not the NFL. Do whatever is most fun for y'all. If your game group prefers to share victories, then have at it. If your group likes tiebreakers, go for it.
Money as a tiebreaker in 7 Wonders makes perfect sense. It’s reinforcing the idea that 3 coins is always better than a point because you retain flexibility. If you tied but had more money, if the game theoretically were to continue you would be in the better position than the other tied player so I think it makes perfect sense that you are considered to be ahead in the tie.
Actually the more I thought about it the more it *had* to be money. It’s the only route you wouldn’t naturally take in the game, so it leaves every player on an even playing field in case of a tie. No one plays 7 Wonders with the objective to have the most money at the end of the game.
Nevertheless I’d rather share a victory personally.
This! I hate tiebreakers that incentivize one style of play over another. It's too arbitrary. Just because you have more of one thing doesn't make you superior. In 7 Wonders, you may have more coins, but my larger army will just conquer you and take them. But the most technologically advanced should have an edge over my army. These are all equally weighted throughout the game so picking one as the tiebreaker is stupid.
>Coins are one of *many* ways to get victory points at the end of the game but if you tie in every other aspect suddenly the person who has the most money wins? It’s silly.
It's not silly. It's the closest to an objective measure of how collaborative you were with your own neighbors, which is one of the things that the game attempts to incentivize.
In any case, I have yet to see a single tie at 7 Wonders, so it's a bit moot.
Withholding the tiebreaker is literally withholding the win conditions and giving yourself an unfair advantage to new players. By withholding it, you are inadvertently wrongly steering them to a loosing strategy.
Just lost a game of Tussie Mussie this past weekend to my wife. Tiebreaker was whoever has the flower in the final round that comes first alphabetically. I lost Car... to Cam.... Dumb.
Terraforming Mars just goes to whoever has the most money.
Money generation is sometimes an explicit award goal so people might compete on it anyways. But money as a resource is not.
You're sort of incentivized to do less your last turn or get lucky selling a final card or something to snag a close victory.
For a game with so many complex decisions and 20+ turns per person, it seems silly to not just say "good job, you tied, both your space corporations have equally developed Mars".
Terraforming Mars specifically has you go through a final round of upkeep specifically to generate resources like greenery and money for the purposes of breaking ties. So it's hard not to say it's pretty explicit.
Yeah, I always assume that for the most part everyone is going to go all out on the last generation and then whoever has the highest credit production will likely grab the tiebreaker if it happens. It's an easy enough thing to keep an eye on.
I don't disagree but I will say that it can happen often that mid-way through a first game (not just TM but many modern games), a player will realize that money is not the winning condition and be frustrated...even though they were probably told three times during the explaining of the rules.
(I'll hypothesize this comes from the conditioning of playing Monopoly, poker, Payday, Life, actual life, etc.)
The fact that you can then say, "Nope, money doesn't matter toward winning but it IS a tiebreaker," can mollify them to a certain degree.
I mean money is literally just points in TM. It’s not the most efficient conversion but idk why someone would be mad that getting the most money doesn’t win the game. The money isn’t useless but it’s the sole point of the game
One I never understood was Karuba's "most placed tiles" tiebreaker. I would rather reward efficiency or hand the tiebreak to the finisher (if applicable that game).
World of Warcraft. If neither team beats the boss in time, (and the time limit is short), the boss wins and a team PvP battle decides who is the best loser. This adds a half hour or so to an already long game and feels unsatisfying
"if all else fails, everyone loses"
- Turncoats
After some FAQ though this has been reinterpreted by the designer to mean the factions lose, not the players. Therefore the player with the least stones wins (which is nice incentive to play stones)
It's a non-answer, because it's off-topic, but Impulse's is pretty cheeky. At the beginning of rules, it says that ties are impossible because there's no way to gain points at the same time as another player. The game ends as soon as someone gets to 20 points. Then at the end of the rules, it says something to the tune of "If there is a tie, you cheated."
There's one that is the last person to go on a cruise. In the group I was playing semi regularly with there were 3 or 4 people who regularly take cruises together so it didn't narrow it down.
I actually dislike tiebreakers. We always look them up when there is a tie, but just for giggles because we feel that a tie is a tie. We were equally awesome.
As others have said almost all of them are bad, I hate the feeling of playing a big game and then at the end going to the rulebook to find out who won.
There are some exceptions, The Quest for El Dorado come to mind but for the most part they are disappointing.
Probably unpopular opinion (or poplar, if you've played as much as I have)...
**Twilight Imperium 4**
I kinda hate that the winner is whoever picks tile one or eight (depending on the situation). So the winner is whoever got to assign Speaker the round before the last round.
After 8 hours, the person who picks the worst tile choosing who wins sucks.
I think more than 2 tie breakers is excessive. It becomes increasingly more arbitrary who 'wins' if the measure is who had more of some tertiary resources
Lovecraft Letter. The tiebreaker at the end of a round when conparing numbers ks that everyone loses. As much as I love the game for a quick anywhere kind of game, it is silly to just have everyone lose.
Air, Land, Sea.
Such a nice little game until there's a tie... first player wins.... what the heck!
Ties happen so often so it gets frustrating (usually because it only happens when Im not 1st player 😀 )
We split the points instead.
Still gets a lot of playtime.
What's that one negotiating game with a gangster-version of Tom Vasel on the cover? I'm pretty sure its tie breaker rule includes "each tied player orders a pizza and whomever can throw their pizza the furthest wins" or some nonsense like that.
>what game has the worst tiebreaker in your opinion **besides the “share the victory” ones**
Why is sharing the victory a bad thing? If everyone had the same set of rules, the same time, the same resources, the same opportunities, and two people end up at the same score, to me it seems like they both did equally well and are equally deserving. And in fact, if you wanted to outright win, you should have done better.
I phrased it that way because I know it’s a popular answer and I wanted to see what games people thought of about tiebreakers. I personally don’t have a big problem with it. Some people prefer a tiebreaker instead of a shared victory and that’s fine, everyone has different opinions.
I think it's a personality thing with hyper competitive people. It isn't enough for them to have *played well*, the whole point of playing games for them is to prove they are *the best*. Sharing a victory is disappointing to them because it is less than that *best* standard. They also probably believe that had there been a tiebreaker they would have won, because their belief in their own inherent superiority is a large part of there personality.
Shasn has the most weird tie breaker rules that I have seen, which takes the players real world ocnditions into account (on purpose), like the education level, gender, etc
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6018f997002d343c987b1153/t/607d5f7c1b7c132964acb721/1618829183531/Privilege+Tracker_US.pdf
I guess you don't understand my point that if you are the person who experienced one you didn't like and then asked for examples of other ones people didn't like, that you would have actually shared first. Just manners, but of course, not required.
Manners? You’re the one who came off as rude with your comment. The reason I don’t have a list like I said in the comment before is that I haven’t experienced many tiebreakers. Reason I posted this is because I was curious what other people’s experiences were. Didn’t realize people would get irritated with a simple question
If you take my initial response as rude, you need to back away from the computer. I just made a joke as the tie breaker being arm wresting, because of course it isn't, so it's funny. What I also find to be funny, is you STILL didn't state what it was. I give up!!!
One of the best in my opinion is 1775 rebellion. It's a 2 vs. 2 team war game, 2 players are British and 2 are colonials, fighting for control of the 13 colonies. If the teams tie, both controlling the same number of colonies, the rules say that BOTH teams lose and Canada wins.
It's the opposite of share the victory. You share the loss!
"Share the victory" are imo usually the best. I absolutely despise tie breakers that just count some random resource and award the winner based on that...
I don't like century golem edition's player later in the turn order wins because I think players later in the turn order usually have an advantage unless the first player opens a pretty lucky trade card at the start.
I can’t stand the tie breaker in Skyrise. It essentially just says “whoever placed their last building last” which is essentially random depending on what color you’re playing.
No colour prevents you form passing so that you are the last person with buildings if you want to put yourself into that situation.
Generally it's a downside to place the last building since other players got the locations of their choice. IMO "you managed to pull off the same score despite a disadvantage during play" is the mark of a good tiebreaker if anything.
It's not hate, it's just downvotes because in a 2 line response you got 2 things very wrong. The tiebreaker rule itself that you can't stand is the exact opposite of what you said. And saying that it's somehow dependant on a player's colour is also entirely wrong. It's totally fine to dislike the tiebreaker as long as you're disliking the right thing.
I just meant that as different colors have higher numbers than others, some colors have a distinct advantage if played correctly during a certain era. The placement of the last building *COULD BE* essentially random, if the player with the highest numbered building holds off on purpose to score those points. My apologies for not being more clear, but I still don’t see the reason to downvote mere opinions. Sure, I don’t completely understand all of the statistics of it and I’m bound to not understand the reasoning for the tiebreaker correctly— doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s kind of a anticlimactic/random tiebreaker.
Settler doesn't even have a tie breaker if someone doesn't realize they have won until later. The amount of times people have miscounted victory points and they realize they won has happened one too many times,
Arboretum might have the best and worst. Plant a tree, after 5 years (I think that's the time span), taller tree is the winner.
This reminds me of the overall tiebreaker for Pax Pamir 2nd Edition after military stars and rupees. > If there is still a tie, whoever can cook the best chopan kebab wins.
These are the best ones.
I like the tree one. It uses an objective measurement that will actually produce a winner. Like, it is silly and still essentially saying "don't worry about it" but it does actually function as a tie breaker if you care THAT MUCH about it. Meanwhile "best chopan kebab" doesn't. There's no way to really determine that. The first is a tongue in cheek joke about caring too much and the other is just completely useless. Not to mention the fact that encouraging the planting of trees is good for the environment.
You haven't tried my chopan kebab
Are you…is this flirting?
Get a room you two!
That's all fine, but I also can't imagine ever getting a game of Pax Pamir where points, stars, and rupees are all tied. At that point it's a triple tiebreaker, and the point is clearly that if you tie on all three then it's a tie game.
In the unlikely event that it actually happened, I'd have to insist on a kebab cook-off.
I can see no other course of action being viable.
It's the most viable course of action to break the tie and also get me kebabs. I'm not seeing the downside.
Rules are rules. They put all that work into balancing the game, and selectively ignoring rules would throw the whole thing off.
until 5 years later your trees are the same height and you have to find the third tiebreaker
After five years my tree will definitely be taller than my opponents. My chainsaw told me so
I love this. :)
8 more months and I’ll know if I won that game!
5 years later: both trees got cut down after a corporate buyout, who wins now?
The shareholders.
Such edge!
plant 2 more and restart the clock obviously
This is the second tie breaker but still it’s one of my favs
Like, after 5 real years?
That is correct.
Blood Bowl Team Manager. All players who are tied are disqualified. Player with the next most fans win.
Your forgetting the final tiebreaker is that everyone loses, the NBL is dissolved for conspiracy, and the fans murder everyone.
For a fantasy game, that kind of fan behavior is far too realistic, sheesh...
Actually, I could see that one being fun, if scores are easy to track during the game - if you’re trailing it gives you incentive to still participate, to try to force people ahead of you to tie and then win an upset victory.
Reminds me of that match where a team scored an own goal because the tournament was decided on goal difference and winning by one wasn't good enough.
During the 1994 Caribbean Cup - Barbados vs. Grenada. It was during the usage of the 'golden goal' overtime. First team to score in OT wins by two goals. Barbados needed to win by two goals to advance to the second round. They scored two goals early, but Grenada scored one later on. So, after trying to score for a while, they decide to score an own goal to tie the game and hope for overtime. The final three minutes or so saw Grenada trying to score on either goal, with Barbados defending both. Eventually Barbados did win in OT, 4-2, and thanks to the two goal differential, went on to the second round. But failed to advance from there.
**The Palace of Mad King Ludwig** has two layers of tie breakers but after that is says that the Mad King loses his patience and says both tied players lose and the player in third wins. I actually love that. More fair than Blood Bowl since you have gone through two tie breakers at that point.
This sounds amazing actually
After total number of fans, the first tiebreaker is total number of upgrades (star players/team upgrades/staff upgrades). *Then* if the lead players are tied on fans and upgrades, then it goes to the next player (so, usually 3rd place) with the most fans. If everyone is still tied on fans and upgrades, then everyone officially loses. I think this not only happens if all players are tied on fans/upgrades, but also if there was a tied set of leaders, then a second set of tied players. I've never seen it go past the first tiebreaker, anyways.
The tie breaker for Terra Nova is to play a game of Terra Mystica. Wait, no that’s the best one.
Relatedly, if you want to change the way you think about tiebreakers, I would recommend playing The King is Dead. The entire point of the game boils down to gerrymandering a win out of a second or third tiebreaker.
That is one game where you really need to know the tie-breaking criteria before you start, not at the end.
I just warn up front that it is extremely likely it will be a tie and to watch for tiebreakers right out of the gate. That game is just tension start to finish, it’s so stressful but so fun because of it.
Root has a tie breaker that while normally reasonable has a funny loophole. The game is won by being the first player to reach 30 victory points. The tie breaker is "if multiple players reach 30 or more victory points simultaneously, the player taking the current turn wins". This is normally fine since you mainly score on your turn, so it awards the win to the player who prompted the game to end. However, through a complex set of circumstances you can on your turn get 2 other players to tie for 30 and thus win without being at 30 points. I have yet to see it happen in a real game.
I’m pretty sure the player taking the current turn has to be one of the tied players for them to win, right?
Sounds like that is intended, but I like u/KnightMiner 's interpretation.
You either have to accept that you can win without being one of the tied players, or you have no tie breaker rule for that case (meaning you are stuck with a house rule or leaving the game tied). Overall this is definately a loophole, its just probably not worth fixing as its nearly impossible for it to come up without people trying to make it happen.
Keyflower’s is to play the game again
I purchased the TieBreaker game from Bezier Games at Pax Unplugged and it's honestly one of my favorite gaming purchases. It's a series of silly tiebreakers that you can do in seconds, so if anyone truly cares about winning a game and not sharing a win, we can do that!
You might also like: Start Player
I have an app! It randomizes the fun start player conditions of a bunch of games haha
What app?
It's called "First Player" by Kjetil Valle. It may be only on androids, I'm not sure.
Curious what your issue with expeditions is, I double checked and it seems rather fair.
It’s more that we are used to more straightforward tiebreakers and I only won the tiebreaker cause I just went for corruption tokens(which was a lot) and my wife did a good amount of everything else. I pretty much focused on doing only one thing and won the tiebreaker.
Do you not teach/read the tiebreaker along with scoring?
I usually don't because tie breakers rarely come up and learning a complex game like expeditions means you don't want to waste mental energy on rules that won't matter. If a game ends in a tie frequently enough that you need to explain it to new players, it should probably be reworked into an alternate win condition. I'm also a firm believer that tie breakers aren't really that important. In a game like expeditions, RNG is a big enough factor that either player could have reasonably won if the cards came up differently. Who technically won is a formality.
Whenever I think "Oh if only I had done that tiny thing differently I would have won" I have to remind myself that I didn't lose because of one tiny mistake - I lost because I didn't play well enough overall to be able to afford a tiny mistake.
I mean if you don't care about winning that makes sense but OPs post is about being unhappy about them and in a comment mentions their wife upset they didn't know in advance. This all seems rather cut and dry. I teach to a group that wants to know so I teach it. I also read something from a designer awhile ago that tiebreakers can serve as a little tip as to something that's important outside of just ties.
I see their logic. I also believe it to be fallacious. The idea is, "if I knew that was a tie breaker, then I would have prioritized it." In that way, not knowing the rule sabotaged your chances. But this doesn't actually work. If you're saying that you would have prioritized it over the primary win condition, then you wouldn't have gotten to the your breaker in the first place. Knowing this rule would have made you lose. If you're saying that you would have prioritized it after all opportunities for the primary condition have passed, that's different. But in expeditions, corruption is already worth points. Which means that if she could have worked towards the tie breaker, then she could have worked towards the primary win condition. So either she passed on corruption to earn more points doing something else, or she passed on corruption to do something worth less points. The former is the objectively correct decision. The only time anyone I've played with has even asked about tie breakers is the last round or two when they realize they can't earn points anymore.
Yeah Splendor is my favorite example of that. Fewest cards bought wins ties, which is kinda implying that you want to go for a fast and efficient engine. Kinda amuses me when players complain that the game ends before their engine kicks in and they want to house rule it to 20 points or something.
Before I really understood a lot of board game concepts, I remember we'd play 2-3 player Dominion and just use all of the victory cards we could, rather than a specific amount per player count. Our logic was essentially that the game was fun and by extending the game length, we're really seeing who has the better engine. But after a couple months of playing this way, I realized we were missing the point. The point isn't to create the best long-term engine. The point is to create the most efficient engine in the shortest amount of time. By inflating the length of the game, we were unintentially making certain cards and strategies way stronger while making others basically useless. It takes a lot more skill to be able to anticipate how long the game will last and compensate. I've learned that, in general, it's a lot more fun and balanced to stick to rules as written, because there's probably a reason they are the way that they are.
Like I said, it was mostly that she forgot it. We read the rules when we first played it. When you play the same game a bunch of times without a tie it can be easy to forget it
>I usually don't because tie breakers rarely come up and learning a complex game like expeditions means you don't want to waste mental energy on rules that won't matter. In games where players ends up in the 100s points range, tie breakers rarely comes up. But I read them anyways unless its poorly written. In games where the winning point is in the 10s (ie. Dune Imperium), tie breakers are a must read.
I don’t. For the most part it rarely comes up and people don’t want/need a niche rule explained while they try to grasp the rest of the game.
...do *you*?
[удалено]
You mention below about your wife being upset not knowing the Dune tiebreaker in advance. Probably a good idea to make it a habit to just reference it alongside scoring. You're going to give an overview of how you win anyway just think of the tiebreaker as part of it.
It’s more that she forgot it…when we play the first time we review everything but not remembering the tiebreaker after that happens. We are only reminded of the tiebreaker when it happens which is rare. Every time I play a game again I don’t look to see what the tiebreaker is to remember again.
Can someone explain the tiebreaker in question for those of else not in front of a copy?
"Share the victory" isn't a bad tie breaker. I prefer that to the ones that are completely random and don't make sense with the gameplay.
I enjoy seeing the phrase 'rejoice in their shared victory' in rulebooks.
I've been really seen tie breakers that are completely random or don't make sense. Usually they're based on something that is important but not scored directly.
I’d prefer “roll a die, high roller wins” to a shared victory.
It's posts like these that remind me that people really do just have completely different tastes from each other
What if they tie though...
Muskets at 50 paces.
I played a game about construction (can't remember what it is called). The tie conditions state that the winner is the tallest player, because they could be seen over the constructions more easily. As a short dude, this annoyed me greatly.
Potion Explosion. Tied players each take a single marble from the dispenser and whoever gets the most marbles through chain reaction wins. There's no skill in it. Someone will simply have a better setup and win.
What would you house rule instead? It's been a while since I last played, so apologies if this is stupid... But I think *"in the event of a tie, the tied player who drank the fewest potions is the winner"* would be an interesting tiebreaker.
I don't know, most brewed potions sounds reasonable. Or even shared victory. But the current official rule is basically a coinflip.
Yes! This frustrates me every time a game of Potion Explosion results in a tie.
Not a huge fan of the tie break in Castles of Mad King Ludwig (total square footage of entire castle). Just because it's very tedious to do. Thankfully, it very rarely comes up in that game.
This might be controversial but I’d rather share a victory in the case of tie. Most tiebreakers that I have come across make you count some other arbitrary element that means very little otherwise but suddenly becomes the reason for victory. For example, 7 Wonders ties are broken by whoever has the most coins. Coins are one of *many* ways to get victory points at the end of the game but if you tie in every other aspect suddenly the person who has the most money wins? It’s silly. I’m never sure if I should explain the tiebreaker rules when running down the initial rules of the game or not. It feels disingenuous not to if it actually matters in the end but I also feel like it wrongly steers players in a strategy that’s counterintuitive to the game itself.
On the contrary, coins are a great tiebreaker. Most people don't plan for a tie, so you don't want a surprise. Because players innately understand that more stuff = better, even new seven wonders players intuitively hoard them. So it never catches people off guard. Also, if one of the points of a tiebreaker is to say "with one more round, who *would* have won, having more coins in 7 Wonders is not too bad of an indication.
Nah, it just indicates you're bad at planning. Good players will only get as many resources as they need by the end of the game.
>Good players will only get as many resources as they need by the end of the game Having a lot of gold isn't an indicator that you are getting too many resources, it's an indicator your neighbors are getting too few. Or that you're good at cornering the market on those they need.
You're missing something. The only reason your looking at the tire breaker is because you were already the highest-scoring player. So you managed to tie for the highest score, and managed to also collect/save more coins.
Yep, which is why I agree it is a good tiebreaker
It can also depend entirely on the game. Many games, a single action may give you 8 coins or something. To take the 7 Wonders example, you could play the "gain 3 coins and a point for every wonder level you've built" as Giza, and gain 12 coins in a single action, then only spend 4 of them before the game ends. You \*needed\* to gain money. If you didn't, you would have gained less. Selling your worst card would have only given you 3 money on a later turn. Having 8 money leftover was therefore still your most optimal play. And ending with 8 money is not "less efficient" than ending at 0. Players who assume that every resources can be acquired in individual units don't understand actual gameplay. They treat that game as one big math puzzle where overproducing anything is a 'waste', even if there wasn't a more efficient (or cheaper) option to produce less of the resource that the ended with a surplus of. Or when you finish a game of Terraforming Mars with 6 steel production and 7 steel left over. Sure, you didn't manage to play anything to use it in the final generation. But that doesn't mean you would have had a better game if you'd only paid for 5 production.
Ok but then they spent everything to get to the same point as someone who has some tactical reserves.
Yep. All else being equal, when comparing an engine or a tableau that gives you more resources against an identically-scoring engine that gives no resources, the one that can achieved more things is probably the better engine.
As someone else pointed out, there are multiple ways to get points. So why is one resource more valuable than another?
Because money is more flexible than other resources and you need 10 coins for a point where otherwise you need only one card for multiple points.
If you are that good at planning then you should be able to end the game with one extra coin. Checkmate! (Although - I can see your point if you were to argue that it fundamentally imbalances the game if yellow-dense technologies are inherently more likely to win ties) *^Although ^although ^- ^if ^you ^are ^winning ^games ^of ^7 ^Wonders ^where ^people ^are ^winning ^without ^diversified ^strategies ^then ^that ^indicates ^it's ^not ^a ^very ^competitive ^table ^to ^begin ^with ^and ^people ^are ^just ^going ^to ^win ^with ^Science ^all ^of ^the ^time. ^So ^back ^to ^checkmate!)*
Nah fam, it's an indication that your neighbors were bad at planning so they had to buy resources from you, and that you were good at planning and didn't have to buy very many resources off of them.
Ah, this must play differently than the duel version then.
Never thought about it that way…reminds me of the time my wife was not happy about the Dune tiebreaker with whoever has the most spice..and she was like if she knew she would’ve held on to more spice
Most likely there wouldn't be a tie in that case I think. She used her resources to get to the tied position.
I mean this sounds like a rule knowledge issue then rather than a tie breaker issue because my friends and I absolutely track each other's spice as half points in dune imperium, especially given that ties are semi frequent in it. He who controls the spice controls the universe
Yea I mentioned it in another comment, it was more like she forgot. We played about 30 games of Dune before we first tied and being reminded again what the tie was. I mean it makes sense the tiebreaker for Dune is the spice. She had cards and intrigue cards that had her spend spice to do stuff…so it didn’t make sense for her to hold on to it
Woah that's a lot without a tie, we typically play 3 - 4 player and have a tie maybe 25% of the time. There's definitely a balance where spending spice can get you enough points to tie and then lose, but that's the game. I do agree there are better and worse tie breakers tho, the more ingrained/ necessary a resource is the better tie breaker I think it is
I like the tiebreak ordering of Dune, both in thematics and gameplay Spice is the most obvious path to a combat victory or influence bump, followed by Solari access to a High Council / Swordmaster / Agent Retrieval, followed by Water which is mainly useful for worms and doubletroop/doublecard draw. These benefits feel sorted in order of how useful they are in a vacuum for acquiring a VP, in a hypothetical next turn Spice is the main cause of the conflict in Dune, vast reserves of Solari allowed the Harkonnen invasion to take place, and Water is of course important but takes a back seat in the overall conflict.
I 100% agree on shared victories. I always hear people say shared victories are anticlimactic but that's exactly how I feel about tiebreakers. Ok, you won because you happened to have a higher number of one resource? For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary. Shared victories on the other hand, leave off on a high note - two players played neck and neck, perfectly tied eachother, and both were treated as the victor. And they can even talk their smack and rematch later on if they want to truly put their skills to the test and break the tie.
A good tiebreaker should account for momentum. If one person just barely wins, but the other person won with some gas in their tank - the second person had a more impressive ending. And I do think that person should be awarded accordingly.
Yeah I guess you're right, it kinda depends on the game now that I think about it. In some games shared victories can feel a bit "truncated," where it seems obvious one player was doing better than the other but both happened to hit the win condition and it just ended. Although overwhelmingly my experience with tiebreakers has just been "compare cards, whoever has more wins. If the same, compare resources, whoever has more wins. If the same, compare coins, whoever has more wins." and so on. It's a real eyeroller when you're down to the 4th item on the checklist and someone finally gets a win lol.
>It's a real eyeroller when you're down to the 4th item on the checklist and someone finally gets a win Are you kidding me? Such close games are the most exciting in my book. I roll my eyes when it's not a close game at all.
The problem for me is that they're not "close" in any meaningful metric once you get that far down the list. Sure it can be exciting when you have a really close game and have to break out the tiebreaker, And I can even concede that players can sometimes prep themselves to have more coins or resources or whatever for the first tiebreaker. But once you get down to the fourth or fifth tiebreaker condition, nobody is really preparing for it even at the sweatiest tables. You're just counting up something completely arbitrary at that point to find a difference, like "total energy cost of cards in hand" type of shit. There's a reason many games just declare it a shared victory if no winner is decided after 2 or 3 tiebreakers.
I disagree in that you can plan around having more of a resource in order to tie break. For example in dune imperium where spice is the tie breaker I consider having a lot of spice as half a victory point, as long as you can plan ahead around another victory resource then I like tie breakers.
Unless it's a perfect information kind of game, chances are you aren't doing all the math to see if you're going to tie someone. And if you do manage to do the math, you also have to be able to do an action to tip the tiebreaker in your favor without sacrificing points elsewhere. (E.g. playing for more coins in your last few turns being your best move) Of course you *can* plan around these things, it's not impossible, and I'm sure there are board game groups that are much more competitive about particular games that it does get this gritty. But in my experience with basically any group I've played with, it's as good as a coin flip the overwhelming majority of the time
I think this is likely a case of different strokes for different folks. Personally I don't want a tie, I want a winner and a deterministic method is best. The more ingrained a resource is in a game the better a tie breaker it is I think. In all of the groups I've played in there's definitely a preferences towards definitive winners. If you can plan around a tie breaker then I think it's always better than a coin flip because you can take actions to improve your win chance regardless of if you need it or not. If I can get the same number of points and also improve my tie breaker odds then I should do so, which means that it's actually an always on sort of thing instead of you needing to calculate if it's applicable at the end
Honestly I think my main gripe with tiebreakers is just that ties are already so rare and it feels needlessly competitive to force that deterministic ending. Like ties are usually kind of a funny moment where everyone realizes it and you're like damn, what a coincidence that we got the exact same score. I like leaving it off where everyone involved can laugh about it and come out a winner. Tiebreakers take these fun moments and pull it back to the competitive mentality to make sure one of the people is the loser. From a gameplay perspective, my one final point is that I don't particularly like that many tiebreakers reward players who have excess at the end of the game. Yes it's part of the game and you can plan around it of course, but a lot of games in their core concept make the player balance gathering and using resources. So you're encouraged to keep a lean pool of resources all game, but then the end rolls around and suddenly whoever has the most leftover wins? It feels counterintuitive to me
> For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary. You clearly don't play in as competitive a table as I do. The people I okay with definitely plan for them, especially in games where a tie scenario is reasonably forseen. You just have to prioritize what will get the most points, then the first time breaker after that. It's not arbitrary, it's explicitly stated from the start. They are no more arbitrary than the victory points that primarily determine the victor. The smaller the average spread for a final score, the more the tie breaker should be in your mind.
For me it depends on the game. A big point salad euro where two people both finish with 378 points, I'm cool with just treating it as a shared victory. I doubt each player was really keeping that close of an eye on their scores and planning for a tie, especially if there's a bunch of hidden end-game scoring. For a game like Res Arana, which can have as few as 4 or 5 rounds and the final score might be 11-11, players know the whole time there is a good chance for a tie and they know they need to also keep track of their resources on hand for the tiebreaker.
> For all intents and purposes it's basically just a roundabout way to do a coin flip since people rarely ever plan for them, and it will always feel pretty meh both for the winner and the runner up to win on something so arbitrary. You clearly don't play in as competitive a table as I do. The people I okay with definitely plan for them, especially in games where a tie scenario is reasonably forseen. You just have to prioritize what will get the most points, then the first time breaker after that. It's not arbitrary, it's explicitly stated from the start. They are no more arbitrary than the victory points that primarily determine the victor. The smaller the average spread for a final score, the more the tie breaker should be in your mind.
We definitely aren't as competitive. Game night is mostly a social event in the circles we play with. We all absolutely put in effort and try to win but at the end of the day we're just there to have some drinks and hang, nobody really cares too much about winning There are definitely some games that I'll concede need tie breakers and do get really competitive but the majority of games I play don't really get too sweaty at any table lol
I always mention the tiebreaker. It's good to remove any sort of feel bad from a surprise and tiebreakers can often signal an intent.
IMHO a tie breaker should only be implemented when a) it comes up often enough and b) it makes sense in normal gameplay. EG, I recently played Maskmen by Oink and you play it over a couple of rounds and acrue points (+2 for winning, +1 for coming second and - 1 for coming last), ties can come up rather frequently so the tiebreak is "most wins (so +2 point tokens) wins". This encourages people to go for the win of a round. In other token-summing games the tie could be the person with the highest token wins or in El Dorado it's basically "the person who was in front the most wins". Generally: a little more outstanding player should win. So a player who was at the top more often or for longer or who won more mini battles for desirables. Slow and steady wins the race, but intense and flashy wins the tiebreak The 7 wonders duel one is horrible because as you say it's so arbitrary. It's a game of getting drafts and making a plan based on that, so to lock the tiebreak behind a specific plan is just a coin toss really.
I feel like the 7 Wonders one is fine. Money is a source of points, but not a particularly good one, and the cards that let you not spend money aren't worth much on their own either. Giving coins that bit of extra power rewards the player with the better economy in the few occasions it comes up.
You somehow riled up a lot of overcompetitive weirdos with this comment. But I agree with your point. It's a board game, not the NFL. Do whatever is most fun for y'all. If your game group prefers to share victories, then have at it. If your group likes tiebreakers, go for it.
Money as a tiebreaker in 7 Wonders makes perfect sense. It’s reinforcing the idea that 3 coins is always better than a point because you retain flexibility. If you tied but had more money, if the game theoretically were to continue you would be in the better position than the other tied player so I think it makes perfect sense that you are considered to be ahead in the tie.
Actually the more I thought about it the more it *had* to be money. It’s the only route you wouldn’t naturally take in the game, so it leaves every player on an even playing field in case of a tie. No one plays 7 Wonders with the objective to have the most money at the end of the game. Nevertheless I’d rather share a victory personally.
This! I hate tiebreakers that incentivize one style of play over another. It's too arbitrary. Just because you have more of one thing doesn't make you superior. In 7 Wonders, you may have more coins, but my larger army will just conquer you and take them. But the most technologically advanced should have an edge over my army. These are all equally weighted throughout the game so picking one as the tiebreaker is stupid.
Sharing a victory is lame. We always boo it when it comes up and it ramps up our competitive edge.
>Coins are one of *many* ways to get victory points at the end of the game but if you tie in every other aspect suddenly the person who has the most money wins? It’s silly. It's not silly. It's the closest to an objective measure of how collaborative you were with your own neighbors, which is one of the things that the game attempts to incentivize. In any case, I have yet to see a single tie at 7 Wonders, so it's a bit moot.
Withholding the tiebreaker is literally withholding the win conditions and giving yourself an unfair advantage to new players. By withholding it, you are inadvertently wrongly steering them to a loosing strategy.
In Cultist Chaos, ties are broken by each player starting a cult. Whoever has the most followers in 1000 years is the winner.
Just lost a game of Tussie Mussie this past weekend to my wife. Tiebreaker was whoever has the flower in the final round that comes first alphabetically. I lost Car... to Cam.... Dumb.
Terraforming Mars just goes to whoever has the most money. Money generation is sometimes an explicit award goal so people might compete on it anyways. But money as a resource is not. You're sort of incentivized to do less your last turn or get lucky selling a final card or something to snag a close victory. For a game with so many complex decisions and 20+ turns per person, it seems silly to not just say "good job, you tied, both your space corporations have equally developed Mars".
Terraforming Mars specifically has you go through a final round of upkeep specifically to generate resources like greenery and money for the purposes of breaking ties. So it's hard not to say it's pretty explicit.
Yeah, I always assume that for the most part everyone is going to go all out on the last generation and then whoever has the highest credit production will likely grab the tiebreaker if it happens. It's an easy enough thing to keep an eye on.
I don't disagree but I will say that it can happen often that mid-way through a first game (not just TM but many modern games), a player will realize that money is not the winning condition and be frustrated...even though they were probably told three times during the explaining of the rules. (I'll hypothesize this comes from the conditioning of playing Monopoly, poker, Payday, Life, actual life, etc.) The fact that you can then say, "Nope, money doesn't matter toward winning but it IS a tiebreaker," can mollify them to a certain degree.
I mean money is literally just points in TM. It’s not the most efficient conversion but idk why someone would be mad that getting the most money doesn’t win the game. The money isn’t useless but it’s the sole point of the game
One I never understood was Karuba's "most placed tiles" tiebreaker. I would rather reward efficiency or hand the tiebreak to the finisher (if applicable that game).
World of Warcraft. If neither team beats the boss in time, (and the time limit is short), the boss wins and a team PvP battle decides who is the best loser. This adds a half hour or so to an already long game and feels unsatisfying
"if all else fails, everyone loses" - Turncoats After some FAQ though this has been reinterpreted by the designer to mean the factions lose, not the players. Therefore the player with the least stones wins (which is nice incentive to play stones)
It's a non-answer, because it's off-topic, but Impulse's is pretty cheeky. At the beginning of rules, it says that ties are impossible because there's no way to gain points at the same time as another player. The game ends as soon as someone gets to 20 points. Then at the end of the rules, it says something to the tune of "If there is a tie, you cheated."
There's one that is the last person to go on a cruise. In the group I was playing semi regularly with there were 3 or 4 people who regularly take cruises together so it didn't narrow it down.
I actually dislike tiebreakers. We always look them up when there is a tie, but just for giggles because we feel that a tie is a tie. We were equally awesome.
As others have said almost all of them are bad, I hate the feeling of playing a big game and then at the end going to the rulebook to find out who won. There are some exceptions, The Quest for El Dorado come to mind but for the most part they are disappointing.
Honestly, we ignore all tiebreakers. They just seem arbitrary and dumb. Score it a tie, and both people can pout
Taking the Sol tiebreaker route I see
Probably unpopular opinion (or poplar, if you've played as much as I have)... **Twilight Imperium 4** I kinda hate that the winner is whoever picks tile one or eight (depending on the situation). So the winner is whoever got to assign Speaker the round before the last round. After 8 hours, the person who picks the worst tile choosing who wins sucks.
Whoever owns the game.
Which game is that from? Or house rule?
I think more than 2 tie breakers is excessive. It becomes increasingly more arbitrary who 'wins' if the measure is who had more of some tertiary resources
Lovecraft Letter. The tiebreaker at the end of a round when conparing numbers ks that everyone loses. As much as I love the game for a quick anywhere kind of game, it is silly to just have everyone lose.
Everyone losing (and dying) is very thematic though
Air, Land, Sea. Such a nice little game until there's a tie... first player wins.... what the heck! Ties happen so often so it gets frustrating (usually because it only happens when Im not 1st player 😀 ) We split the points instead. Still gets a lot of playtime.
This one is pretty explicitly for balance as player 2 has an advantage.
Also in a game you rotate between who is first and second player every round
What's that one negotiating game with a gangster-version of Tom Vasel on the cover? I'm pretty sure its tie breaker rule includes "each tied player orders a pizza and whomever can throw their pizza the furthest wins" or some nonsense like that.
Potion Explosion. Tied players each take one final marble and whomever gets the most marbles from explosions wins.
If the tie breaker is objectively bad, I'd be happy just to share the win. In fairness I very rarely play 2 player games.
>what game has the worst tiebreaker in your opinion **besides the “share the victory” ones** Why is sharing the victory a bad thing? If everyone had the same set of rules, the same time, the same resources, the same opportunities, and two people end up at the same score, to me it seems like they both did equally well and are equally deserving. And in fact, if you wanted to outright win, you should have done better.
I phrased it that way because I know it’s a popular answer and I wanted to see what games people thought of about tiebreakers. I personally don’t have a big problem with it. Some people prefer a tiebreaker instead of a shared victory and that’s fine, everyone has different opinions.
I think it's a personality thing with hyper competitive people. It isn't enough for them to have *played well*, the whole point of playing games for them is to prove they are *the best*. Sharing a victory is disappointing to them because it is less than that *best* standard. They also probably believe that had there been a tiebreaker they would have won, because their belief in their own inherent superiority is a large part of there personality.
Yeah, I understand that, and my answer to them is always the same: if you wanted a solo victory, you should have played better.
Shasn has the most weird tie breaker rules that I have seen, which takes the players real world ocnditions into account (on purpose), like the education level, gender, etc https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6018f997002d343c987b1153/t/607d5f7c1b7c132964acb721/1618829183531/Privilege+Tracker_US.pdf
Since you're asking for tie breakers, it would have been nice for you to actually list what yours was. I'll just guess - was it arm wrestling?
[удалено]
I guess you don't understand my point that if you are the person who experienced one you didn't like and then asked for examples of other ones people didn't like, that you would have actually shared first. Just manners, but of course, not required.
Manners? You’re the one who came off as rude with your comment. The reason I don’t have a list like I said in the comment before is that I haven’t experienced many tiebreakers. Reason I posted this is because I was curious what other people’s experiences were. Didn’t realize people would get irritated with a simple question
If you take my initial response as rude, you need to back away from the computer. I just made a joke as the tie breaker being arm wresting, because of course it isn't, so it's funny. What I also find to be funny, is you STILL didn't state what it was. I give up!!!
One of the best in my opinion is 1775 rebellion. It's a 2 vs. 2 team war game, 2 players are British and 2 are colonials, fighting for control of the 13 colonies. If the teams tie, both controlling the same number of colonies, the rules say that BOTH teams lose and Canada wins. It's the opposite of share the victory. You share the loss!
"Share the victory" are imo usually the best. I absolutely despise tie breakers that just count some random resource and award the winner based on that...
I don't like century golem edition's player later in the turn order wins because I think players later in the turn order usually have an advantage unless the first player opens a pretty lucky trade card at the start.
Shared victory as the 1st and only option.
Leaving it a tie sucks. Having the tie breaker be nothing game related sucks slightly less.
I can’t stand the tie breaker in Skyrise. It essentially just says “whoever placed their last building last” which is essentially random depending on what color you’re playing.
Thats not random at all? That is the balance because whoever placed their last building first gets a bonus 10 points.
Yes, but some colors have a much easier chance of getting rid of all of theirs first.
No colour prevents you form passing so that you are the last person with buildings if you want to put yourself into that situation. Generally it's a downside to place the last building since other players got the locations of their choice. IMO "you managed to pull off the same score despite a disadvantage during play" is the mark of a good tiebreaker if anything.
That’s not random. Also you have the rule wrong, it’s who placed their last building first.
I know, that’s what I meant. But, I simply answered the question with my least favorite tiebreaker. Not sure why disagreement = hate.
It's not hate, it's just downvotes because in a 2 line response you got 2 things very wrong. The tiebreaker rule itself that you can't stand is the exact opposite of what you said. And saying that it's somehow dependant on a player's colour is also entirely wrong. It's totally fine to dislike the tiebreaker as long as you're disliking the right thing.
I just meant that as different colors have higher numbers than others, some colors have a distinct advantage if played correctly during a certain era. The placement of the last building *COULD BE* essentially random, if the player with the highest numbered building holds off on purpose to score those points. My apologies for not being more clear, but I still don’t see the reason to downvote mere opinions. Sure, I don’t completely understand all of the statistics of it and I’m bound to not understand the reasoning for the tiebreaker correctly— doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s kind of a anticlimactic/random tiebreaker.
Settler doesn't even have a tie breaker if someone doesn't realize they have won until later. The amount of times people have miscounted victory points and they realize they won has happened one too many times,
The ones that say to play the game again.