Points are tied! Who wins?

By Hawkcraft, in Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition

Our game ended up with tied points. Two player reached 14 points at the same status phase. The rulebook says now their initiative number counts.

But the player with the higher strategy card was the naalu player. Does it mean that his race ability makes him winner or does this only count for order of play?

Thx for answers

Hawkcraft

I believe points are awarded clockwise from the Speaker, so there should always be a 'first'.

Public Objectives are claimed in order of play.

Naalu wins.

-Mike

Agreed, Initiative Order is the order in which objectives are claimed. Naalu has the advantage. Speaker is irrelevant.

The only time you can really have a "true" tie is if Imperium Rex shows up. Then you would follow the tiebreaker listed in the book.

Been playing for... 2 years? And still finding out what the actual rules are...

I'll just house rule it or something. 'Naalu win' seems a bit... powerful.

The Naalu tend to be a mediocre race at best as it is. I don't get to play as often as some do, but it's not super-common for two players to get to 10 points at once.

If you do house-rule it, though, the easiest way would just be to see if one person has MORE points (ie, one person may have pulled to 11 points while the other got to 10). If that's tied, just go with the Imperium Rex tiebreaker.

favouredenemy said:

Been playing for... 2 years? And still finding out what the actual rules are...

I'll just house rule it or something. 'Naalu win' seems a bit... powerful.



The whole point of being Naalu is for that power. There are very few times in the game where you WANT to go first. It's almost always better to go last and having to go first makes that difficult.
Further, with SE and the subsequent fighter nerf, they lose out on their other racial (+1 to fighters) because no one builds fighters anymore.

They're racial tech is good, but it's still pretty expensive and you have to control the systems which makes it not as useful as it seems at first.

The retreat ability is marginal at best probably used once per game.

Scoring objectives first is their only really good ability.

Hawkcraft said:

Our game ended up with tied points. Two player reached 14 points at the same status phase. The rulebook says now their initiative number counts.

But the player with the higher strategy card was the naalu player. Does it mean that his race ability makes him winner or does this only count for order of play?

IIRC, the rules say that the game end AS SOON as a player gains 10 VP (or 14 in your case, since you were apparently playing the extended score track.) Players collect VP in turn order and the game ends when the first player to reach the end gets there. Other players don't even get to finish scoring their points after that. The only time a tie can occur, as others have said, is if Imperium Rex comes out.

In the situation where Imperium Rex came out, btw, I would say the Naalu's racial ability does NOT count to modify their SC number when determining a tie. But that would only be for IR. In a case like the one you describe, the Naalu's ability to always act first would give them first dibs on VPs and therefore secure them the victory.

As was stated before, there is already a tie-breaker rule regarding Imperium Rex (and any other situation where 2 or more players would win at the same time-such as a Political Card resluting in VP's) in the rulebook and is independent of Initiative Order.

Indeed. If IR comes out and this happens, it means the score was ALREADY tied; inititaive order doesn't really apply because nothing is happening to change the score at that point.