We had a discussion at a store championship last weekend about how to award tournament points in swiss for the following situation:
Player A playing with the Maester's Path agenda is playing B, who's not playing Maester's Path. After time has been called and the last turn has been played, player A has more power markers than B. Let's say a has 16 power total, B has zero. But A also has chains left on his agenda. How many tournament points should be awarded to A and B?
I know that this topic has been discussed here before ( http://goo.gl/uGZ4Xy ), but I still find it a bit unclear.
According to the tournament rules, page 8: "If, through a card effect, a player “cannot win the game,” he cannot be awarded a win or a modified win for that match. (His best possible result is a draw.)".
That still doesn't fully cover how points should be awarded.
I think that based on that sentence and the paragraph about vitory conditions above, various interpretations could be made:
Interpretation 1: A didn't win, because he still has chains an the agenda. B didn't win, because A is closer to his victory total concerning power markers. Both players didn't win but it should not be possible that both players lose a game, so the game is declared a draw: 2-2 . (That's actually the line of reasoning ktom went for in the above cited post.)
Interpretation 2: A would have gotten a win if it weren't for his chains on the agenda. Since there are chains left, he cannot be awarded a win, so he's downgraded to a draw. That doesn't explicitly imply that player B also gets a draw though, the rules only state that both players get a draw if they're equally close to their victory conditions. So we'll give B a modified loss, because A is 16 power closer to his victory power total: 2-1
Interpretation 3 : A is an infinite amount of power markers away from his victory total. After all, it wouldn't matter in this situation if he had 1.000 power markers - he still wouldn't win. So B is closer to his victory total. B didn't get a full win, so it's a modified win for B: 1-4
Interpretation 4: Neither of them did win the game. One player is further away from his winning condition, the other cannot win. Where in the rules does it say that the game has to end in a draw then? They both made it over the time without the other playing reaching his winning condition though, so they both get a timed loss: 1-1
So if anyone has an official FFG ruling for that situation, that I just didn't find, or can otherwise shed more light on the topic, I'd be interested to hear.
In addition to that: what are your opinions on how the ruling should be? Should the amount of chains left on the agenda matter? Should the difference in power totals matter?
Another thing, though even more unlikely to occur: let's say we have this situation in the cuts without time limit. A has commanding board position without any chance for B to ever turn that around, but unfortunately for A all of his Maesters ended up in his discard or dead pile without any chance for him to reanimate them. Will we play this game out forever? Replay the game? Flip a coin?