Hi guys,

I've been watching Vassal games, and it occurred to me that I'm not really clear how Black Market interacts with tie-breaks. I'm assuming that points gained by Black Market are considered to be "objective" points, or at least "neutral" points. But what about spent points?

Quote

Skirmish Tournament Rules, p 7, wrote:

In the rare situation that both players have the same number of victory points at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points from defeating hostile gures wins the game (see “Eliminated Groups” on page 5). If the result is still a tie, each player counts the number of damage tokens on his or her remaining gures. en, each player adds the Health values of any defeated gures corresponding to Deployment cards still in his or her play area. e player with the lowest total damage tokens and Health wins. If players are still tied, each player rolls one blue die, and the player with the highest Accuracy rolled wins the game.

So, supposing that Player A "bought" Assassinate for 3 VP's on the Black Market. At the end of the game, points are thus:

Round One: Player A gains 3 points for killing Chopper. Player A uses those points to buy "Assassinate" from Black Market.
Player A: 40 pts: 30 from figures; 10 from objectives
Player B: 40 pts: 30 from figures; 10 from objectives

BUT, Player A would have 33 points from figures, except that 3 were spent to draw Assassinate.

The rules are slightly unclear: "The player with the most victory points from defeating hostile figures" ... the points that were gained in round one from the Chopper kill aren't "with" the player anymore; they were spent. If the rules read "the player who earned the most victory points," it would be clear to me.

What say you, o learnéd ones??

You are placing the defeated figures aside and using strain tokens to mark VP from reinforced figures to determine the value for the tiebreaker. (You are not removing any of these if you spend VPs.)

The total VPs are tracked separately and is the primary way to determine the winner.

As far as I have understood, the tiebreaker points from defeated figures determine the winner whether you have later spent any or all of them.

I could be totally off base here though, but the tournament rules only have those methods to track VPs, so I don't see how else it could be ruled.

39 minutes ago, a1bert said:

As far as I have understood, the tiebreaker points from defeated figures determine the winner whether you have later spent any or all of them.

Would attachments or skirmish upgrade cards be included during the tie-breaker step? Does Vader represent 18 figure cost at that stage, or does Driven by Hatred (-5) reduce that to 13?

Hater Vader is 13 points.

35 minutes ago, Fightwookies said:

Would attachments or skirmish upgrade cards be included during the tie-breaker step? Does Vader represent 18 figure cost at that stage, or does Driven by Hatred (-5) reduce that to 13?

That's an interesting case study, though, because it's similar to what A1bert's saying: if the points are scored, and CAN be "taken away" by upgrade-card cost reduction, why not "taken away" by spending? When you "spend" VPs on black market, should you be putting strain tokens in a negative area of some kind?

If I had to rule on this in a tournament, I think I'd make the players go to second tie-breaks (total damage), and then roll blue dice, as long as their record-keeping from the game agreed that the points that were spent had to have come from a kill. But this would be fairly unique in my understanding, in that this situation would require knowing what kind of VP's had been spent through Black Market. In my example, I made it totally clear for argument's sake, but often in a game, players may have both kill and objective VP's when they spend them on Black Market. Would we need to start saying "I spend three objective victory points?"

Watching Vassal is what brought this to mind, since it actually tracks them separately. I sort of doubt FFG meant to affect that tiebreak mechanic when they created the card.

Skirmish attachments are scored at the same time but separately, so it can go either way. (They would not be scored if the group isn't defeated, so they are associated with defeating figures.)

A ruling about Evacuate might give the answer to this as well.

Right, associated, but not explicitly part of. For abilities like Change of Plans, they don’t factor into figure cost at all

That next FAQ is going to be HUGE

The next FAQ has a lot, but there will always be need for more.

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

The next FAQ has a lot, but there will always be need for more.

Has it been almost a year for a FAQ?

3 hours ago, a1bert said:

The next FAQ has a lot, but there will always be need for more.

Coming soon to an FFG page near you?

4 hours ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

Has it been almost a year for a FAQ?

Version 2.3 was effective on 4/12/17