AshesFall said:

I didn't think about your proposal much yet to have comments on it, but I wanted to quote this part to point out…if you destroy Heart of the Empire or Trench Run it doesn't matter how much total damage/objectives you killed. You have a LS win happening in either case.

Scoob said:

Yeah. This thread is mostly discussing the issue of the tiebreaking method.

MarthWMaster said:

I know. I was trying to point out that in DS tiebreakers Trench Run and Heart of the Empire are not an issue if you want to calculate total damage. Because if you only get 9 damage on them, you only got 9 damage. But if you got 10 damage (absent Defense Upgade) you win the game as the LS player. So you're no longer in DS wins both tiebreaker mode.

As for me, I agree that I don't like the tournament rules suggesting a specific playstyle. If the LS tiebreaker only takes into account how close the losing player was to winning, the DS tiebreaker should try to do the same.

I'd just like to echo what others have said about the favoring of aggressive play styles being a positive thing. I want to see my tournaments end in a reasonable amount of time which means I am in favor of limiting stall tactics.

Also, I think the savvy Sith player can adjust on the fly to a more smashmouth style if he thinks he'll need help int he tiebreakers department. The real issue here is not about whether Sith can sin tournaments reliably - it is about the community as a whole getting better at playing LS, I think.

At this point I just have to ask because I'm a little surprised: Who here is actually finding that their games with/against Sith are taking too long, or would be taking too long in a tournament environment?

I've found Star Wars to be one of the fastest games I've ever played, regardless of each player's affiliation.

I have yet to have a match (we've been practicing with the tournament rules but haven't had an official event just yet at Your Local Game Store in Matthews, NC) that gets even close to time. I just think this was done in the tournament rules as a matter of forethought. The folks at FFG are planning ahead because they know much more about the types of cards/powers of cards/number of cards per faction that are going to be released than we do. I don't think matches going to time is much of an issue at this point, but the rules are structured to keep it from becoming so.

I think that Sith's record for victory (that is a STRONG control deck) will mean lots of players still field that deck at tournaments. The tiebreaker rule slightly favoring Imperial Navy might also mean we get an encouragement for a variety of DS deck styles, too.

I would prefer total objective damage done as a more accurate measurement of tie breaks. Dial then damage done for LS.

agnos said:

Yeah. Damage done (per my suggestion perhaps, or another if a better version can be found) for when both win with DS, and the dial count (essentially how close the ds got to 12) for when both win as LS. A dial count is, in my mind, ideal. It favors aggressive style decks that push the dial along by killing objectives and defensive style decks that hold out and keep the force equally. It is a -much- better way to break an LS win tie.

So, a complete suggestion perhaps;

"Whenever a tie occurs (I.e both players won either as LS or DS), it is broken in the following way;

If both players won as the dark side, a tie is broken by counting the total number of damage points inflicted by the players' light side deck upon dark side objectives. If the light side won either by destroying the heart of the empire or the trench run, this counts as having inflicted 15 points of damage regardless of actual damage dealt to objectives. When calculating how much damage you inflicted, choose three objectives either in play or in your victory pile. Trench run may be included among these. Add together all damage inflicted up to the objectives base damage capacity. The player that inflicted the most damage after this calculation wins the tie.

If both players won as the light side, a tie is broken by comparing the final position of the dark side dial at the time of light side victory. The dark side player with the highest final position on the dark side dial wins the tie."

The current rules for "true ties" are functional when adapted to this context.

I don't really like the tiebreaker for the DS but I'm also not a huge proponent of changing the rules before tournements even get off the ground. Let's see how it works before changing it.

But did anyone consider using the cards remaining in the deck as a tie breaker? Would that be worse than objectives destroyed?

Holliday88 said:

While I'm not opposed to the rules as they are, I don't know why I didn't think of that. It makes sense, mainly because that is the other alternate victory condition.

Holliday88 said:

While it is true that being "drawn out" is a way to loose the game, it does not at all measure performance or success. The advantage other tie breaker models have over this one is that they do.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that this sort of tiebreaker would run contrary to game design and would be pretty ripe for abuse. The game is, in the main, designed around high card rotation. Also, consider this. You won your LS game and now you are playing the dark side. The table looks like it's probably going to be a loss for you. Instead of trying to play your best and hanging on as long as you can to maybe pull a win out of what looks like defeat, you instead stop playing cards completely. Consequently, you dont draw any cards at all. The end result is that you have more cards in your deck than your opponent did when he lost, so in essence you just "won" the tie by loosing on purpose.

AshesFall said:

In your example you'd use the LS tie breakers because both players would win as LS. What I mean is when both players win as DS. One wins at +23, the other wins at +15, the player who won at +23 gets the extra point.

Edit: the more I think about it the more I disagree with your assertion that it doesn't measure performance or success. Because you are required to draw at the start of your turn, you are encouraged to end the game as quickly and as efficiently as you are able.

Holliday88 said:

Ah, gotcha. You mean that you count the cards left in the deck with the winning faction.

The problem with this, then, is that your relative "success" with your non winning deck becomes irrelevant. it is, in my opinion, a good idea to break ties by the most successful "loosing" deck (you did both win with the other faction after all).

Using a model that relies on cards left also impacts deck that draw a lot of cards in a bad way, for example a rebel deck centered around mission briefings and leias set with stolen plans and "you're my only hope". This reintroduces in some way what the tie breaker rules should strive to avoid as much as possible, that is impacting deck builds and gameplay styles. That why I believe that ties should be broken via the method that already wins the game for the factions (objective damage and ds dial), without putting emphasis on -how- that is done (how quickly, whether by destroying objectives as ds or holding the force and defending, and so on)

AshesFall said:

LS tie breaker uses the Death Star dial. I thought the conversation was talking about changing the DS tie breaker?

I feel like Heart and Trench are SUPPOSED to be all-or-nothing gambles. If you go for the (theoretically at least) easy victory and still lose, you deserve to walk away empty-handed. Still, some way of measuring closeness-to-victory as Light (more granular than simply destroyed DS objective count, since that will just continue the tie too often) would certainly be preferable to what we're currently dealing with. I still prefer the score-based system I outlined in the first post (as it rewards strong play across both sides without favoring any specific faction or play style, and allows extreme granularity in ranking, such that a complete shut-out hurts your standing much more than a narrow loss), but how about this: for each Dark objective destroyed in your Light game, you get Objective Destruction Points (ODP) equal to twice its damage capacity, then one additional ODP for every damage remaining on undestroyed Dark objectives (including Trench Run). Whoever got more ODP wins the tie. (Light tiebreaker remains as-is.)

These are the rules deal with it.

To AshesFall:

Again, it does not matter how much damage you count a destroyed Heart of the Empire or Trench Run to be, those are Light Side wins and do not matter for the Dark Side tiebreaker rules. You can eliminate that section from your proposal.

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To The Gas:

One of the things I liked about the original rules is they were a lot simpler than some of the proposals I had seen floating around. Not a lot of calculations to make (yours aren't hard to make, just each calculation to make introduces a chance for error) and really specific examples of how things work.

---

I like the idea to count damage. What I liked about the LS victory condition is you were comparing how close you came to winning when your Dark Sides lost, in essence seeing who won in a more dominating fashion. I suggested in another thread that in the case of a DS wins both tie to only count destroyed DS objectives, to again see how close the losing sides came to winning.

I think it was dmeboy who pointed out this gives the options of the tiebreaker score being only 0, 1, or 2, not a lot of granularity in the ties. So for this reason I would support total damage done. Someone who gets 7 damage on two different Defense Upgrade'd objectives, and destroys a 5 health third objective came closer to winning than someone who destroyed a 5 health objective and placed no other damage.

TL;DR

I like the idea of taking damage dealt by the losing LS sides to DS objectives as the DS wins tiebreaker, without taking into account what your DS side does to LS objectives.

Scoob said:

The problem is with counting damage you are assuming more damage means closer to victory. Not even touching Heart of the Empire of Trench Run there are more then a few situations where doing more damage is not being closer to victory. You can do 15 damage across 3 DS objectives and still be 7 overall damage away from winning (having killed no objectives) provided the right objectives or upgrades, but that would give you a tiebreaker win over 2 destroyed 4 health objectives and 4 damage on one 5 health objective for a total of only 12 damage. Perhaps instead of total damage done it would be better to score destroyed objectives as a primary tiebreaker and then total health remaining as a secondary.

But still how many players have actually run a tournament under FFG rules? I understand the reasoning behind some of the reactions, but without any data there is no basis for a request to overhaul.

ScottieATF said:

This is a good point, I hadn't considered that. The issue here is that you DO need to touch Heart of the Empire or Trench Run, because going after them makes a player less competitive for your first tiebreaker. I'm intrigued by the total health remaining idea, though. Perhaps make it simply total health remaining to a victory as the tiebreaker. If you have 4 damage on three different 5 health objectives it's the same as having 7 on Trench Run. I still feel like the first deck did better overall, though I can see the point when I'm arguing for seeing who came closer to winning.

ScottieATF said:

I also think you're right that data might be needed before FFG would consider a change. But I'd prefer changes before the regionals start, rather than after.

Jonnyb815 said:

NO U

I think you guys need to get in the right mindset when deckbuilding. If you're building your decks with tiebreaks in mind then you're "planning on losing". Build your decks to give youself the "best chance to win the game", not the best chance to win a tiebreak".