[Icehouse] [Martian Chess] End of Tournament Games

[A Ross]

-----Original Message-----
From: icehouse-bounces at lists.looneylabs.com
[mailto:icehouse-bounces at lists.looneylabs.com] On Behalf Of Marc Hartstein
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 8:09 AM
To: icehouse at lists.looneylabs.com
Subject: Re: [Icehouse] [Martian Chess] End of Tournament Games

On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 10:27:09AM -0400, kerry_and_ryan wrote:
> So an issue came up during the Martian Chess tournament at Origins.
> The ad hoc rule I made was that the game continues until there is an
> empty sector AND there is a lone player with the most points.  

One alternative I thought of after the tournament was to have a
tiebreaker rule instead.  I see two possibilities:

1. Having an empty quadrant breaks ties.  The argument in favor is that
the normal way to win is to get a point lead and then empty your
quadrant, so this player, having successfully emptied their quadrant, is
closer to victory than the one with an equal number of pieces who
hasn't.  It's also similar to "you win ties if it's your turn" as seen
in other pyramid games.
--------------------------------------
Expanding on the first possibility:
There's a mechanism in "Kill Doctor Lucky" and "Save Doctor Lucky" for
deciding who goes next when Doctor Lucky walks into a room with two or more
players.
How about trying it like this?

"If two or more players are tied for first and you end the game by emptying
your quadrant, if you are -
- tied for first, you win (like #1, above).
- not tied for first, then whichever tied player whose turn would come up
soonest wins."

Example: Andy, Brad, Carl, and Dawn are playing (in that order).
Brad and Carl are tied for first.
Dawn ends the game by emptying her quadrant.
She's not tied for first, and Brad would get his next turn before Carl
would, so Brad wins.