UDE just posted an update to the tournament policy that contains a change to the end of match procedure. It has to do with what happens when you reach the end of the additional turn and have a tied game. here's the relevent section with the changes bolded:

What do you guys think? Not going to SoCal I've got the chance to see this one play itself out, but I'm sure some of you have an opinion on this. I doubt you will see this happen very often, but when it does expect someone to raise holy hell. It seems a bit to arbitrary to determine victory to me.

We tested this at WW:T. It only came into play in one of my games. I don't think it makes that big of a difference honestly, but it does put the off initiative player in a position of having to do 1 less endurance loss than they used to on the final turn.

If you've got initiative on the last turn, you should be able to push through for the win. If you can't win, you lose.

I'm all for letting the match play out like it should, but if you've gone to time, finished a turn and played one additional turn, it's time for the game to end.

Just my personal opinion, though. The fact that it coincides with UDE tournament policy is a benefit for me :-)

I think it's a good call (though I'm sure if I'm the person this happens to I won't be thrilled about it). Basically though, there's no reason 300 other people should have to wait around an extra 10 minutes for you to play that final turn of a tied game. More often than not the person w/ the init will win the next turn anyway.

It seems perfectly reasonable. It means games WILL end after the 2nd round from when time is called, which is good.

Since there has to be a way to decide a winner in the case of tied endurance totals when time is 'up' ... having the off initiative player win is the most reasonable option [it would be easier for a player ON initiative to 'play for the tie' and any other method would likely be much more arbitrary, like number of characters in play, or unstunned, or much more random, like a coin flip]

As long as the players are informed at the start of the event that this rule is in effect, it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't see any problem with this.

The person with initiative on the additional turn should win by 1 or more... start packing those Surprise Attacks, Meltdowns and Insect Swarms!

What they should do is add a clause that if you are going to this additional turn with initiative and there is NO WAY you can win, to just scoop and not waste more time or you'll receive a loss for your NEXT match. I've seen this several times where the player is hoping some type of divine intervention will turn one of his face down cards into 'Your Opponent Loses 100 Endurance' because there is no way for him to win.

So you guys are saying that it doesn't effect the integrity of the tournament that some matches are decided based on the fact that a player choose a certain initiative?

What seems odd to me is that this was included at all. I mean it comes up so very rarely. I mean it comes up once at WW:Tx? How is that a problem that deserves a policy shift? It seems to me that there were other issues that effected round time more then this.

I suppose that makes sense. MOST of the time when going into the sudden death turn the person with INT is going to win anyways. (not withstanding stall decks like gamma doom or xstall)

This doesn't really happen often of course but we can all recall at least one time where we all sat around for half an hour just waiting for one pair to finish.

It's happened at least twice at the PC that I can remember, and I wasn't paying all that much attention. There will be over two thousand matches at the PC and it will only take one going to the second additional turn to extend the tournament another half hour. I'm for most changes that are going to shorten the tournament without affecting too many people, and this does that.

I did not say it came up once overall, I said it came up once in _my_ matches.

Isn't that a determining factor in a lot of games even without taking long games into consideration?

If two guys both have a win condition on 7 that banks on attacking first, then you're still punishing whoever has to play on evens.

How does this affect the integrity of the tournament? Both players have the same chance to have time called on their off-inish so it's not like it favors any player based on what initiative they choose. If the last turn happens to be your initiative then the onus is on you to win by 1 or more endurance.

Well I think there is a clear difference between not getting the initiaive that you want(which you describe), and losing a match which is played to its conclusion, and having a judge issue a loss for picking the wrong side of the coin. I mean unless you are planning on trying to tie up the score at a particular point, this occurance will be entirely random. Which means that the outcome of the match isn't made by player skill, but by random chance. I'm not saying that this isn't a viable option, but it seems like there must be better way to determine the outcome then random chance.

I'm also saying that this happens so rarely that it might be worth having one or two rounds be extended by a few minutes rather then have the match decided by the die roll that determined initiative. It seems to me that it is being suggested that we effect the integrity of the results to save a little time.

btw sorry I miss quoted you fatal, just read a little to fast.

Ya see if players were playing rounds that lasted "a few minutes" then they'd never be in this position in the 1st place. An additional turn in many of these games would be another 10 minutes, that's just how things are right now.

I see no problem w/ it, if you have the init on the last turn of the game then you know you have to have 1 more endurance than your opponent or you will lose the game. You need to plan for this. If you don't accomplish it, then you have no one to blame but yourself.

Something to keep in mind is that the player who'll have the initiative after the tied turn will probably be able to win the game at least 9 times out of 10. Consider that this ruling hurts some 1/10 of the times this will happen, which is a rarity within a raity, and it's going to do anything other than just save time to the foregone conclusion so rarely that it's easily more fair to everyone than making people wait around as they might have to now.