From my reading of the rulebook the answer is No. If there is a tie of any sort, you play one more turn and whoever has the highest life total wins.

This came up at a tourney yesterday. Two players ended their 2nd game (1-1) at the buzzer. I argued that they had to play their first turn of the 3rd game, highest life total wins. They wanted, and got, a draw.

I will be VERY disappointed if UDE allows draws in VS., considering how clear the rulebook is about dealing with ties. Magic has almost become a joke in this regard, with players trying to play as few matches as possible. Play the game!!!

Yes it can be frustrating losing to Endurance level. I "lost" my first round, when I had dropped Magneto and has Scarlet Witch and Blastaar in hand, and my opponent had very little in play, but he was playing beatdown and I control, so I was at 30 and him 40, but I would WAY rather have that situation than sitting down and getting "Do you want draw? Let's look at the math..."

You can not draw a match, I'm not sure of all the tie breakers, but I know the VS System does not allow for a drawn match.

if your in a tournie, you can not have a match going on indefinatley so a tie would be posible

The rules say no ties and I don't see any exceptions listed. If a match is stuck in a loop, there's a problem. Not a huge one though.

A sporstman will concede a 1-0 match or agree to some random method of choosing a winner if the match is 1-1.

This is how I would run a tourney:

If there is a 1-1 tie at the end of time, you play turns until one player has more life than the other. Yes, this rewards certain decktypes over others, but it's what the rules say.

If the players are stubborn and refuse to attack each other (which they can choose to do), it goes to a coin flip.

We had 50 minute rounds. Most of the time lost was to inexperience and doing math in your head (bring a calculator when playing sentinel decks ;) ). I suspect that over time game play will be faster - which should be encouraged.

Like I said, it's rough losing on Endurance, but them's the rules, so we all need to deal with it.

Yes, but a double match loss is possible, as in both players receive a match loss. If I was a judge, that is what I would do if the players did as you described.

In official UDE tournaments there are no draws. . . from their Official Tournament Policy:

There's not an Appendix for resolving Vs. tournament Match draws right now (though the web site says there should be one posted April 2004, I think this may be another case of 'get it done right instead of getting it done fast').

So, right now, there's not an official tie-breaker so whatever the Tournament Organizer decides to use as a tie-break is whatever is used since the TO is always right :-)

There does not have to be a specific to VS tie breaker because there is a standard method for all UDE tournaments.

The first thing you look at is game score. If time runs out and one player has won and the players are in the second game, then the match ends and the player with the game win, wins the match.

If both players have won one game each then they finish the current turn and compare endurance. the player with the highest endurance wins that game and thus the match.

If at the end of that turn both players endurance is equal (not very likely but it does happen), then the players continue until the first endurance point change.


The software that is used for UDE sanctioned events does not allow draws.
Spot's Knight

With the way the rulebook is worded, there is really only one scenario that someone could argue would be a draw, and that scenario is resolved fairly easily.

Now, this scenario is virtually impossible (at least at this time), but just go with me on this. If both players run out of cards in their deck and hand, have no characters on the field, and have the same endurance total then what do you do? This is also taking into account that neither player has a resource that can deal damage. they can't play another turn because they don't have any more cards.

They would probably have to shuffle up their cards and play one more turn which is a fairly easy solution. What I think would be really cool though, is if both players leave their resources on the field and only shuffle up their KO'd pile, and then play one more turn.

I know what you're thinking. That'll never happen? And...you're right. For now. There are bound to be future cards that help stall and maybe even cards that force your opponent to discard from the top of his deck. There may even be activation payments that require a player to discard from the top of their deck to play a card or activate an ability. Who knows? I did not post this just to come up with the most inconceivable play scenario, but because it is "potentially" possible. When it comes to big money up for grabs at a major tournament, all bases need to be covered with regard to the rules.