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[neoeinstein]

Here's a question that I recently came up with and figured that opening a tiny can of rules worms might be fun. I searched on this board but didn't find a similar topic.

Take four scenarios. In all, assume Player A is the first player and that the VP scores are equal at the end of the game:

1. A game with Outpost. Player A plays Outpost—gaining an extra turn—at least one more time than Player B. The game ends when Player B piles out. (example game, another)

2. The converse Outpost game. Player B plays Outpost—gaining an extra turn—exactly one more time than Player A. The game ends when Player A piles out.

3. A game with Possession. Player A plays Possession—causing Player B to take an extra turn—exactly one more time than Player B. The game-ending pile out occurs while Player A is possessing Player B.

4. The converse Possession game. Player B plays Possession—causing Player A to take an extra turn—at least one more time than Player A. The game-ending pile out occurs while Player B is possessing Player A. (example game)

The scores are equal, so the tie-breaker is:

Code: [Select]

If the highest scores are tied at the end of the game, the tied player who has had the fewest turns wins the game. If the tied players have had the same number of turns, they rejoice in their shared victory.

Card text for reference:

You only draw 3 cards (instead of 5) in this turn's Clean-up phase. Take an extra turn after this one. This can't cause you to take more than two consecutive turns.

The player to your left takes an extra turn after this one, in which you can see all cards he can and make all decisions for him.
Any cards he would gain on that turn, you gain instead; any cards of his that are trashed are set aside and returned to his discard pile at end of turn.

The tie-breaker hinges on what constitutes a turn. Isotropic takes the opinion that possessed or outpost turns do not count. I think there is a case to be made that a plain text reading of Outpost and Possession indicate that players affected are taking a turn, and thus counts for the purposes of a tie versus a shared victory. The former is more intuitive and only requires remembering the start order, but the latter seems to follow the text although it may require some tracking to get right.

Which is the proper way of adjudicating the tie-breaker here?

In all, this is a very tiny space, having only affected 2 out of the 200 recent Outpost games and 1 out of the 200 recent Possession games on Councilroom, which I've listed above as examples.

[DStu]

Those turns do not count, for one of it it is in the rules, for the other one Donald admitted that he forgot it.

Edit: It is in Posessions FAQ

Possession turns (and other extra turns) do not count for the tiebreaker.

[neoeinstein]

Aha! I did finally find it. In Alchemy there is a block of text regarding Possession:

Code: [Select]

Possession causes an extra turn to be played, like the card
Outpost does (from Dominion: Seaside). The extra turn happens
only after this turn is completely over - you will have discarded
everything and drawn your next hand. Outpost only prevents
itself from giving a player two consecutive turns, it does not
prevent other cards or the rules from doing so. So, for example, if
you play Possession in a two-player game, then after the
Possession turn, that player still gets his normal turn. If he played
Outpost during that turn though, it would not give him an extra
turn. If you play both Outpost and Possession in the same turn,
the Outpost turn happens first. If you make someone play
Outpost during a turn in which you Possessed them, that player
will get the extra turn and make decisions during it and so forth,
not you; if you make someone play Possession during a turn in
which you Possessed them, that will make that player Possess the
player to his left, rather than you getting to Possess anyone
further. Possession turns (and other extra turns) do not count for
the tiebreaker. Once the game ends, no further turns are played,
including extra turns from Possession and Outpost.

The key portion hidden in there is: "Possession turns (and other extra turns) do not count for the tiebreaker." which back-ports the rule to Seaside and Outpost.

Closes that out for me nice and quick.

[Kuildeous]

And it does make it easier in the end. Online, it'd be easy to count the number of turns with Outpost and Possession. And if this were exclusively an online game, then maybe that consideration would have been entertained. Though, I doubt it, since an Outpost's extra turn is often going to be worse than a typical turn, so it shouldn't count as the same.

But after the cards are down and the victory points counted, how do you count the turns? Does Player A remember how many times he played Outpost? Did Player B possess Player A 4 times or 5 times? Well, crap.

So it's just cleaner to not allow Outpost or Possession to affect turn count.