Craig Duncan
United States
Ithaca
New York
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My family (me, my wife, 8 year old daughter, and 11 year old son) enjoy this game and have been playing it a lot. Last night we had a game end with my daughter and me tied for first place, with 37 victory points each.
We checked the rules for a tie-breaking condition, but there is none listed; I suppose we are just meant to be co-winners.
But it got us thinking as to what a good tie-breaking condition would be. Since it is fairly difficult to catch poultry cards using fox cards (it's rare to succeed more than 50% of the time, in our experience), we decided that the winner of ties should be the player with the most "poultry points." That is, add up all your caught bird cards and the one with the most points on these is the overall winner.
Of course, it's possible that the tied players might STILL be tied, since it is possible that they have the same number of poultry points. So we also tried to think of a secondary tie-breaking condition.
We thought of three possibilities:
(1) The "Fattest Fowl" Condition: The person with the highest valued single poultry card wins.
(2) The "Sliest Fox" Condition: The person with the most poultry cards wins (e.g. if both players have 6 poultry points, but one player has a single poultry card of value 6, whereas the other player has a poultry card of 2 and a poultry card of 4, then the latter player wins).
(3) The "Efficient Eater" Condition: The player with the most yellow cubes wins.
Of course, whichever of these you choose as a secondary tie-breaking condition, it is possible it still won't resolve the tie. In that case I think that, rather than resorting to a "tertiary tie-breaking condition" (no need for this -- it is a just quick kids' game, for goodness sake!) both players should be judged co-winners.
Thoughts on this? That is, thoughts on the original tie-breaking condition proposed above, plus the choice of 1-3 as a secondary condition?
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Gene
United States
Somerset
Massachusetts
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cdunc123 wrote: We checked the rules for a tie-breaking condition, but there is none listed; I suppose we are just meant to be co-winners.
But it got us thinking as to what a good tie-breaking condition would be.
So we also tried to think of a secondary tie-breaking condition.
We thought of three possibilities:
(1) The "Fattest Fowl" Condition: The person with the highest valued single poultry card wins.
(2) The "Sliest Fox" Condition: The person with the most poultry cards wins (e.g. if both players have 6 poultry points, but one player has a single poultry card of value 6, whereas the other player has a poultry card of 2 and a poultry card of 4, then the latter player wins).
(3) The "Efficient Eater" Condition: The player with the most yellow cubes wins.
Same thing happened to us just last night. Our game ended in a tie so we did a quick check of the rules; but found nothing on ties.
It's a kids game. Still, I like the idea of having a tie breaker.
Before reading your thread here I thought about breaking any ties to the player with the most cubes in total. The idea of the game is to eat as much as possible and this seemed a good way to match that.
As an alternate I like your idea of giving the tie breaker to the player with the most yellow cubes too.
Of the ones you listed I like them in this order:
(3) The "Efficient Eater" Condition
(2) The "Sliest Fox" Condition
(1) The "Fattest Fowl" Condition
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Craig Duncan
United States
Ithaca
New York
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Germarish wrote: [q="cdunc123"]
Before reading your thread here I thought about breaking any ties to the player with the most cubes in total.
I like this idea! It's simple and intuitive, and it is unlikely that two people will have the same number of cubes, so my guess is that it will almost always break ties. In the rare case it does not break a tie, then the "most yellow cubes" is a sensible secondary tie-breaker.
One question: is it a bit disappointing that poultry cards are irrelevant? Instead of a "most cubes" tie breaker, you could use a "most meals" tie-breakers: count the number of cubes and add this to the number of poultry cards. What do you think?
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Gene
United States
Somerset
Massachusetts
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cdunc123 wrote: Germarish wrote: [q="cdunc123"]
Before reading your thread here I thought about breaking any ties to the player with the most cubes in total. I like this idea! It's simple and intuitive, and it is unlikely that two people will have the same number of cubes, so my guess is that it will almost always break ties. In the rare case it does not break a tie, then the "most yellow cubes" is a sensible secondary tie-breaker. One question: is it a bit disappointing that poultry cards are irrelevant? Instead of a "most cubes" tie breaker, you could use a "most meals" tie-breakers: count the number of cubes and add this to the number of poultry cards. What do you think?
What do I think? I think we just came up with a new variant for tie-breakers in my house 
Using a "most meals"(total cubes + poultry cards) as a tie-breaker keeps with the spirit of the game and doesn't favor one area of scoring over the other. I think it's a great blending of the two and it's what we'll be using from here on in 
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Craig Duncan
United States
Ithaca
New York
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Agreed! "Most meals" it is for us too! And if that doesn't break the tie, I vote for having co-winners (i.e. no secondary tie-breaking condition).
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