🧑‍⚖️ Rules

Tournament Format

The tournament will have a Swiss-style format with four players per table, which means that the top 4 players after each round constitute one table, then 5th to 8th, etcetera.
If the total number of players is not divisible by 4, the last 1-3 tables will be 3-player tables.
Every player will play 5 games in 2 days (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday). In the first round, players are assigned to tables randomly.

Tournament Points

In a 4-player game, each player gets 1000 points for a win, 611 for second place, 403 for third place, and 200 for fourth place (in the event of a tie, you take the average of the two positions).
The tiebreaker is the (cumulative) relative amount of points as a percentage of the total points in your table.

Table Setup

In each round, the complete game setup will be the same for all 4-player tables and the same for all 3-player tables. We will use the website Board Game Helpers for generating setups.
In addition, 4 random factions will be selected, the same for all tables.
Each round will feature factions that were not in play in previous rounds, except the fifth round which will have two (random) factions for the second time.
After completing setup at a table, players will have 10 minutes to analyze the setup before the auction begins at that table.

The Auction

After the analysis phase, one (random) player starts by bidding X points on a faction.
Then each player in turn can either raise the bid on a faction that already has one, or start a new bid of X on a faction that has no bid yet. The initial bid can always be zero.
Players holding the highest bid on a faction cannot make any further bids until their bid is outbid.
The auction ends when all factions have been chosen (the last faction always for 0 points).
The bids are recorded on paper and subtracted from each player’s final score at the end of the game.

Game Timer

We will use the (non-official) Gaia Timer app to make sure games take a similar amount of time and people don’t have to wait a long time until the last game of the round is finished.
Players will have a base 45 seconds to complete each turn. In addition, they have a ‘bank’ of 900 seconds (15 minutes) that they can use if they need more time than the 45 seconds.
If their turn timer and bank timer have both reached 0 at any point, the player is forced to pass for the remainder of the game.

Other Rules

• Players have to ANNOUNCE their move, PAY and THEN take the rest of the action.
• In order to avoid mistakes, the income phase is processed in player order, where all players can check that other players get all their income and do not forget anything.
• Whenever a player receives victory points from a round bonus or tech, they should mark it with a satellite to make sure points are not forgotten. Those satellites are removed/reset at the end of the round.
• Forgotten income, resources and advances can be corrected if all players at the table agree to the correction.
• Moves can only be changed as long as you remain in your game time and have not yet pressed the button to pass the time, AND it is 100% clear to the other players how your initial state of resources used to be (this is relevant for free conversions).
• If you realize that an illegal move was made after the turn has been passed, you stop the time and roll back the moves up to the illegal move. If this is not possible, the players have to decide together on a solution that does not negatively affect the other players.
• Players should make a photo of the full game state at the beginning of every round (before taking income).