A tie at the end of the game: how do you break it?

End of the game, points are counted, and two players land on exactly the same score. Awkward silence, then everyone invents a criterion that suits them. The good news: most games have already planned for this. You just need to know where to look.

1. Look for the tiebreaker in the rulebook

Most modern games explain how to break a tie, usually in the “end of game” or “final scoring” section. The criterion almost always follows the same logic: reward the most useful leftover resource, the one that would have scored more had the game gone on.

A few examples:

• 7 Wonders: in case of a tie, the player with the most coins in their treasury wins.
• Azul: the player who completed the most horizontal rows on their wall wins.
• Catan: no tiebreaker needed, the game ends as soon as a player reaches 10 points on their turn. There is only ever one winner.

2. No tiebreaker? Share the win

If the rulebook says nothing, or the tiebreaker itself ends in a tie, the most common rule is simple: tied players share the victory. It is also the fairest: neither did worse than the other.

3. The most common house tiebreakers

Some groups dislike shared wins. If that is you, here are the most widespread criteria:

• Leftover resources: money, cards in hand, unused pieces.
• Reverse turn order: the player who went last had one fewer turn, so they win.
• Score in a key category: for example the biggest objective completed.
• A sudden-death round: one final turn to settle it. Best kept for short games.

The golden rule: decide the criterion before the game, not at the moment of the tie. A criterion chosen once the result is known will always be disputed. Write it down as a house rule so it is the same every game (see how to avoid arguments over house rules).

4. What about cooperative games?

The question does not arise: everyone wins or loses together. There is no individual winner to separate. We explain it in our guide to cooperative games.

5. Ties in rankings between friends

If you keep a ranking of your plays, a tie usually counts as a win for each tied player. That is what MeepleThèque does: when two players finish with the same top score, they both get the crown, and the play is described as a tie (“Nobody would back down”). To choose how to log your plays, see our notebook, spreadsheet or app comparison.