I know bids are points you leave for trying to get first player, but what is good about first player?

You're usually trying to get second player, so you can see where your opponent has moved to before you decide what action to take. Do you need to boost to get a better shot, or barrel roll out if their arc to avoid their fire?

On the other hand there are abilities that You'd like to trigger before Your opponent ex Han Solo Gunner for Scum. Sometimes shooting first gives You an opportunity for getting a crippling critical for Your opponent (ex. -1 red dice). It wholly depends on the list structure. In a general ace lists aim to be a second player to arc-dodge, others usually don't care (or are build in a way not to care), unless they ahve special abilities that need to be triggered before or after the opponent. This is why people invest in bids

An exampel beeing that if you have 2 ppl playing with 1 kylo ren each, and one player has a bid. That player will be abel to arcdodge the first players kylo for days, becuse when you activate , you have knowledge of were your opponent ended up. so you are free to boost /barrelroll out of arc as you please.

Bidding is also a way of points fortressing. As a practical example, let’s say your list contains Soontir Fel with Predator (54 points) and my final ship is Fenn Rau with Fearless (69 points). As I have more points left on the board, I must be ahead on points destroyed, right?

Not exactly. If my list doesn’t have a bid and yours has a 16 point bid then as well as the 54 points on Soontir there’s an additional 16 that I’ve not destroyed. So in fact you have 70 points remaining on the table, and are ahead by one point.

The above is the real reason why bids are a blight on the game. It’s easily solved too, by counting any unused squad points as “destroyed” from the start of the game.

Being first gives you first choice of obstacle.

If you have ships at the same initiative as your opponent being first can allow them to move into a blocking position without necessarily losing actions like target lock or focus.

As has been noted it depends on your list. It also depends on what you're facing. You might have a list that wants to be first against some lists and second against others. A bid is points spent to influence who gets the choice in your favor.

5 minutes ago, RelativeShoe said:

Bidding is also a way of points fortressing. As a practical example, let’s say your list contains Soontir Fel with Predator (54 points) and my final ship is Fenn Rau with Fearless (69 points). As I have more points left on the board, I must be ahead on points destroyed, right?

Not exactly. If my list doesn’t have a bid and yours has a 16 point bid then as well as the 54 points on Soontir there’s an additional 16 that I’ve not destroyed. So in fact you have 70 points remaining on the table, and are ahead by one point.

The above is the real reason why bids are a blight on the game. It’s easily solved too, by counting any unused squad points as “destroyed” from the start of the game.

There should certainly be a way to score some or all of the points spent on a bid other than tabling the entire list.

4 hours ago, RelativeShoe said:

Bidding is also a way of points fortressing. As a practical example, let’s say your list contains Soontir Fel with Predator (54 points) and my final ship is Fenn Rau with Fearless (69 points). As I have more points left on the board, I must be ahead on points destroyed, right?

Not exactly. If my list doesn’t have a bid and yours has a 16 point bid then as well as the 54 points on Soontir there’s an additional 16 that I’ve not destroyed. So in fact you have 70 points remaining on the table, and are ahead by one point.

The above is the real reason why bids are a blight on the game. It’s easily solved too, by counting any unused squad points as “destroyed” from the start of the game.

I’ve always thought of something a bit less aggressive (as I fly with large bids but agree that it’s a bit skewed):

1) At setup you either assign your bid to a ship/ships or it is equally divided onto your ships. So if you assign your bid to Soontir he’s 70 points dead 35 half hull, etc.

2) When half your squad points on table are lost, you also lose half your bid.

Thoughts?

— Your Local Imp Ace Flyer —

No thanks ^

So would you recommend 4-7 pts bid if you have an ace(I6 ship)?

1 hour ago, TIE wing said:

So would you recommend 4-7 pts bid if you have an ace(I6 ship)?

6 or 7pts is fine for most games. If its crucial that your list move second, then 10+pt is ideal (like a kylo with supernatural).

3 hours ago, TIE wing said:

So would you recommend 4-7 pts bid if you have an ace(I6 ship)?

Yeah...... sadly 10 is a minimum. Some tournament builds go up to 15-16 points.

Altho that’s for aces where it’s absolutely critical. It depends on the build.

14 hours ago, JBFancourt said:

I’ve always thought of something a bit less aggressive (as I fly with large bids but agree that it’s a bit skewed):

1) At setup you either assign your bid to a ship/ships or it is equally divided onto your ships. So if you assign your bid to Soontir he’s 70 points dead 35 half hull, etc.

2) When half your squad points on table are lost, you also lose half your bid.

Thoughts?

— Your Local Imp Ace Flyer —

Too complicated, and unnecessarily so. Currently a bid gives you the benefit of moving with perfect information combined with a stash of untouchable points, with the only downside being that you can use fewer upgrades in a game that has been rebalanced to favour using fewer upgrades. It’s completely skewed.

Far fairer would be to say that if you want to fly with perfect information then you have to concede your bidded points to do so. No faffing around with maths, no assigning bids to ships, just a simple (but tough) choice. That’s what X-Wing is about, making those choices.

18 hours ago, JBFancourt said:

I’ve always thought of something a bit less aggressive (as I fly with large bids but agree that it’s a bit skewed):

1) At setup you either assign your bid to a ship/ships or it is equally divided onto your ships. So if you assign your bid to Soontir he’s 70 points dead 35 half hull, etc.

2) When half your squad points on table are lost, you also lose half your bid.

Thoughts?

— Your Local Imp Ace Flyer —

It seems a little complicated but neither is a bad idea. I think the second is cleaner and easier though.

You get something for a bid. That something is considered worth giving up upgrades to get. In that regard we can consider a bid an upgrade. Points spent on upgrades can be scored in whole or in part without tabling the entire list. Points spent on a bid can not.

Should points spent on bids count differently than points spent on upgrades?

5 hours ago, RelativeShoe said:

Too complicated, and unnecessarily so. Currently a bid gives you the benefit of moving with perfect information combined with a stash of untouchable points, with the only downside being that you can use fewer upgrades in a game that has been rebalanced to favour using fewer upgrades. It’s completely skewed.

Far fairer would be to say that if you want to fly with perfect information then you have to concede your bidded points to do so. No faffing around with maths, no assigning bids to ships, just a simple (but tough) choice. That’s what X-Wing is about, making those choices.

Yeah, I agree that simple is better (tho this does NOT always describe tourney rules). However, unlike an upgrade a bid is not a complete benefit. Moving last is good, shooting last is not. I like @Frimmel suggestion that option #2 is simple and easy to implement.

I don’t see the necessary logic that bid points are automatically counted against you.

It would really slow the roll on large bids tho. Haha.

Another thought:

You could have bid brackets based on a point range.

1-5

6-10

11-15+

You could make each bracket worth so much “destroyed points” without creating a bid war. This would function more like a purchased upgrade.

I like that bids are the way that they are. A player can choose to have a "stronger" team (one that uses more points) at the expense of moving first. A bid is like an upgrade on your entire squad where you spend points to move second (or maybe first if your squad relies on moving first). Since move order affects the entire squad, it makes sense that those points are not earned until you defeat an entire squad.

Seems the easiest fix is just have the bid give up MOV from the start of the game, I often have huge bids in my list and I'd be fine with that as a fairer system

15 hours ago, JBFancourt said:

Yeah...... sadly 10 is a minimum. Some tournament builds go up to 15-16 points.

Altho that’s for aces where it’s absolutely critical. It depends on the build.

It heavily depends on your local meta. In my area 6 points is considered big.

3 hours ago, Amc879 said:

I like that bids are the way that they are. A player can choose to have a "stronger" team (one that uses more points) at the expense of moving first. A bid is like an upgrade on your entire squad where you spend points to move second (or maybe first if your squad relies on moving first). Since move order affects the entire squad, it makes sense that those points are not earned until you defeat an entire squad.

I would completely agree, except the precedent set at getting half points on a ship. This started back in the Fat Han days...

So it seems consistent that if you destroy half a squad you’d get half the bid too?

On 1/23/2019 at 11:26 PM, SOTL said:

You're usually trying to get second player, so you can see where your opponent has moved to before you decide what action to take. Do you need to boost to get a better shot, or barrel roll out if their arc to avoid their fire?

Then wouldn't you bump into them?

7 pts bid enough?

Wedge w. proton torp, servo.f., R5

Norra wexly w. I.C.T., vet t. gun., proton bomb, expert handling, R2,

Evaan Verplaine w. I.C.T, vet t. gun., ses charges, selfless, R5

I see that usually people bid 0 to 5