@MrRoboto:
Giving such a great player as Hobo a +17 bid is courageous.
I don’t know you yet, Arathorn - so I’m rooting for Hobo, who crushed me clearly in two games.
Anyway, good luck and have fun you two.
Welcome to the thread MrRoboto. Glad to have you follow our game.
You’ve done well in the league yourself this year, so I am happy to have players like you watch us. It’s an honour!
Regarding this game and the bid, I would say it is all about the adaptation to the situation.
Hobo is indeed a very great player, and his stat in the league is nothing but very impressive. Especially his win streaks. So Hobo deserves all the respect due to a great A&A player.
However, he and I have never played a game before, so we both have the opportunity to “surprise” each other. And since he stated that he really wanted the Axis in the playoffs, I was willing to bid him up to take the Allies. He could have bid me up to +18, but he accepted the +17. I believe that one should always try to get the side you really want, your stronger side, in a competitive match like this one is. Development of your “weaker” side for those of us that aren’t equally strong with both sides (like allweneedislove) is for less competitive league games or for the lobby/play boardgames section.
Back to the bid, I think it is an exaggeration to use the word courageous regarding the size of the bid. Allow me to explain:
Let me first say that yes, a bid can affect the game one way or the other, that is of course true - but to what extent is a completely different debate. People need to stop being so afraid of bids, especially the larger ones, especially when we’re using 1 unit per territory limitation.
Think about it - the Allies start with a TUV of 2072. A 12 bid is only 0.57% added to the TUV. That’s not even a 1% addition! Everybody knows that in ONE single battle roll in a small to medium battle, that entire bid can be annihilated.
A 17 bid is only 0.82% added to the TUV, so not even such a “big bid” breaks the 1%.
Not until you have a bid of 21 will you have 1 single percent added in TUV, and even that isn’t proportionally considered “big”.
Statistically, it is almost insignificant, because dice will be rolled, and that can change everything.
When a battle in 112 with scramble can see a TUV swing of -74 for allies if they completely whiff or only get one hit (which I have seen happen, though rarely), a bid of 30 would suddenly not seem that big as the losses would be terrible.
Same goes for a failed G1 attack. Let us say that you capture France with only 2 tanks left (negative swing of 20, and strategically a weaker position, since instead of average of 12-13 units left, you only have 2, a swing of -10 units). If also a sea battle fails miserably and you’re short 3-4 planes, a bid of 6 could appear to be “massive” if placed correctly.
I am not discounting the process of using bids for determination of sides - BUT I am trying to be a “balancing voice” in the debate regarding bid sizes and its ramifications in the LONG run.
Short term, yes, a bid can say a lot, especially the way things look before the game starts. But then the dice have to be rolled, and any bid of less than 1% added to the TUV can be swallowed in one bad roll, in a small battle. And suddenly the “advantage” is gone, all do the a bad roll.
I started by saying, it is all about adaptation, and I will conclude by saying that regardless of bid size and placement, a player must then take that into consideration in the execution of the next turn. In this game, it wasn’t tempting to take out 91 with the regular 2 subs, since it would depend on luck with the extra sub there. But had I done it and succeeded, his bid would suddenly have been “reduced” to 11. Also, had he only had a bid of 11, and NOT placed a sub there, and I had taken 2 subs there and LOST, it would have been the same as if he got a bid of 17.
That might have been longer than I intended, but again, thank you for stopping by.
If you want a better and more precise opinion about “bid size” matters, you can ask Gamerman, as he and I share the same views on this.
Again, thank you for following the game, even though you “root” for hobo ;) hehe. Just kidding.
It will be a fun game!
Rolls: 1@1; Total Hits: 01@1: (3)
