Hero Wars Mechanics Question

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

 So I've been running some test sessions of the Extended Contest
Mechanics for Hero Wars and I think I've found a snag (or a misunderstanding on my part).

 There is absolutely no good reason to bid high.  Ever.  The system
never rewards you for making a large bid, it only punishes you.  If you make a large bid and succeed (critically or not), you keep your bid.  Any
gains you might get come from the loser.  If you fail on a large bid you either lose the points or hand them over to your opponent.  So since the size of your bid only determines how much you will lose or give to your opponent, you want to keep the bids small.  If you're ahead on APs/Masteries, you bid small because you can wait out your opponent, but if you're behind, you can't make a large, risky bet to win large rewards so you may as well bidsmall to drag out the fight or just throw in the towel.  If you and your opponent are closely matched, there is some amount of dramatic, shifting fortunes where first one side is up and then the other, but that makes conserving your APs with low bids all the more critical.

 I understand the idea that dramatic moments may require dramatic
bids, but going to this level of resolution generally means that the situation is very important to both sides.  Both sides will try hard to win and neither
side will lose more APs than absolutely necessary.  Nothing justifies a
large bid as far as I can tell.

 So am I missing something here?

later
Tom

[Mike Holmes]

So since the size of your bid only determines how much you will lose or give to your opponent, you want to keep the bids small.

That's not the total picture. The size of the bid also indicates how many points the opponent may lose. That is, typically the loser of the exchange forfiets x 1. So if I bid 20 and I win, you lose the 20 points.

Does that make it make sense?

The book has a little note on strategy regarding this, which is correct. That being that if you have the smaller Trait being rolled against, you want to go big and drive the opponent to zero quickly because it's more likely that fewer long odds rolls will come up than more.

Actually, all that gets skewed if anyone has any edges which makes you want to go lower for efficiency's sake.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

One thing we figured out very early in playing Hero Wars is that only one Bid is "in action" at a time, per [roll vs. opposed roll]. In other words, it's not [his Bid and roll] vs. [your Bid and roll], which is where I think you're running into a mistaken reading. It's [your Bid, your roll vs. his roll], then [his Bid, his roll vs. your roll]. This is why the sequence of actions, and often the expenditure of points to bump yourself forward in the sequence, is a big deal.

Best,
Ron

[bluegargantua]

Ron,

 Bingo!  I had been reading it as:  Both sides put up a stake and roll.  One stake per roll makes a lot more sense and all the other strategies become meaningful.  In particular, under my erroneous reading there was no way to drive anyone to much less than 0 because you couldn't force your opponent to dump enough points for a serious loss.

 OK, consider my question answered.  Man, I hope the new edition is better (it could hardly fail to be but still...).

later
Tom