I'm sure there will be a lot of different opinions about what the idea arena settings for GWT are. For my part, I was happy to see that the arena settings for GWT are 2 player, 2nd Edition, and without Simmental variant. While I have played a lot at all player counts, my preference right now when playing online is 2 player. However, I was disappointed to see that bidding for turn order was not activated for arena.
At first, this may seem sensible, since bidding is a variant not in the official rules. However, for competitive play I would estimate about a quarter of games based on the particular setup conditions (in 2nd edition - more than 25% in 1st edition) have a pretty clear advantage to going first. In those games, it can feel a bit sad not to be able to bid, as you are just starting off from a significant deficit.
I probably will not play much arena as it is, since it feels a lot better to me to play with bidding. So if there is general consensus, perhaps we can urge the BGA admins to add bidding? Normally we would wait until the next season to suggest changes, but if it happens that everyone mostly agrees this should be added, waiting two months seems silly. So comment below if you agree!
Happy gaming fellow GWT enthusiasts!
At first, this may seem sensible, since bidding is a variant not in the official rules. However, for competitive play I would estimate about a quarter of games based on the particular setup conditions (in 2nd edition - more than 25% in 1st edition) have a pretty clear advantage to going first. In those games, it can feel a bit sad not to be able to bid, as you are just starting off from a significant deficit.
I probably will not play much arena as it is, since it feels a lot better to me to play with bidding. So if there is general consensus, perhaps we can urge the BGA admins to add bidding? Normally we would wait until the next season to suggest changes, but if it happens that everyone mostly agrees this should be added, waiting two months seems silly. So comment below if you agree!
Happy gaming fellow GWT enthusiasts!