Board Game Arena

When buying cards in the draft, your opponent(s) immediately know how many cards you decided to buy when you make the selection. This might be before they make the selection themselves. This usually doesn’t matter but might in certain cases like claiming planner. Contrasted with buying cards in the opening hand, when you and your opponent simultaneously learn information about how many cards were purchased only after making your own selections, the buying implementation during the draft feels like it leaks a small advantage to the player that stalls (for no reason as I understand it).

I may be making an error somewhere. Why does bga implement it this way for draft purchases?

This really just applies to planner. +99% of the time, it’s irrelevant so people don’t worry about that. If I am clearly buying one card, I am just going to do it. If that’s how I lose then I’m not playing well enough. Yes, BGA shouldn’t tell you until both submit. But think about in person… you will say you are buying X before your opponents decide. It’s a low impact, one might say negligible, outside of planner decisions.

bwalsh96 wrote: ↑17 April 2025, 01:17 This really just applies to planner. +99% of the time, it’s irrelevant so people don’t worry about that. If I am clearly buying one card, I am just going to do it. If that’s how I lose then I’m not playing well enough. Yes, BGA shouldn’t tell you until both submit. But think about in person… you will say you are buying X before your opponents decide. It’s a low impact, one might say negligible, outside of planner decisions.

This is relevant at all times, not just for planner. It should no show how many cards someone is buying before the other player has committed.
You're saying it doesn't matter if I see my opponent bought zero cards? Maybe I was about to waste 8 MC on protected habitats, but I see him buy zero because he didn't feel like wasting money on virus, or something like that. If someone pays 12, now I know 3 cards in his hand and can decide whether I want all of mine. I can also make inferences on his ability to play certain cards now that he is light on cash.

I really hope they change this.

In real life, I think it should be done simultaneously. And on the internet, we have the technology to do it, so, why not?

I think you are just blowing it out of proportion. The impact is near zero when you consider every other component of the match. I agree it should be simultaneous, but it’s irrelevant 99.9% of the time.

yeah would be good to be changed though. Its not a huge impact in general but 99.9% sounds quite off, its was already a couple of times relevant in 170 games, though i usually don't focus on it as i don't want to start waiting for the other to decide and slow down the game, but it can be abused/used in more like 5-10% of the games not 0.1 even if its only 1% 99.9% is a 10fold underestimaton

I’m saying it doesn’t change the end result in +99.9% of games. If you think this changes your outcome (Win/Loss) in 10% of your games, I don’t know what to say. That’s wild. Like the Minnesota Wild.

no not the result who wins but point differences etc but only 1 out of 1000 games i'd also not expect. probably we should simply delete this post once people are more aware of it it would be more abussive