There has been a fair amount of discussion over the past couple of weeks about Matt Cary’s thirteen point bid in his Gold Squadron Classic winning Boba/Guri build. I’ve seen questions on Reddit asking, “why take a bid at all”, “why such a large bid”, et cetera. So I thought I might take some time to address the concept of an initiative bid.

First thing to address: the term “initiative bid”. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a holdover term from the now obsolete first edition of X-Wing. In first edition, the ranking system used to determine which ships moved and shot in what order was referred to as “pilot skill”, and when two ships of opposing sides had the same pilot skill, the player who had initiative both moved and shot first. Initiative was determined before the start of the game in one of two manners. First, if the squads were both built out to the same number of squad points, the players would roll an attack die for a 50/50 chance to control the ability to choose who had initiative. Alternatively, if one player had spent fewer squad points than the other, then the player with the fewer points spent would be able to choose which player would move and shoot first. Depending on the dynamics of the squad, that choice could be hugely important, or fairly inconsequential. Those who were flying squads in which it very much mattered who moved first and who moved last would make a bid for the right to control who had initiative, by intentionally handicapping their squad by not spending all the points they had available. In some ways, that bid could be thought of as a variable cost upgrade that could give you a strategic advantage over your opponent. The bid for the right to control which player had initiative became simply known as an initiative bid.

Moving into the current rendition of the game, Fantasy Flight Games changed what was referred to as initiative to “first player” and what was pilot skill to “initiative”. I’m sure they thought this was a simpler and easier to understand, and maybe for newer players it is, but for many veterans, it’s just a bit annoying to be left fumbling over game terms that used to mean one thing and now mean something completely different. So maybe it’s first player bid now, but I’m sticking with the old terminology for the foreseeable future.

So why take an initiative bid? It mostly is for the right to control which player moves first and who moves last. In chess, moving first is typically seen as an advantage, but we have a few more cogs and gears moving in X-Wing. Both the choice to move first or move last have their merits. In the classic TIE swarm, the ability to block your opponent’s ships often made the difference between a win and a loss. And you can’t block a space that you didn’t get to first. So for a low initiative swarm, dropping a few points to guarantee that your ships can occupy a certain space before your opponent’s ships can is well worth it. On the flip side, any low hit point, high initiative, repositioning ace you might have in your squad will desperately want to be moving last. The later you move, the more perfect the information you will have about the board state for the remainder of the round. Having the capability to consistently be out of your opponent’s arcs is far superior to all the hull, shields, or green tokens you could muster. As an added benefit, any points that aren’t spent on upgrades or ships are added to the value of whatever ships you have left on the board at the end of the game, and those points aren’t affected by the half points rule.

As to the origins of Matt’s large bid, well… that might be, at least partially, my fault. As I’ve mentioned before, I was very conditioned to flying Thweek as my end game ace. And Thweek, more than most, wanted to move last. I ran him with a four point bid, and it was a exceedingly rare occurrence that I would have to roll for initiative in a tournament. So I was very comfortable with running larger than average bids. Moving into second edition, I naturally gravitated towards playing Guri, an Initiative five pilot. Because I6’s are so rare and because of the lack of Veteran Instincts and Adaptability, I5’s have become the new standard ace, with I5’s beating out over 83% of pilots in the game, and an I5 with a bid becomes almost as potent as an I6, moving after all but about 3.5% of the ships possible to field. Because of that, I fully expect that the bidding war for I5 will be much more fierce than the one at I6. If you can guarantee the bid, you can guarantee your I5 moving with perfect knowledge essentially 96% percent of the time. With any repositioning ace that is a huge advantage, but with an advanced sensors, afterburners Guri with microthrusters barrel roll, the advantage in the end game becomes astronomical. Therefore, with Guri as my main list building centerpiece, I immediately started including a large bid in almost every squad I created. When the squads I built got up to around 188 points, I became increasingly uncomfortable adding anything else to them. If I’m going to gamble for the initiative, I want to be as sure as possible.

A screenshot of first squad lists I started building in Launch Bay Next, my primary second edition builder.

I can’t say for sure how much my tendency to run squads in the high 180’s affected the bidding in the St. Louis meta, because Mark Myers and Alex Bell both promptly started including significant initiative bids in their squad building, but it did have an effect. Soon it wasn’t uncommon at all to sit down across the table from someone running a fifteen or sixteen point bid.

Another reason for the large bid is the relative lack of lower priced, but still useful, upgrades. Take, for instance the Boba/Guri build from the Gold Squadron Classic:

(80) Boba Fett

(3) 0-0-0

(3) Marauder

(4) Han Solo

(2) Debris Gambit

(6) Shield Upgrade

(5) Proton Bombs

Points 103

(62) Guri

(8) Afterburners

(6) Outmaneuver

(8) Advanced Sensors

Points 84

Total points: 187

The only unused upgrade slots on Boba are the cannon, illicit, and missile slots. Both the cannon and missile options that are available are rather lackluster. In some instances, a case can be made for heavy laser cannon being worthwhile, but on Boba, paying four points for a weapon that might proc every once in a while, but takes away the ability to deal crits seems foolish. No other cannons are worth not taking a primary shot for on a ship that already throws three red dice. Homing Missiles can do good work in certain situations, but with so many natural rerolls, Boba almost never takes a lock action, so what’s the point of taking a missile you’ll likely never use, and would only be useful a small percent of the time anyway? Of the illicits currently available, a case could be made for Contraband Cybernetics. The ability to get actions even while stressed is incredibly powerful and certainly would have proved useful multiple times during the tournament. But… having the five points it costs added to the build would have caused me to lose out on the initiative bid on 50% of the games I played that day. And that is a far higher price than I am willing to pay for one more action, once per game.

Moving on to the Guri build, the only two slots still available to her are the torpedo and the title slots. The torpedo options are all good, and well worth the points they cost, if used properly. But the cheapest one is six points, which again would have lost initiative for me multiple times. Compounding that problem is that Guri, at least the way I tend to play her, also almost never takes a lock action. Her actions are generally reserved for either repositioning, or for taking a calculate token for defense. As for the Virago title, unless you are going to be sinking the points into Guri for two modifications, the title is largely a glorified shield upgrade that costs two more points than a normal shield upgrade. If you’re going to sink that 94 points into her, at that point you might as well go all the way up to 102, and grab a normal shield upgrade in addition to the title and turn her into a four hull, three shield beast that’s a better Tie Defender than the Tie Defenders are. But my philosophy, as I noted before, has been that the best way to defend is to not be shot at all rather than have more shields and more defense dice.

It’s been an interesting experience watching and listening to some of the fallout from this two ship list with a thirteen point bid have an influence in shaping the meta, especially knowing that I bear some culpability for the results. And I can’t say that I’m particularly thrilled. Matt and I have worried that the worst thing for our Gold Squadron Classic list was for it to win, ironically. I want my twelve or thirteen point bids to remain uncontested. But I’m afraid that time has passed on. I’m afraid that the bidding war for I5’s has only just begun in earnest, and I can only hope that FFG will be able to adjust the points as needed to keep the Han Solo gunner-esque cards from dropping us too far down this sarlacc pit. But until they do, I expect to see more fifteen, sixteen, or higher point initiative bids in tournaments both in St. Louis, and around the X-Wing world.

So, what do you think? Is having such a large bid the wrong move? Or is the St. Louis bid going be a thing in 2nd edition? Will it die off after a few weeks or stay relevant to the meta for the foreseeable future?

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