Can I ask about 'sheep walker'. I've seen this in normal, but not competitive.
Is it just me?
Is it just me?
Banlist Discussion!
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Re: Banlist Discussion!
Sheep Walker is certainly in. It hadn't been implemented until recently on BGA, but now that it is it is in all formats. The only cards currently on the banlist are Caravan and Braggart.
Re: Banlist Discussion!
As for the CD bans, after looking through the entire list, I think I agree with the four card discussion EconSean has started. I wouldn't consider banning anything else on my glances though. So on those four cards:
Carriage Trip: I agree I'm very open to banning this. I agree that it really isn't generally too powerful, but it is just extremely annoying. I think it can almost be game breaking good too in that situation where someone gets to build 2 rooms and then manages to start and grow to ensure the first grows of the game. How often will that arise and should we reward a player with "good" drafting? I suppose you could argue that, but it's just really annoying for players to play around the threats Carriage Trip can create. I don't think this card adds good features to the game and so banning it for annoyance sake I am totally good with.
Clay Supports: This depends a bit on what we totally want the banlist to support. At the moment arena mode doesn't include extra action spaces and is at a low draft count. If we're trying to help protect all game modes, including extra action spaces, I'm firmly on the side of banning this card. I think Clay Supports is possibly too strong even in regular games, I think it is probably way too strong in a game where you know you can grow in to your cheap rooms rapidly via the extra action spaces.
This one is really on the edge for me in normal games. It can occasionally fall in to issues and not work out, but it's still very strong. It's fun to have strong impactful cards in the set, but is Clay Supports on the side of too good? Having a cheap big house is great, especially when it is clay rooms. I think I do lean towards banning this, but am open to letting it get played for awhile and then deciding otherwise too.
Begging Student: Another one where I think format matters a good bit to me if I want to ban it or not. If you're playing a draft 7 game, I'm not sure I'd ban Begging Student. It's very strong, but if the draft is a bit weak you're not going to get all that much value from him, especially in a game where that begging token might really hurt. However once we start talking about formats like draft 9 or draft 10, your average hand is that much stronger and more synergistic, and Begging Student really scares me in that format. Begging Student is also just a lot of fun to play though, this card set has so few things that help to play more occupations still so I'd be a bit sad to see him go since he really opens up a fun and unique way to play. I mostly play draft 7 and would prefer to keep him around, but if arena mode or general games see higher draft counts more often I'm open to banning Begging Student. For now I'd rather not though.
Field Watchman: I think I would ban him for just being too strong. There are too many cards that combo on the grain seeds spot, getting your plows from there is stupidly strong especially in games that are otherwise plow tight. The fact he can easily solve your feeding too by getting up very early grain fields means that this one card can solve so many things in your game--crops, fields, and food. That's just so much stronger than most other cards. We don't currently have a lot of the huge grain payoff cards that come in some of the other revised decks, but as soon as we do I think we certainly would need to ban this card, but I suspect even in the current format FW is just too good. I think there's a shot FW was too good in original and deserved a ban, he's certainly one of the strongest cards that didn't get the ban and I'm unconvinced he's worse than Chamberlain which many experts ban. I think with revised reducing the number of ways to score and increasing the need for field and crop scoring, FW just becomes that much better in this revised world to where we should ban it. Therefore I'm firmly on board with banning Field Watchman.
Carriage Trip: I agree I'm very open to banning this. I agree that it really isn't generally too powerful, but it is just extremely annoying. I think it can almost be game breaking good too in that situation where someone gets to build 2 rooms and then manages to start and grow to ensure the first grows of the game. How often will that arise and should we reward a player with "good" drafting? I suppose you could argue that, but it's just really annoying for players to play around the threats Carriage Trip can create. I don't think this card adds good features to the game and so banning it for annoyance sake I am totally good with.
Clay Supports: This depends a bit on what we totally want the banlist to support. At the moment arena mode doesn't include extra action spaces and is at a low draft count. If we're trying to help protect all game modes, including extra action spaces, I'm firmly on the side of banning this card. I think Clay Supports is possibly too strong even in regular games, I think it is probably way too strong in a game where you know you can grow in to your cheap rooms rapidly via the extra action spaces.
This one is really on the edge for me in normal games. It can occasionally fall in to issues and not work out, but it's still very strong. It's fun to have strong impactful cards in the set, but is Clay Supports on the side of too good? Having a cheap big house is great, especially when it is clay rooms. I think I do lean towards banning this, but am open to letting it get played for awhile and then deciding otherwise too.
Begging Student: Another one where I think format matters a good bit to me if I want to ban it or not. If you're playing a draft 7 game, I'm not sure I'd ban Begging Student. It's very strong, but if the draft is a bit weak you're not going to get all that much value from him, especially in a game where that begging token might really hurt. However once we start talking about formats like draft 9 or draft 10, your average hand is that much stronger and more synergistic, and Begging Student really scares me in that format. Begging Student is also just a lot of fun to play though, this card set has so few things that help to play more occupations still so I'd be a bit sad to see him go since he really opens up a fun and unique way to play. I mostly play draft 7 and would prefer to keep him around, but if arena mode or general games see higher draft counts more often I'm open to banning Begging Student. For now I'd rather not though.
Field Watchman: I think I would ban him for just being too strong. There are too many cards that combo on the grain seeds spot, getting your plows from there is stupidly strong especially in games that are otherwise plow tight. The fact he can easily solve your feeding too by getting up very early grain fields means that this one card can solve so many things in your game--crops, fields, and food. That's just so much stronger than most other cards. We don't currently have a lot of the huge grain payoff cards that come in some of the other revised decks, but as soon as we do I think we certainly would need to ban this card, but I suspect even in the current format FW is just too good. I think there's a shot FW was too good in original and deserved a ban, he's certainly one of the strongest cards that didn't get the ban and I'm unconvinced he's worse than Chamberlain which many experts ban. I think with revised reducing the number of ways to score and increasing the need for field and crop scoring, FW just becomes that much better in this revised world to where we should ban it. Therefore I'm firmly on board with banning Field Watchman.
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torvaldur_makan
- Posts: 79
- Joined: 19 January 2021, 21:34
Re: Banlist Discussion!
I want to add another card to the discussion:
Lantern House: This card is extremely strong, especially with the addition of cards that makes it easier to play occupations such as Bookshelf, Patron, Writing Desk and is auto-win in combination with Begging Student. It guarantees a SP action in stage 1 for 1w and it nets you 3-4 points even without trying and maxes out at 7 points.
As for the other cards:
Begging Student: Definite ban. I mean, even the weaker occupations give some value. Good players will obviously draft around it and make sure to pick occs that can come out late. It can also act as a feeding engine with Bookshelf, Book case or Patron and then it doesn't even matter which occs you have.
Carriage Trip: Ban, it's annoying.
Clay Supports: While strong I don't think it should be banned. It is slightly difficult to play it good, especially with the randomness of when reno flips. It is not banned on other sites that have even better support cards for big house, such as Mansion and Chief. While I could see it being overpowered with Additional Action spaces, I don't think we can base a banlist around that. We have to do everything in our power to prevent Additional Action Spaces from getting in to competitive play.
Field Watchman: No ban, at least not initially. It is a classic Agricola card and with the current card pool I don't find it stronger than in regular Agricola and it is not banned on any other site. It could change if more cards from ABCD decks are added that gives payoff from grain.
Lantern House: This card is extremely strong, especially with the addition of cards that makes it easier to play occupations such as Bookshelf, Patron, Writing Desk and is auto-win in combination with Begging Student. It guarantees a SP action in stage 1 for 1w and it nets you 3-4 points even without trying and maxes out at 7 points.
As for the other cards:
Begging Student: Definite ban. I mean, even the weaker occupations give some value. Good players will obviously draft around it and make sure to pick occs that can come out late. It can also act as a feeding engine with Bookshelf, Book case or Patron and then it doesn't even matter which occs you have.
Carriage Trip: Ban, it's annoying.
Clay Supports: While strong I don't think it should be banned. It is slightly difficult to play it good, especially with the randomness of when reno flips. It is not banned on other sites that have even better support cards for big house, such as Mansion and Chief. While I could see it being overpowered with Additional Action spaces, I don't think we can base a banlist around that. We have to do everything in our power to prevent Additional Action Spaces from getting in to competitive play.
Field Watchman: No ban, at least not initially. It is a classic Agricola card and with the current card pool I don't find it stronger than in regular Agricola and it is not banned on any other site. It could change if more cards from ABCD decks are added that gives payoff from grain.
Re: Banlist Discussion!
I think Lantern House is in the same spot as begging student for me, where in formats with more cards it's probably too powerful since you tend to want to play more cards, but in draft 7 your last 2 minors/occs tend to be harder to play. The games where you do play most of your hand it is incredibly strong. Unlike something like Braggart it has a huge restriction which is that it must be played in the first few turns of the game and before you can play any occs, which limits your ability to play powerful early game occupations.
Re: Banlist Discussion!
I'd say I'm for keeping Clay Supports, Field Watchman, Begging Student, and Lantern House. They can be great with certain combos. But the combos are not likely to happen with a low draft number game. In a higher draft number game, all played should have good combos, so I think it balances out.
Roof Balaster bothers me more, actually.
Roof Balaster bothers me more, actually.
Re: Banlist Discussion!
Yeah, I actually don't have an issue with Lantern House, even in higher draft games. Yes it can be quite strong, but you have to get wood and spend an action playing it early, and that is in my opinion a reasonably steep cost. You likely also have to draft it very highly, which further reduces the value of the other cards you're going to get.
Again if you're playing draft 10 or something it perhaps starts to become too onerous, but even then I'm not that convinced. I probably do need to play around with it a bit more, but I would not ban it.
As for Clay Supports and Field Watchman not being banned, I don't think they needed to be in original. These are different decks and meta, and I think the huge explosion in resources means that Clay Supports becomes even stronger than it once was. I think FW also becomes stronger because they made plowing much tighter and more important overall, and being able to take plow on grain seeds becomes even stronger in a format where there is a lot less plow help. Also I think both cards benefit from the fact there is just a lot less victory point ceiling in the deck coming from other places, so it's more important to have points coming from maxing crops and fields or points coming from a full family and big house.
Again if you're playing draft 10 or something it perhaps starts to become too onerous, but even then I'm not that convinced. I probably do need to play around with it a bit more, but I would not ban it.
As for Clay Supports and Field Watchman not being banned, I don't think they needed to be in original. These are different decks and meta, and I think the huge explosion in resources means that Clay Supports becomes even stronger than it once was. I think FW also becomes stronger because they made plowing much tighter and more important overall, and being able to take plow on grain seeds becomes even stronger in a format where there is a lot less plow help. Also I think both cards benefit from the fact there is just a lot less victory point ceiling in the deck coming from other places, so it's more important to have points coming from maxing crops and fields or points coming from a full family and big house.
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MasterOfWar
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 19 January 2021, 19:24
Re: Banlist Discussion!
I will acknowledge up front that I do not yet have a great deal of experience playing with these cards and therefore may not have fully grasped the "meta." However, I have had considerable success in the past couple of years playing EIK, mostly tournament 4ers, on another site. I was finding play there to become a bit stale in large part due to what I felt was the over-sized importance of one's place in the FG queue, that, as a result tended to dictate stage 1 actions.
I was pleased to find that these new cards mixed things up with a number of "growth queue disruptors" (e.g. cottager or stork) and some alternative early game strategies (e.g. big country).
In this latter category I would place field watchman (plow and sow in stage 1) and clay supports (reno first, then build). For this reason, I would hate to see these cards banned. Field watchman is certainly a strong card, but not game breaking. It also seems that there are now a sufficient number of other cards that support plowing(plow man, plow driver, assistant tiller and 3 or 4 plows).
Clay supports by itself is a good, but not over-powered card. When played in the "traditional" way (reno, then build rooms), the first room actually costs 3w,4c,2r (2w for card, 2c, 1r to reno, and 2c, 1w, 1r for room) and generally can't be built until well into stage 2. There are a number of other cards that give similar room discounts (carpenter, carpenter's parlour, wooden hut extender), that quite reasonably are not being discussed for banning. Yes, certain combos (e.g bricklayer) can make rooms ridiculously cheap - in one of my last games on the other site I lost to a 15 room stone house built with clay supports, bricklayer, and ladder. If combos could be banned, you might get my support, but I don't see banning a single card in order to disrupt a powerful combo as these combos will come together infrequently and, as fiscused suggested, there are many powerful combos in this game.
Regarding the other suggestions, I don't see lantern house as inherently over-powered. It is most analogous to tutor. With tutor you can get 6 points for playing all 7 occs. Lantern house gives you 1 more point for additionally playing all 7 minors. BTW, I had these 2 cards along with education bonus in a recent game. Yes, over-powered combo, but again, I think each of these cards is quite reasonable by itself.
Carriage trip? Annoying, yes, but I kind of like the disruptive potential and by itself, really doesn't do anything else. The fact that it is a passing minor also means that your opponents have an opportunity to return the annoyance. I say keep it.
Begging student? I'm not sure. Does seem powerful. For me, the closest analogy is educator in the original EIK. With begging student you can potentially get out your other 6 occs, skewed toward the end of the game, at a cost of 3 points. With educator, the occs can, and typically do, come out much earlier, and will cumulatively cost 14f. Educator is certainly strong, but not banned. I guess I would take a wait and see approach with begging student.
Also, wondering if the plan is to eventually get the remaining cards from ABCD on this site. If so, I would be careful about banning cards now unless there is experience and precedence from other venues, as there was with braggart and caravan.
I was pleased to find that these new cards mixed things up with a number of "growth queue disruptors" (e.g. cottager or stork) and some alternative early game strategies (e.g. big country).
In this latter category I would place field watchman (plow and sow in stage 1) and clay supports (reno first, then build). For this reason, I would hate to see these cards banned. Field watchman is certainly a strong card, but not game breaking. It also seems that there are now a sufficient number of other cards that support plowing(plow man, plow driver, assistant tiller and 3 or 4 plows).
Clay supports by itself is a good, but not over-powered card. When played in the "traditional" way (reno, then build rooms), the first room actually costs 3w,4c,2r (2w for card, 2c, 1r to reno, and 2c, 1w, 1r for room) and generally can't be built until well into stage 2. There are a number of other cards that give similar room discounts (carpenter, carpenter's parlour, wooden hut extender), that quite reasonably are not being discussed for banning. Yes, certain combos (e.g bricklayer) can make rooms ridiculously cheap - in one of my last games on the other site I lost to a 15 room stone house built with clay supports, bricklayer, and ladder. If combos could be banned, you might get my support, but I don't see banning a single card in order to disrupt a powerful combo as these combos will come together infrequently and, as fiscused suggested, there are many powerful combos in this game.
Regarding the other suggestions, I don't see lantern house as inherently over-powered. It is most analogous to tutor. With tutor you can get 6 points for playing all 7 occs. Lantern house gives you 1 more point for additionally playing all 7 minors. BTW, I had these 2 cards along with education bonus in a recent game. Yes, over-powered combo, but again, I think each of these cards is quite reasonable by itself.
Carriage trip? Annoying, yes, but I kind of like the disruptive potential and by itself, really doesn't do anything else. The fact that it is a passing minor also means that your opponents have an opportunity to return the annoyance. I say keep it.
Begging student? I'm not sure. Does seem powerful. For me, the closest analogy is educator in the original EIK. With begging student you can potentially get out your other 6 occs, skewed toward the end of the game, at a cost of 3 points. With educator, the occs can, and typically do, come out much earlier, and will cumulatively cost 14f. Educator is certainly strong, but not banned. I guess I would take a wait and see approach with begging student.
Also, wondering if the plan is to eventually get the remaining cards from ABCD on this site. If so, I would be careful about banning cards now unless there is experience and precedence from other venues, as there was with braggart and caravan.
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torvaldur_makan
- Posts: 79
- Joined: 19 January 2021, 21:34
Re: Banlist Discussion!
This I kind of agree with. Re-evaluate if more cards are added.MasterOfWar wrote: ↑04 December 2021, 17:31 Also, wondering if the plan is to eventually get the remaining cards from ABCD on this site. If so, I would be careful about banning cards now unless there is experience and precedence from other venues, as there was with braggart and caravan.
And about precedence: Field Watchman and Clay Supports have always existed and they are not banned in any other venue. I don't think the arguments put forward in this thread for banning them are convincing enough.
Re: Banlist Discussion!
I mean, the other cards existed in a totally different card set.
Just because they weren't banned in the past isn't a great argument for what things should be now.
Regardless, does seem many prefer to be more on the end of not banning things, so it isn't clear there is going to be consensus on dropping anything yet which I think is a shame.
I'm still strongly for removing Field Watcman, it 100% is going to be have to be banned if some grain payoff cards from the and A and B decks ever get added and I already think it's going to be too strong in this current format.
I'm still also in favor of removing Clay Supports. In a format that has added resources and reduced victory point bonuses/ceiling, there is a lot of value in building extra rooms cheaply still. (Also just as a side to an above comment, one of the stronger ways to use Clay Supports is to just build an early room and grow fast and then get your next two clay rooms during the mid game with Clay Supports, although many game plans can work.) There's also a real issue in the future with the number of cards in revised that encourage and allow for early/fast reno though too. Clay Supports is going to find things like Cottager, Priest, Clay Hut Builder etc in drafts with regularity around here. The milieu in which Clay Supports existed in the past vs what it will look like in revised especially as we keep adding more sets is a different thing and I think it will get too good.
I still think Begging Student is fine though, I wouldn't remove that.
I am a fan of removing Carriage Trip for annoyance reasons much like Ratcatcher in the past. I will live either way though.
Finally some players lately have been discussing the potential need to remove Cross Cut Wood and I think I'm personally on the end of banning it for mostly annoying reasons as well. If you don't know Cross Cut Wood is in the game, it can completely wreck the wood/stone economy in warped ways. It can create really dumb/strong combos with Roof Ballister and Freemason, or any card that injects a bunch of stone. Having a minor improvement that can inject all that wood can do very weird things to the way the game plays out. I don't know if it is too strong for any one player, but I think it might be bad for the competitive experience of the game in terms of how much it warps things.
Just because they weren't banned in the past isn't a great argument for what things should be now.
Regardless, does seem many prefer to be more on the end of not banning things, so it isn't clear there is going to be consensus on dropping anything yet which I think is a shame.
I'm still strongly for removing Field Watcman, it 100% is going to be have to be banned if some grain payoff cards from the and A and B decks ever get added and I already think it's going to be too strong in this current format.
I'm still also in favor of removing Clay Supports. In a format that has added resources and reduced victory point bonuses/ceiling, there is a lot of value in building extra rooms cheaply still. (Also just as a side to an above comment, one of the stronger ways to use Clay Supports is to just build an early room and grow fast and then get your next two clay rooms during the mid game with Clay Supports, although many game plans can work.) There's also a real issue in the future with the number of cards in revised that encourage and allow for early/fast reno though too. Clay Supports is going to find things like Cottager, Priest, Clay Hut Builder etc in drafts with regularity around here. The milieu in which Clay Supports existed in the past vs what it will look like in revised especially as we keep adding more sets is a different thing and I think it will get too good.
I still think Begging Student is fine though, I wouldn't remove that.
I am a fan of removing Carriage Trip for annoyance reasons much like Ratcatcher in the past. I will live either way though.
Finally some players lately have been discussing the potential need to remove Cross Cut Wood and I think I'm personally on the end of banning it for mostly annoying reasons as well. If you don't know Cross Cut Wood is in the game, it can completely wreck the wood/stone economy in warped ways. It can create really dumb/strong combos with Roof Ballister and Freemason, or any card that injects a bunch of stone. Having a minor improvement that can inject all that wood can do very weird things to the way the game plays out. I don't know if it is too strong for any one player, but I think it might be bad for the competitive experience of the game in terms of how much it warps things.