Banlist Discussion!

[TigToad]

I'm adding my opinion. I have played a lot of games on BGA and a lot of games off of BGA of Agricola. I'm no where near Sean and the other top players ability level.

Big Country - It is a card that lets me feel like I can beat anyone, regardless of their skill level, because it just isn't that hard to implement to great effect. 50 points is not that tough and more is quite doable. I think it needs to be banned.

Begging Student - I think it needs to go also. It is, without a doubt, the card I am most excited to see in any opening draft, and the card I cringe inside when anyone else plays it. At least with BC you know what actions they will be taking and you know early what you need to do to compete with them. Begging student just makes whatever strategy you're going for easier/better/faster.

I wouldn't remove any of the currently banned cards from the list.

I wouldn't add any other cards to the banned list.

Assistant Tiller is amazing, but so are most of the Day Labor cards when working in combination. Often, the DL cards are so good, you find yourself drafting something to keep it from passing. If you remove Tiller, I think you'd see more of the other DL combos as some of that fear is released, and I'm just not prepared to see a variety of the DL cards go. There will always be a 'best' card and Tiller is one of the likely candidates for that role. But, I never feel like I'm out of a game just because my opponent played Tiller. Unless it was Sean.

I feel similarly about field watchman. If you ban Tiller, you need to ban watchman, too... but in some ways, my opponents plowing with these cards is a relief as it means I'm more likely to get my traditional plows when I want them.

In essence, I think those two cards are all that feel broken to me, while lots of cards feel strong.

[ColorfulPockets]

Just adding my voice to the chorus that wants Big Country and Begging Student banned. Mostly Big Country, because regardless of how powerful it is, I don't find it fun to play with it or against it. It's just too game-warping.

[Aspheric]

A really interesting a mature discussion going on here; super to see such a passionate group of players and developers in this community.

In order to make these decisions I’d prefer to do it from data and analysis. I think what we have not quite been able to demonstrate quantitatively is to strip out the impact of ELO from card strength. I’m in a tournament where I have had the opportunity to draft Big Country three games in a row. However, I was passed Big Country in two of those games. I drafted the card and won the game. Good players know what to pass and what not to. As a further example I noted that in Lumin’s post Lettuce Patch was in the top three of cards on a PWR level. Noone is proposing to ban this card. It is a great example to me that the list is warped by play skill as the best players will draft this card and then win because they are the best players rather than through the card being OP. It’s not OP it’s just a lot stronger than one might expect at first and is therefore more likely to be drafted by strong players (who are more likely to win the game anyway) as they'll get it late.

I think the banlist should always be reviewed before each season with reference to the card set that will be used. Was tiller OP in AB? Probably. Is it OP in ABCD with a lower concentration of Day Labour? Doubt it. Is Begging student OP in ABCD with loads of minors and occs which favour a high number of occs being played? Probably. Is it OP with just D? Doubt it.

Just to speak subjectively on begging student for a moment, my thoughts are that this is a card which gets weaker as the strength and knowledge of the player base improves. Early in the season strong players would have been able to get this card alongside 6 other strong occs. I would guess that the data would show that as the season has gone on the power level on this card has dropped as people know what to pick.

In general I’m against banning unless there is clear data which says that after accounting for ELO a card is OP.

[msclark]

I’m in a tournament where I have had the opportunity to draft Big Country three games in a row. However, I was passed Big Country in two of those games. I drafted the card and won the game.

But did you enjoy yourself?

[Aspheric]

I’m in a tournament where I have had the opportunity to draft Big Country three games in a row. However, I was passed Big Country in two of those games. I drafted the card and won the game.

But did you enjoy yourself?

A fair question! The answer is yes though as there are still decisions to make around 2 room, 3 room etc and ordering which are interesting.

[Ranior]

While we were lucky to get data that one time, it is not clear we are going to be able to do so again or when. So while I too would prefer data, it's not something we're getting at this time.

We are getting to the waning days of this arena season, and I'd like to have the banlist updated for next season. At this point there are only two cards I think that generally have community consensus on being banned: Begging Student and Big Country

The arguments have been laid out before for these, and I still think they are valid. Begging Student I am pretty sure is just too strong even in draft 7, but certainly as you up the draft count. And yes, even as players get better and know to 1st pick it and therefore get slightly weaker hands overall, there's too much value in getting a bunch of free occupation actions, even when it costs you -3vp. Of course it still loses sometimes, but it leads to an aberrant win percentage and should be banned for strength reasons.

Big Country I also think should be banned for strength reasons, and possibly just for annoyance reasons. While it is kind of fun for other strategies to be possible in the game, it is bad for the competitive experience when one player is able to win via a method nobody else can--it really warps the game when one player is essentially playing a different game and cares about totally different action spaces which makes it hard for them to get blocked or disrupted most of the time, and it's just then a score comparison at the end of who did better, and in some games/drafts especially with later growth (and therefore less overall actions available to players) there just is no way to defeat 2 room big country. The other big issue in my opinion is that we play draft together in arena, and when you know you have Big Country in hand you also get to value the rest of the draft very differently--players will pass on stuff to the Big Country player that is pretty worthless to them or any standard gameplan but it can be very strong for Big Country. Big Country still wins a lot (and sure it still loses quite a bit, but I'm pretty sure it has an aberrant win percentage) but I also think Big Country just isn't a good card to exist in a competitive environment.

I'm still on the edge about Assistant Tiller but players have increasingly been drafting Day Laborer cards very highly which makes the combos less likely to hit (I am not sure I believe those draft choices are correct, but I digress). I haven't seen the community consensus about this one though so don't think we should ban it at this time. I also don't think anything else has proven disruptive enough or powerful enough to warrant a ban. On strength alone, I don't think there's anything else that is close to being ban worthy. On variance/annoyance reasons Stork's Nest and Carrot Museum are perhaps close, but I don't think they need to be banned personally, and I also don't think the community consensus is there for bans.

I think we should try to get a bit more feedback over the next week or two and then hopefully have a community consensus on what, if anything, should get added to the banlist in time for the start of the next arena season.

[Lumin_S]

My personal feeling is that Big Country is almost certainly too strong, and Begging Student is probably too strong. (Subjectively I'd want them banned)

Just short of those 2, observations from my games would suggest that Carpenter's Parlor and Assistant Tiller are very close to that level. (I'd be fine with them banned but wouldn't vote for it myself)

If we did have data (we do not, I'm genuinely not hinting at anything,) I'd guess the PWR on those cards would be roughly 6.0, 5.7, 5.3, 5.0 respectively for this season's arena games with all players >200 Elo. And I'd propose using the widest PWR gap between cards in the 5.0-6.0 range as the threshold for bans, with the card on the high side of the gap banlisted and the card on the low side of the gap not banlisted.

[AceSpade111]

It would be nice to make the decision based on the actual data/stats if possible.

My personal opinion would be to ban Big Country and Begging Student.

Assistant tiller I don't think is op. It's really only strong with other DL cards, and at least in the current meta, I haven't noticed it being particularly overpowered. Carpenters is strong but not as dominating as BC or BS, I wouldn't ban either.

[Grumbleguts]

I concur with majority of the previous recent posts.

I would like to ban Begging Student for power reasons and Big Country for power and annoyance reasons.

I don't think Assistant Tiller or Carpenter's Parlor should be banned at this time.

[George Smiley]

It looks like quite a consensus is building for banning Begging Student and BC. That's too bad. Both cards are interesting, but just poorly designed in that the benefits are just too comprehensive. If BC couldn't be played before round 10, it still would be a great card, but no longer game-altering. Same would be true for Begging Student if some conditions had been put on it (for example, not before Round X ... turns off Occ spots ... or some combo of usage conditions).

The Assistant Tiller case is interesting. At this point, its value has been knocked back a bit by the lower concentration of DL combo cards, but has been degraded even more by player counter-actions during the draft.

In theory, counter-actions by other players could also negate some of the Big Country benefit. Committing to a 2-house strategy is really a significant risk ... but from what I've seen to date, opponents (including me) are not willing to interrupt their own tempo by more aggressively contesting the Farmland space in the early rounds, even where the BC set-up is obvious. That's quite interesting to me. An early plow is often a pretty good action. I wonder if we played another Arena session with BC, players would start to combat the BC advantages.

But I'm fine to go with the flow.

As for other cards besides BS/BC, I'm not in favor of a ban. To be honest, I'd probably draft Wood Barterer, WHE, Childless and Mason at the same rate as picking Tiller. And all these cards are better than Carpenter's Parlor IMO.