Banlist Discussion!

[siverure]

I think I would like to also categorize these cards:

Obvious bans, just give way too many points for way too little:
Writing chamber
Chapel
Estate Master
Craft brewery
Summer house

Will probably be a really obvious ban once players are more familiar with them, but i'd be willing to play more with these cards:
Craft teacher / Artisan district: both of these encourage kindof risky major rushing strategies, and they have an outsized reward for it, but people are going to throw their games to them for a while because major rushing doesn't work if it's everything your game does.

Autumn mother: It seems manageable to fight, albeit strong, in early-mid grow. Managing to have enough food and building resources to really exploit this vs non-late grow games seems rare. That said, the game I played with this I came second to a carpenters parlor player, so it's probably bannable just for being consistent growth shenanigans (in a way that no other card on BGA is) and warping the game towards grow, even if the player playing it isn't always the one who benefits the most (although growing in round 4 in a round 7 grow game seems very hard to beat).

Not played with it at all yet:
Pulverizer plow, Forest clearer, Acquirer

Everything else seems strong (and in some cases very strong) but not clearly bannable to me yet. I'm lot more willing to lose to a card that has too many small incremental benefits than something which does a massive blowout of the game though.

Edit: Bed maker seems like another card that is possibly going to enable too easy growth, and goes in my "probably getting banned eventually" category, but i would also want to see it play out more.

[alsozatch]

I'm lot more willing to lose to a card that has too many small incremental benefits than something which does a massive blowout of the game though.

Yep, but then there's also Work Certificate

Overall I agree with a lot of the insta-ban nominations from Lumin and Siv. Mostly the cards that give an unreasonable amount of points should be quick to go. However I'd urge for more time to play with the new cards before banning more debatable cards, such as pulverizer plow and acquirer.

Besides the power of a card, the effect it has on a game is pretty important to me. It doesn't make much sense to me to consider banning collector for power reasons instead of childless and informant. They are relatively close in power (IMO) but childless and informant promote stagnant playstyles whereas collector promotes fresh lines.

For a similar reason, I see myself being an advocate for not banning acquirer, but I'll have to play with it some more to make sure.

[oyyyy]

After many games and watching others play, I think the following cards are too powerful or have unpleasant interactions:


Craft brewery, strong points of card and food source, compared to beer barrel, it is a clear winner.


Estate Master, with which you can easily score more than 10 points per game.


Night worker, I think its function is similar to Carriage trip and Work certificate, which will make the experience of other players very poor,


For the weak and sickly, there are cards with a very large gap between the upper and lower limits, but they often receive more than ten vegetables in a single game because of the overflow of bricks, fishing, and performing arts.


There are also some cards that I don't think it's necessary to ban:


Summer house, like big country and farm children, is a unique system card. Without the cooperation of other cards, its score is generally around 50 points. As a core card, I don't think it is overpowered. The game needs diversity.


Autumn mother, seemingly powerful, but if you want to use it in the first four rounds, your actions are very limited and require a lot of food.


Chapel is a seemingly powerful card, but it does not perform well in actual combat, and its win rate is not high.


Craft Teacher, the strength of this card lies in the strength of other class cards, and it also requires a lot of stones (you must always visit the resource market in the early stages), which can easily result in the loss of action points before you can finally produce a child.


Artisan District, for the same reason as Artisan District, needs to give up a lot to play it, and it also needs your opponents not to grab it.


Acquirer and Pulverizer Plow, I don't feel any strength.

[self_evident2]

For me (and some Chinese experts and masters),

*The obvious BANS should be:
Weakling - It gives you 10-25 vegetables out of literally nothing, which is 5 points and at least 15 food without any combos. And with any vege-combos like carrot museum, the game will become totally unplayable for other players.
Estate Master - Too many easy points.
Craft Brewery - Too many easy points and food.
Nightworker - Just like Carriage Trip, it interrupts the moving sequence and thus will be TOO ANNOYING.

*The following cards had better NOT be banned:
Forest Clearer - It is weaker than Informant. Informant gives you 13w at a very little cost. Forest clearer is something like 8w+5f at a cost of taking 2w more often than usual.
Pulverizer Plow - It is weaker than Swing Plow. Although the exchange of 1c->1field is strong, the frequency of taking clays is low, and there are fewer potential combos on clay action space. In addition, given that we often plow in the late stage of the game where there're spare moves, compared to Forest Plow, whose wood can be used as late fencing or stables, clay is not as valuable during the endgame. Thus it's just a card that make your field unblocked, and hardly anything else.
Craft Teacher, Collector & Summer House - They are strong but not overpowered. Also, these cards bring us unique playstyle different from common expansion-birth. Varied playstyles make Agricola a more playable and more fun game, thus should be encouraged.
Autumn Mother - It's weaker than most of the wishes-for-children cards. Cards like Lover, Family-friendly Home and Stork's Nest are much stronger.
Acquirer & Lazybones - They are not strong.

[torvaldur_makan]

ACKNOWLEDGED BY PUBLISHER AS BANWORTHY:
Writing Chamber

INSTA BAN, IMO:
Estate Master
Craft Brewery
Craft Teacher
Chapel
Pulverizer Plow
Summer House

Generally agree. I see that some people question whether Craft Teacher should be banned, but I definitely agree it should be banned. Summer House I don't think I've ever played with. I don't see how you should use it for it to be bannable, but I could be wrong when I see it in play.

[xpwz]

According to the basic parts of this gmae: different resources, need of actions, food, which exchange the score for victory, the Banlist obvious should be:
Weakling: easily over 20 vegetables without cost, which means you needn't worry about food anymore and get 5+ score,crazy!!!!!!
Estate Master: you just stay in the sow action space and then get over 15+ scores, no food, no resources.
Nightwoker: He can break the action sequence, and fuckoff the original first player's plan, a totally disordered bitch

Meanwhile, I suggest lift the ban of these cards for their poor abilities dont deserve a banlist:
Big country: It reduce your potential scores and limit your population, honestly it's a balenced design.
Little Peasant: The same disadvantage of limited population and too much rely on some birth cards or actions.

[cwgordon7]

Ban for being too strong:
- Writing chamber
- Pulverizer plow
- Stone axe
- Chapel
- Summer house
- Weakling

Ban for being too annoying:
- Nightworker
- Tree guard

Not yet convinced these need to be banned; suggest waiting for more data:
- Collector
- Autumn mother
- Acquirer
- Forest clearer

No experience with and thus no opinion yet:
- Craft brewery
- Estate master

[siverure]

I was thinking about the fact that there seems to be a large difference in opinion on even the established banlist, and we are likely to expand the banlist somewhat. I think broadly speaking that playing with powerful cards is fun, but playing with too powerful cards isn't. There's just a large variety in how powerful banned cards are, and how powerful is "too powerful" for different people.

I would like for there to be more options for banning cards in a game. I don't know if it's reasonable for the developers to implement this, but a suggestion I have is to allow custom banlists that can be curated by players for non-arena games.

As to other cards:
I don't agree at all with the idea of unbanning big country and little peasant. These cards are far far far too powerful except for the ability of other players to grow too much. These games will always be unbalanced either in favour of the holders of these cards, or in favour of the player who exploited growth too much. Either way it's miserable for the remaining players.

I think summer house, while it doesn't expand your points limit, is far too efficient at filling out your farm. Netting one point per space is a good rate, and summer house lets you do this for seven spaces assuming you build two rooms, play it and then renovate to stone. Fencing and plowing won't net a point per space on this many spaces without far more effort than summer house takes. I also think that it won't often diverge from this fairly set farm layout. In my opinion cards that require unusual but very specific gameplans, where you have to use it in that specific way if you are trying to win, will lead to repetitive instead of varied gameplay (this applies for summer house and big country, as well as probably a couple other cards).

I'm unsure about nightworker - it seems potentially annoying but something that can probably be policed and played around. There are some interactions that seem very absurd that I would want to clarify how they work though (can you take a non-building resource action after nightworker with a card that lets you take two actions at once?).

[Tisaac]

I would like for there to be more options for banning cards in a game. I don't know if it's reasonable for the developers to implement this, but a suggestion I have is to allow custom banlists that can be curated by players for non-arena games.

It is not reasonnable. That would mean a whole bunch gameoptions for a game that already have many of them, and would be cryptic for newcommers.
The sole purpose of banlist on BGA currently is for competitive play (including Arena), we want to keep it as simple as possible, even if it's not 100% consensual.

[Ranior]

I generally agree with Lumin's list for bans and wait to see. The only other addition I have is Bed Maker, I think it's just very annoying and you have to be extremely careful with cards that allow for something like Round 3 growth. (How likely is that? Not very, but in a handful of games it will happen and be completely busted)

I'm also on board with a Nightworker ban for annoyance/game flow reasons. I'm unclear how strong it is, but the disruption to the usual game flow is strong enough reason to remove it, like Carriage Trip.