Banlist Discussion!

[lezurichois]

I've not been playing much lately, partially because the lack of ban list makes too many games uncompetitive.

I agree with the general lists shared here.

I would ban Craft Teacher, Child Ombudsman for strength. I'd ban Tree Guard for strength/warping/annoyance reasons. I'd likely ban Freshman because it is nuts with combos. I don't care too much about an Informant ban personally.

I'd clearly ban Teacher's Desk, Recruitment, Carpenter's Bench, Carpenter's Hammer, Royal Wood, and Pulverizer Plow mostly for strength and a handful of annoyance/warping reasons. I enjoy Brewery Pond, but can understand wanting to remove it since it's basically only acceptable strength wise in the format I play.

I'd accept a ban on Lodger for annoyance reasons.

I've not been playing enough to know if Guest Room is too strong on average, without stats this is a bit harder too. I also find the card really fun, but can easily believe it's too strong on average.

There's probably a few other cards that are mildly close, but I think by the time you cut through these you get to a really good point again. As is though, there's way too man problematic cards still, some extremely so.

I mostly agree with Ranior. I wonder why nobody has mentioned collector though… Of course, the card is very fun to play with and there are games where you do not find the right ceiling. But hey, is not collector much better on average than freshman ? In that sense, I am not so sure we should ban freshman, collector, both, or none of them.

In general, I would err on the side of banning only cards that are obviously too strong and don’t really require much skill to get a winning game (pulverizer plow, royal wood, informant —although there are games with so much wood injection that informant does not fell too strong—, carpenters hammer, carpenters bench, craft teacher). Then they are the cards that warp the game so much that it may lead to unpleasant experiences: I would place child ombudsman, recruitment, and tree guard in that category. I think banning these few cards that often lead to easy wins in games with similarly skilled players would make next arena season more fun!

[torvaldur_makan]

Collector is very strong, but also not easy to play well. And it is fun, so that's why I and others want to keep it.

In another category of very strong cards worth discussing, that are also very easy to play:

• Childless. Very strong and quite easy to execute a standard Childless opening. But as with Collector, it is fun.
• Informant. Very easy to get/keep going. Absolutely nuts that it also gives 1w when it is played. Not very fun.
• Forest Reviewer. Play it, do nothing and get 7-10 reed where at least 2 reed come in stage 1 if you get occ R1. Stats also show it to be very strong. Not very fun.

[Shirefolk231]

Here's what I see it. If you ban more cards, you have to ban more cards. Sounds weird?
When you ban some cards, the strongest cards in the remaining pool becomes too strong and have to be banned, until you have to ban every usable card.
I understand that 2 or more years ago when there were only a small subset of cards, the amount of strong cards is small, so that anyone who gets it on the first draw is lucky. However, if there are more than 30 "strong cards", everyone has a equal and not small chance to have one strong card. Even if someone has more than two on their first draw, they cannot take all of them and have to pass the rest of them on. The game is still fair.
Randomness is part of the fun of this game. The game creater made it this way. One shouldn't just decide that some card is "annoying".

[jegharenplan]

Here's what I see it. If you ban more cards, you have to ban more cards. Sounds weird?
When you ban some cards, the strongest cards in the remaining pool becomes too strong and have to be banned, until you have to ban every usable card.
I understand that 2 or more years ago when there were only a small subset of cards, the amount of strong cards is small, so that anyone who gets it on the first draw is lucky. However, if there are more than 30 "strong cards", everyone has a equal and not small chance to have one strong card. Even if someone has more than two on their first draw, they cannot take all of them and have to pass the rest of them on. The game is still fair.
Randomness is part of the fun of this game. The game creater made it this way. One shouldn't just decide that some card is "annoying".

I think it's the proportion of strong cards and not absolute number that's relevant here as well as the relative strength gaps between cards (i.e. is there a smooth distribution of strength among the bulk of the cards or a very gappy one?). 5 strong cards out of 50 and 30 out of 300 will show up with the same frequency. What's more, if the strongest cards are only slightly stronger than the next strongest and so on for most cards, then the overall impact of strong cards on the game compared to other cards is not as large as if the strongest cards are significantly stronger than the next strongest.

So I don't think the slippery slope you're warning about here actually does follow, assuming the main focus of a banlist is to target outliers to have a smoother distribution of strength and I don't think you've made your case that a non-smooth distribution is not a problem since pointing to the absolute quantity of strong cards is not pointing us towards the right metric.

[alexwjb]

Here's what I see it. If you ban more cards, you have to ban more cards. Sounds weird?
When you ban some cards, the strongest cards in the remaining pool becomes too strong and have to be banned, until you have to ban every usable card.
I understand that 2 or more years ago when there were only a small subset of cards, the amount of strong cards is small, so that anyone who gets it on the first draw is lucky. However, if there are more than 30 "strong cards", everyone has a equal and not small chance to have one strong card. Even if someone has more than two on their first draw, they cannot take all of them and have to pass the rest of them on. The game is still fair.
Randomness is part of the fun of this game. The game creater made it this way. One shouldn't just decide that some card is "annoying".

I disagree for several reasons.

1) There are degrees of strength. Some cards are so much stronger than other cards (eg Royal Wood, a minor with no requirements and a 1 food cost that generally gives 10+ wood) that removing them makes the cards left more equal.

2) Some cards have completely busted combos (eg Freshman + any easy bake helper) that the game is pretty much over from the moment you see the first pack. For a skill game which lasts around 1.5 hours that is not good.

3) Some of the cards aren't just strong, they can be dramatically game warping in a way that makes the game less fun for others. Tree Guard is my go-to example - it fundamentally changes the game by injecting crazy amounts of resources (14 stone, 7 grain, 7 reed, 7 clay is not unusual). Everyone else's plans are warped and scrambled in a high variance way. It's not fun.

4) The game creater did make it this way, but they themselves have acknowledged that some cards are busted and should not be used in competitive settings. See the first post in this thread by Lumin for details. Updating the banlist does not stop people using banned cards if they want, it just makes the Arena settings more competitive and interesting for serious players.

There are 800ish cards and the suggestion is to ban roughly 10 of them in competitive play. It is a small price to pay to significantly reduce the number of silly games we are seeing in competitive settings.

[bomboloni]

To revive this thread:

Lumin's upcoming tournament adds a bunch of extra bans. I can agree they all deserve a ban more generally. The cards are:

Occupations: Craft Teacher, Child Ombudsman, Freshman, Informant, Tree Guard
Minor Improvements: Teacher’s Desk, Recruitment, Carpenter’s Bench, Carpenter’s Hammer, Royal Wood, Pulverizer Plow

I also personally want to ban Brewery Pond (on strength, especially for non-arena settings but also very strong in arena settings) and Lodger (for being annoying - lodger growth parking has tended to seem weak in games I've played, but has a very high kingmaking effect on other players and is entirely untelegraphed unlike other ways of getting a room).

I agree with these additions to the ban list; adding them is desperately needed.

[fhila]

To revive this thread:

Lumin's upcoming tournament adds a bunch of extra bans. I can agree they all deserve a ban more generally. The cards are:

Occupations: Craft Teacher, Child Ombudsman, Freshman, Informant, Tree Guard
Minor Improvements: Teacher’s Desk, Recruitment, Carpenter’s Bench, Carpenter’s Hammer, Royal Wood, Pulverizer Plow

I also personally want to ban Brewery Pond (on strength, especially for non-arena settings but also very strong in arena settings) and Lodger (for being annoying - lodger growth parking has tended to seem weak in games I've played, but has a very high kingmaking effect on other players and is entirely untelegraphed unlike other ways of getting a room).

I agree with these additions to the ban list; adding them is desperately needed.

I also agree with this list. I'm not certain about the Lodger as it's more of an annoyance than an actual too powerful card, kinda like the Archway, but everything else I completely agree.

[eSotiric]

I've not been playing much lately, partially because the lack of ban list makes too many games uncompetitive.

I agree with the general lists shared here.

I would ban Craft Teacher, Child Ombudsman for strength. I'd ban Tree Guard for strength/warping/annoyance reasons. I'd likely ban Freshman because it is nuts with combos. I don't care too much about an Informant ban personally.

I'd clearly ban Teacher's Desk, Recruitment, Carpenter's Bench, Carpenter's Hammer, Royal Wood, and Pulverizer Plow mostly for strength and a handful of annoyance/warping reasons. I enjoy Brewery Pond, but can understand wanting to remove it since it's basically only acceptable strength wise in the format I play.

I'd accept a ban on Lodger for annoyance reasons.

I've not been playing enough to know if Guest Room is too strong on average, without stats this is a bit harder too. I also find the card really fun, but can easily believe it's too strong on average.

There's probably a few other cards that are mildly close, but I think by the time you cut through these you get to a really good point again. As is though, there's way too man problematic cards still, some extremely so.

I agree with this list. I also don't care about banning Informant, due to the requirements to make it work.
I'd accept banning guest room - I've seen someone get 3 actions in round 4 because of it - or changing it so that you can only play it in round 5 or later, or you can't use it in the same round.
Lodger is annoying, so I'd happily see it banned.

[Atzedo]

My banlist:
Based on Power:
Occupations: Craft Teacher, Child Ombudsman
Minor Improvements: Teacher’s Desk, Recruitment, Royal Wood, guest room

Based on bad gameplay effect:
Minors: pulverizer plow

I think its better to only ban the extremly strong cards, and the cards that let you easily grow first. Then in the next loop we can maybe ban further strong cards. Maybe in other draft formats some of the bannable cards that we want to ban in draft 9/10 are not that Strong (bearing in mind that in draft 9/10 there is almost always enough woodin game for f.e a Carpenters bench, carpenters hammer etc)

[Acerbic]

Thanks for the contributions, everyone. Based on your opinions, we have decided to add the following cards to the ban list:
- A131_CraftTeacher
- A14_CarpentersHammer
- A97_Freshman
- B117_Informant
- B15_CarpentersBench
- C102_TreeGuard
- C28_TeachersDesk
- D19_PulverizerPlow
- D21_Recruitment
- D74_RoyalWood
- D92_ChildOmbudsman
- E22_GuestRoom

For those who have been shying away from playing due to concerns about power level, hopefully this can rekindle your interest :)