Banlist Discussion!

[alexwjb]

Keeping this up to date: siverure was very against Garden Designer being removed from the banlist. I am happy to take his word for it as it's not a card I know well. I can see how it could be busted.

So I withdraw my proposal re Garden Designer!

[torvaldur_makan]

Garden Designer should remain banned. Lodger I don't find that annoying or strong. Pulverizer Plow is probably strong but not too strong. Guest Room is probably too strong in the revised version.

[JustYellow]

Strongly disagree with reducing the banlist. If anything, I would add a couple of cards to it.

Annoyance wise, I’d put all the cards that allow growth without “Wish for Children” flipping ahead of Lodger. Not that they are overpowered by themselves, but they just turn the game into a lottery. Thinking Liitle Stick, Family Friendly Home, etc. Not saying they should be banned, but that they're really annoying.

Lover (which I dislike for the above mentioned reason) is very, very powerful, but at least discourages one to build more rooms. One has to choose their strategy at least by stage 2, whereas Guest Room just lets one keep on building or doing whatever with no further downside.

In regards to Pulverizer Plow, don’t think you’re seeing it from the right perspective. At the very least, it gives one a farmland button to be used by the 4th or 5th person in the last 3 rounds. With no tempo loss whatsoever! Can’t stress enough how powerful this is.
It is not comparable to Forest Plow (that is also a very strong card anyway) because everybody wants wood and nobody wants clay. And besides, one has to give up 2 wood to use it and make that place more interesting to the other players in the next round.

[Siveure]

Okay finally got around to giving my thoughts on the banlist. I think for me there are basically four tiers of cards on the banlist. I have divided them as such:

1) Cards that are very annoying - to the point I don't want to play with them even if I was playing with a mindset of "no banlist, anything goes":

A82_WorkCertificate, B10_Caravan, B22 Walking Boots, C3_CarriageTrip, C125 Nightworker

2) Cards that are game breaking - either by providing far too many points (10+) at a low cost, or by providing growth far too easily:

A39 Chapel, B21 Hayloft Barn, B132_EstateMaster, C63_Craftbrewery, C99_GardenDesigner, D21_Recruitment, D92_ChildOmbudsman

3) Other cards that are clearly way too good in a way that does not break the game (many of these are game breaking given a combo with other cards):

A14_CarpentersHammer, A33_BigCountry, A48 Shaving Horse, A97_Freshman, A131_CraftTeacher, A133_Braggart, B15_CarpentersBench, B161 Weakling, C28_TeachersDesk, C31_WritingChamber, D33_SummerHouse, D74_RoyalWood, D97_BeggingStudent, D137_TradeTeacher

4) Other banned cards:

B117_Informant, B151_LittlePeasant, C102_TreeGuard, D4_CrossCutWood, D19_PulverizerPlow, E22_GuestRoom

Of the stuff in category 4: I think Little Peasant, Cross Cut Wood and (sadly) Tree Guard are all not candidates to come off the banlist as they are more there for issues with their play patterns than their power. I think Informant is there for it's effect in high draft count high power games, and do not want to have to fight the mostly Chinese community that loves these games on that issue again.

For the cards that Alex brought up:

Garden Designer belongs in game breaking tier - it is not that difficult to create a game that makes an absolutely massive surplus of food at the end of the game, especially if you're willing to sacrifice points to do so. It's just usually pointless. Getting 15+ bonus points for doing this makes it literally not pointless, and you can totally take over a game by doing so. The field requirement is also not very restrictive, given that some of the best ways to get the necessary food involve sowing lots of crops. Don't unban this card ever, please.

Pulverizer plow: I think the most illustrative comparison for pulverizer plow is not forest plow, it's assistant tiller. "The other clay action cards aren't very strong" point misses that pulverizer plow does something a lot better than any of them, similar to how tiller stacks up among other day laborer cards. I think I most dislike the arbitrariness of how the card effects the game - sometimes nobody cares about clay so it's just uncontested plows (which also sometimes aren't useful), sometimes another player cares about clay and their game completely dies as a result of being unable to get a big clay action, sometimes the pulverizer plow player makes great use of the clay and gets a nuts card (this is not common, because clay is kindof bad haha). Don't really want the card unbanned, but don't think I'd be too upset right away.

Guest room: I have no clue about this card. I don't know how it stacks up against lover which is a card we didn't feel the need to ban. No real feelings either way. It feels very powerful to use, but I don't actually know if it matches up to how it feels. Could see unbanning it.

Lodger: I think the worst part of lodger is the kingmaking effect of it being played badly. Played well the card is actually not strong or annoying, but a weak player will think it is strong and accidentally hand the game to another player. I've mostly gotten over this annoyance as I find the minigame of "Can I block the lodger room from happening so the person dies in r9" interesting (I care about this more than winning the game sometimes...). It's quite a feels bad moment if that happens to the lodger player (who has sometimes quit when this actually happened in games) so I could see banning it for this reason as well as the original one given.

Shortened version:
Garden Designer - Don't unban. Pulverizer plow: Prefer not to unban. Guest room: Idk? Lodger: Sure ban it if you want.

[Ranior]

I'm strongly against Garden Designer being removed from the banlist. It absolutely should stay on there, it's very much in the category of too easily providing too many bonus points.

I'm generally against Pulverizer Plow being removed, I think it's both too strong in general, and it's sometimes really annoying/disruptive. It's very powerful to be able to last action take a plow action in some games. I will grant it's slightly weird in that some times it doesn't matter much, but it has too high a rate on games where it matters too much.

I'm fine with Guest Room coming back, I was never sure it was ban worthy. I'm still sad revised accidentally changed it slightly to allow it to work the round it is played, as that maybe has made it too strong. I think it's always been a bit on the edge though, so I don't have strong feelings either way if it should be on or off.

I also don't really mind if Lodger goes on the ban list for annoyance reasons. It's rarely even good, but I agree some love to use it in ways that aren't good for them, but really warp the game in ways that aren't really predictable. I had hoped over time players would come to realize this, but if it's still consistently warping games in unfun ways....banning is fine.

The banlist is in a great spot in my opinion, pretty much everything on there I agree with. Looking through the list, I'm ambivalent about Informant actually being too strong, but if a bunch of players still find it annoying and/or players playing different settings than I tend to say it's ruining their games, then leaving it on the banlist is fine. I really don't think there's anything else that I'd consider changing off the banlist.

[DavidJG]

Job Contract seems too powerful and IMO should be banned.

Job Contract C023
If both are unoccupied, you can use the "Day Laborer" and the adjacent "Lessons" action space with a single person (in that order).
Afterward, both spaces are considered occupied.

This not only gives the player an extra lessons action every time, but also blocks it from all other players.

Other actions that give a player an extra action every time can also be very powerful even when they do not block the other players.

[lezurichois]

Not sure if anyone cares, but I will also give my two cents haha.

After checking the strong card banlist again, I agree that it is in a "very nice place" (to quote Ranior) at the moment for 4 player non-AAS games. I am against removing pulverizer plow and garden designer from the banlist, for the reasons mentions earlier in this thread.

I had to bang my heads multiple times against my desk by seeing players destroying their own games (and sometimes mine) by playing a bad lodger. The card can be very annoying, but I also enjoy a little "lodge hunt" from time to time. I do not mind banning it for annoyance, if that is the will of a majority of players. But overall, I am slightly in favor of keeping it.

Regarding guest room, I am also on the fence. I don't think the card is game breaking and in most games it is not game winning by itself. It also lets you try alternative lines. I would be slightly in favor of bringing it back in the card pool...

[alexwjb]

Summarising recent replies:

Garden Designer
Universal desire to keep banned, now including by me

Pulveriser Plow
Keep banned [5]: cranes, justyellow, siverure (not strongly), Ranior, Lezurichois
Unban [3]: Alex, silverriver, torvaldur (not strongly)

Summary: keep banned

Guest Room
Keep banned [2]: torvaldur, justyellow
Unban [4]: Alex, cranes (not strongly), silverriver, lezurichois (not strongly)
Neutral [2]: siverure, Ranior

Summary: more opinions needed? if more people want it unbanned there could be a case

Lodger
Ban [4]: Alex, cranes, siverure (not strongly), Ranior (not strongly),
Keep Unbanned [4]: silverriver, torvaldur, justyellow, lezurichois (not strongly)

Summary: significantly more opinions needed before a change could be considered.

Job contract
DavidJG raised this as a card they want to ban. For the record I am against banning it.


Basically it seems like Ranior's point that the strong card banlist is in a good place is correct! But keep the opinions coming in case it moves the dial. Fwiw in general I think there should be a status quo bias in favour of the way things are already, unless an alternative gets some decent momentum behind it (hence why I consider Guest Room in the "more opinions needed" category).

I continue to think more up-to-date stats would help a lot. But maybe the devs are too busy working on the new Irrigation module

[cranesflyhigh]

Job Contract seems too powerful and IMO should be banned.

Job Contract C023
If both are unoccupied, you can use the "Day Laborer" and the adjacent "Lessons" action space with a single person (in that order).
Afterward, both spaces are considered occupied.

This not only gives the player an extra lessons action every time, but also blocks it from all other players.

Other actions that give a player an extra action every time can also be very powerful even when they do not block the other players.

Without daylabor combo, it basically has the effect of Patron that only works on a single space, but also on the first proc. It is a very good card for sure, as rushing out occs is potent, especially early game where you do not need an extra feeding action to keep the occ spam going, and the combo potential makes it great. It is nowhere near the power level of other cards on the banlist though - it is in most cases better than Patron, but Patron is only a mediocre occupation to begin with.

[torvaldur_makan]

Job Contract seems too powerful and IMO should be banned.

Job Contract C023
If both are unoccupied, you can use the "Day Laborer" and the adjacent "Lessons" action space with a single person (in that order).
Afterward, both spaces are considered occupied.

This not only gives the player an extra lessons action every time, but also blocks it from all other players.

Other actions that give a player an extra action every time can also be very powerful even when they do not block the other players.

Without daylabor combo, it basically has the effect of Patron that only works on a single space, but also on the first proc. It is a very good card for sure, as rushing out occs is potent, especially early game where you do not need an extra feeding action to keep the occ spam going, and the combo potential makes it great. It is nowhere near the power level of other cards on the banlist though - it is in most cases better than Patron, but Patron is only a mediocre occupation to begin with.

Yeah, I'm not following. It comes with some drawbacks, like you still have to use DL before anyone uses the Lessons action space in a round. The strength (if there is one, I'm not really a fan of DL combos) of DL combos is that you can use it with your last person in a round because no one wants the action space.

Job Contract is occasionally strong, but never ban-worthy strong in my opinion.