With the
new stats, it’s time to look at the weak banlist again.
As a reminder, the point of the list is to remove cards that are pretty hopeless even in niche strategies. Having complete junk in the draft adds variance, especially in lower draft counts, without making the game more fun. It actually makes interesting combos with unusual cards less likely, by wasting a slot in the draft. But cards that can occasionally lead to brilliancies should not be included. It is for this reason that cards like Growing Farm, Wealthy Man, Cob, Heart of Stone etc are not in it - unusual cards doing brilliant things is part of the joy of the game.
Proposal
Unban: Blackberry Farmer
Blackberry Farmer continues to have terrible PWR, BUT it has reasonable elo/play over a non-trivial amount of games, suggesting it can add value in niche strategies. Plus there is an official movement to get it unbanned, which adds weight to the idea that people think it’s in the wrong place.
Ban: Cooperative Plower, Roughcaster, Small Animal Breeder, Forest Tallyman
These cards have the following features. (a) Extremely low PWR and strong negative elo/play. (b) Played non-trivial amounts of the time. Previously we decided that cards that were being played a reasonable amount shouldn’t be included, but Lumin made a good point; why keep in cards that are pure traps for newer players. (c) No meaningful brilliancy potential (boring even when they come off).
For discussion (recommend ban): Hardworking Man, Large-Scale Farmer, Mummy's Boy, Culinary Artist, Claw Knife, Mill Wheel, Brotherly Love, Dutch Windmill
Taking each in turn:
Hardworking Man: Terrible PWR, Terrible elo/play. But maybe it has the potential to be part of a brilliant game?
Large-Scale Farmer: Similar. Marginally less terrible stats, but less brilliancy potential?
Mummy’s Boy: This one confuses me. It has very bad PWR, but its elo/play is actually good on a reasonable number of plays. I must be missing something because to my eyes it looks unplayable.
Culinary Artist: Bad PWR, Bad elo/play, not convinced it has enough potential for niche strats but could be persuaded.
Claw Knife: This has a painfully awkward requirement (exactly 1 pasture), a weak effect (2f when you take sheep), and it turns out that even when played it has very bad elo/play. This is the kind of minor I think we should be including.
Mill Wheel: Lumin was strongly against banning this before, but the stats for it are dreadful and I take justyellow’s point seriously that we should be trying to add more minors to the weak list. Low PWR, bad elo/play, just an all round bad card. Should we keep terrible cards just because they have a point written on them?
Brotherly Love: terrible elo/play, probably has padded PWR stats as a minor costing only one food but is still very low PWR. Not convinced it’s part of any meaningful fun strats either.
Dutch Windmill: Very low PWR. It has decent elo/play, but stats suggest it’s generally played in the late game as a way to convert excess resources to points: maybe those games were winning anyway? If we want to ban more minors, this is the kind of card we should seriously consider including.
