There is some subtlety to the stats.
For example, cards suffer in the stats if they are widely thought of as strong. This is because weaker players become more likely to take the card in the draft before a stronger player has the chance to see it and take it. And so even if that card is very strong, it looks worse because being drafted by weaker players makes it appear less likely to win.
We can see that effect by looking at a card's average draft position, ie the average round in the draft in which it is picked. Beer Table is 1.61, this is the 9th earliest minor in the game. So it is being snapped up by most players in the draft.
But still: the fact is that cards like Cesspit, Brewery Pond, Job Contract, Hardware Store and Swing Plow are both picked very early AND have extremely strong power. Beer Table is simply not normally as good as those cards.
My view is that that downsides of Beer Table are not appreciated enough:
- 2 wood cost is not trivial.
- You can't have grain in supply when you play it, making the tempo much more awkward.
- Feeding your opponents is not a small point. An early Beer Table might give your opponents a collective 15 or even 18 food (in a 4p game). Consider a card like Pavior. It's the 12th strongest occ, and all it does is give you a food a round if you meet an easy condition (plus a veg at the end). An early Beer Table is like playing one of the strongest occs in the game, then giving the benefits to your opponents!
One other point - Beer Table is also in no way annoying for opponents in the sense of warping their games, which is also a consideration for the banlist (this is why Carriage Trip, Walking Boots etc are banned).
So I encourage people to stop seeing Beer Table as broken and start enjoying the free food your opponent is feeding you
- or if you are the one with Beer Table, think about how to get the most out of it.
